(Clearwisdom.net) Greetings Teacher! Greetings fellow practitioners!
I am a Chinese language teacher in a junior high school, and I have been practicing Falun Gong since 1996.
I love writing. Before I started to practice Falun Gong, I published some short novels in newspapers and magazines, and was somewhat well-known in the local area because of it. This skill had brought me some fame and profit, but also inflated my ego.
During the past several years of practicing Falun Gong, I had abandoned a lot of attachments to fame, profit and sentiment (qing), but I didn't see my attachment to self.
When the persecution started on July 20, 1999, I wasn't frightened and stepped forward with fellow practitioners to validate the Fa.
In September 2001, I started to write and submit articles to Clearwisdom, and later to Pureinsight. Since then, I have been publishing several articles every year on Dafa disciples' websites. I still remember when my first article was published on Clearwisdom; I was very excited. I really wanted to tell practitioners around me about it and show off. Actually, it was an attachment to validating myself and promoting my fame among practitioners. Fortunately, I became aware of my attachment to showing off, so I was able to restrain it and only told a local coordinator about the article.
Inspired by other practitioners, I wrote an article in August 2005 about how a lot of local practitioners idolized other practitioners. The article, "A Dangerous Phenomenon That Calls for Our Attention," was quickly published on Clearwisdom (http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2005/9/2/64536.html), and to my surprise, was commented on by Teacher. My excitement was beyond words. I had to keep reminding myself, "Don't get big-headed. The article was inspired by fellow practitioners' sharing, and the wisdom comes from the Fa. I should write more and better articles to validate the Fa, and not to let Teacher down."
Although I kept reminding myself of these things, I couldn't help feeling good about myself and held myself in high regard for my understanding of the Fa. I didn't realize that the thought was not from my true nature, and as I didn't eliminate it right away, it gradually grew into an attachment to self.
When local practitioners heard that Teacher had commented on my article, they started to admire me (which was caused by my attachment), and they all wanted me to speak at Fa conferences. In the beginning, I felt it was not right and wrote an article to remind practitioners not to show off at Fa conferences. Yet, was I making the same mistake by speaking at Fa conferences so frequently? Then I thought, I spoke about my understandings from the Fa, not my experiences. So it was different. Thus I continued speaking at Fa conferences. Now I realize that showing off an understanding of Fa principles and showing off about experiences in going against the persecution are both forms of showing off and self-validation.
In the second half of 2005, "Minghui Weekly" published a lot of articles on eliminating one's fundamental attachments. Through talking to some practitioners, I found that there were quite a lot of practitioners who didn't pay much attention to this issue. Some practitioners even had no idea about the concept of fundamental attachments. I was very worried about this. I remembered that Teacher raised the issue of fundamental attachments in his article "Towards Consummation," published in 2000. Now that five years had passed, how could we keep up with the Fa-rectification process without eliminating our fundamental attachments? Around the time of the 2006 Chinese New Year, I spoke about my understanding on fundamental attachments at various Fa conferences. I also selected four articles on this topic from Clearwisdom (three of them were written by me), printed them as small pamphlets, and distributed them among practitioners. My actions had a negative impact on local practitioners' working together to validate the Fa and to save sentient beings. More seriously, what I did was not only an act to validate myself, but also no different than a disruption to the Fa and saving sentient beings .
I didn't realize this back then, but I often felt very good about myself and thought I was validating the Fa. The dangerous phenomenon that I wrote about to alert practitioners was quietly sneaking up on me, but I didn't realize it.
Very soon after writing the article, I was arrested and detained in the county detention center. Actually, before I was arrested, Teacher had already given me some hints, but I didn't understand them. I thought that my actions were based on the Fa, so I believed that nothing was going to happen to me.
The first night in the detention center, I couldn't sleep; I pondered the situation and tried hard to find my loophole that had caused the authorities to suddenly persecute me. During the night, my thoughts became clearer and clearer; I realized that I had been validating myself and deviating from the Fa. I confessed to Teacher that I had let him down and caused unnecessary loss to Dafa. I then promised to study the Fa well, eliminate the attachment to self, and do better in validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. "Calmly reflect on how many attachments you have. As you get rid of human mentality, evil is naturally defeated" ("Don't Be Sad" from Hong Yin Vol II) Seven days later, with Teacher's merciful care, I walked out of the detention center in a dignified manner.
This was a huge lesson. In order to avoid similar mistakes, for a period of time, I seldom attended or spoke at Fa conferences. I thought it was the only way that I could avoid making the same mistake.
I was still doing many things to validate Dafa, including distributing truth-clarification materials, hanging up banners, putting up posters, talking to people face to face, organizing a new Fa study group, setting up a new truth-clarification materials production site, writing articles, editing truth-clarification materials, and sharing with a few close practitioners.
