(Clearwisdom.net) In His Fa lectures, Teacher talked about interference from one's own thought karma. In fact, all postnatal notions are not part of ourselves. However, we often don't differentiate those notions to see if they are ours or not. Although we know that those are bad notions, they still, whether consciously or unconsciously, control us.
Due to my attachment of fear, I was monitored by some thugs. I thought to myself, "I can't continue to go to another practitioner's home to study the Fa. I need to be rational." However, when I evaluated my thought with the Fa, I found that my avoidance and fear of being arrested did not conform to the Fa. After much debate, I decided to go. However, I was very late. Because I was controlled by that thought, I continued to debate the issue with myself all along the way, and I thought of returning home twice. But I did have a righteous thought: The fear might want to control me but it can't. However, this righteous thought was immediately overthrown by my fear of being arrested. Those thoughts strongly controlled every cell of my body.
I cannot describe in words how difficult it was for me to make the decision to go. It was only a trip to a fellow practitioner's home. Imagine if I needed to do other things to validate Dafa--how much fear would overcome me then? The fear is deeply rooted in me. It is selfish; it is fear of suffering, fear of death, fear of leaving Dafa, and fear of going to Hell. I then thought--a selfish life is indeed Hell! Why don't I have the urgency to save sentient beings? Why is my determination to save sentient beings moved by others' sarcasm and threats? Why do I feel bitter and no longer want to deal with them?
I knew that the obstacle was not myself and that it was something I wanted to abandon, but at that moment, one excuse came to my mind, "You need to be rational. You cannot recognize the persecution." In fact, this thought was just a shield so that it seemed all right on surface. Most of the time, I hid my attachment with this shield and stopped clarifying the truth.
In retrospect, we need to let go of every human notion on every step in our cultivation. To a person who is tortured nearly to death, it means letting go of the issue of life and death. Because when a practitioner truly abandons human notions and selfishness formed by pursuing self interest and fundamental attachments, if he can truly conform to the requirements of the Fa and do things for saving sentient beings, the life formed by karma would die! Even if only one molecule or one cell dies, it is enormous in other dimensions! The enormous deteriorated beings will be destroyed and transformed.
Next morning when I practiced the sitting meditation, I found myself very clear-headed, and I could clearly hear the music. For many years in the past, I had been very sleepy while practicing the sitting meditation. I did not even realize that I was practicing until the music stopped. It had never happened to me that I could hear the music throughout the entire sitting meditation.
I enlightened to the fact that the decision I made the other day was a choice of abandoning and giving up human, non-self notions, although I went through much debate and struggle. Teacher said, "But it's not that you can't get rid of it. As I just said, even if sometime in history you did sign some kind of pact, if today your righteous thoughts are very strong, you don't recognize it, and you insist on not taking part in it, then you can in fact reject it." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.")