After a while, a rumor soon spread among local practitioners, implying that at an experience sharing conference I said that a local coordinator acted like a queen among practitioners. I was shocked. I never said anything like that, and I didn't even attend that particular conference. Then how could this happen? Which attachment of mine caused this? After searching inside myself I found that I have a tendency to protect myself and have a fear of being hurt by others. That is why I avoided showing myself at Dafa gatherings. On the surface, I was not validating myself, but I had already gone to another extreme and put protecting myself before validating the Fa and saving sentient beings; my selfishness was behind all of this. I was determined to change and knew that I should do whatever needed to be done. Maybe sharing with fellow practitioners and improving as a whole body is a very important factor on my cultivation path.
On July 16, 2007, Clearwisdom published a U.S. practitioner's article "Let Us End the Persecution Now," which was well received among practitioners both inside and outside China. Following its lead, many other articles were published on Clearwisdom related to the same topic. I soon realized that it was by no accident that the article was published. It was a hint that the Fa-rectification process was entering a new phase, which all practitioners should clearly understand and thus form a strong field of righteous thoughts. I openly shared my understanding about this with practitioners. Prior to the sharing, at the very beginning, I explained that I didn't come to help practitioners improve; I came to share on an equal basis in the hope that we could improve together. This time, I didn't speak nonstop like other times, and I tried to let every practitioner have a chance to speak. Practitioners were no longer attached to listening to me speak either. It was truly a wonderful experience of improving as a whole body!
Of course, local practitioners had different understandings on ending the persecution right away, which was normal.
A practitioner told me, "Accomplishing is cultivating" ("Solid Cultivation" from Hong Yin). I knew what she meant, but I didn't say anything. Several days later, another practitioner told me that some practitioners thought I didn't do much in validating the Fa. I smiled and didn't say anything. Some days later, while sharing our understanding on ending the persecution, practitioner A, who often went to rural areas to distribute flyers, said, "I think we can end the persecution only when all of us do well." I'm not sure why, but at that moment I just felt as if some part of me was attacked. So I replied, "Practitioners are all walking their own path. None of us have to tell other practitioners what we have done. For example, ..." Although I was referring to another practitioner, I wanted to say that I had also done a lot of things in validating the Fa that others may not be aware of.
On my way home, a practitioner said to me, "Just now, your state of mind wasn't truly pure. You were validating yourself." I was stunned. How come I was validating myself again? When I thought about it calmly, I realized that this practitioner was right. I felt uncomfortable when practitioners thought I didn't do much, and so I wanted to explain myself. Didn't I try to validate myself? I realized that I still had a strong attachment to self. I couldn't let this opportunity slip by, I needed to expose it and dissolve it.
After sending forth righteous thoughts at noon, the next day, I went to practitioner A's workplace and talked with her about my attachment to validating myself. It was quite strange; on my way to her workplace, the sky looked heavy and cloudy, but when I left her workplace, the clouds were gone and the sun came out. My mood lit up too.
After watching "Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners," I understand more clearly the issue of validating oneself. I realized that validating oneself is an issue that needs to be taken care of in the last phase of our cultivation. It isolates practitioners, sabotages cooperation among practitioners, and even destroys the environment that practitioners have created through their hard efforts of truth clarification. Validating one's self is an enormous obstacle on the path to validate the Fa and save sentient beings. Behind the attachment of validating the self, there are many human attachments, including the competitive mentality, jealousy, the mentality of showing off, etc., which usually manifest as desires and urges to show off. In a word, validating the self is the manifestation of selfishness.
As a genuine Dafa disciple, no one would want to show off or validate oneself intentionally, but with strong human notions, one may validate oneself unknowingly. Forming a human mentality can be a subtle and undetectable process, but if we can maintain strong righteous thoughts, any human attachments can be restrained, and mistakes such as validating oneself can be avoided too.
Validating the self is a common issue among practitioners. As long as there are human attachments, anything in the human world can become a trigger for validating the self. For practitioners who are famous or have some special skills, the issue can be more intense. When they are applying their skills to validate the Fa, inevitably they are also exhibiting their skill level.
As someone who also possesses a bit of skill, I now clearly realize that the skill comes from Dafa, and I do not own it. Gods arranged for me to use it to validate the Fa during the Fa-rectification period. If gods arrange for any practitioner to have this skill, the skill should be used to better validate the Fa. If we use our skills to show off, it is not only very unreasonable, but it is also against our true nature.
In "Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners," Teacher solved this longstanding issue for us, but we cannot rely on Teacher for everything. We must walk our own cultivation path.
While writing this article for the Internet experience sharing conference, I deeply feel that I didn't do well; I had let Teacher down. In the future, I will doubly cherish the limited time, study the Fa well, and keep strong righteous thoughts. I will wholeheartedly validate the Fa and save sentient beings. I will walk the last part of the path well and attain the righteous enlightenment of selflessness and altruism.
