(Clearwisdom.net) I would like to share my understanding of the Fa related to the case of the two practitioners who were raped.
The old forces use their evil arrangements to test practitioners and to try to destroy practitioners' belief in Teacher and the Fa. When the rape case was exposed, it was important whether Dafa practitioners' initial response when they heard the news was based on the Fa or not. When I read the article published in Minghui Weekly to my mother, who is also a practitioner, it was hard to tell if the event had any negative effect on her. She did not express doubts about it on the surface. Would the evil people have been able to rape the two female practitioners in front of several practitioners if the two practitioners had remembered clearly that they were practitioners who are protected by Teacher's fashen instead of regarding themselves as powerless ordinary women in trouble? It may sound easy, but the idea is as direct as passing a normal test in the peaceful cultivation period: when the demon of the attachment comes to tempt you, whether you can remember that you are a practitioner is the line to distinguish between a cultivator and an ordinary person. If you cannot reach a cultivator's standard, you will stay at the ordinary people's level; if you can reach a cultivator's standard, you will be supernatural. To put it simply, no matter how cruel and shameless the evil people in this world are, they would not dare to commit a sin against dignified gods face-to-face. Indeed we practitioners have the capability to avoid this kind of hurt and persecution.
Teacher says in "Teaching the Fa in San Francisco, 2005" that
"it undoubtedly has two goals. One is to have that person display such a state and then see how people around him or her look at it. It's to see how and whether your minds are moved by it. Isn't that the case? ... and see if all of you still cultivate. The future doesn't acknowledge anything of the old forces, and the change is inevitable. The old forces' overall system has already been destroyed, since the Fa-rectification has destroyed it at the highest place. It's just that the things the old forces left in this world in the past are still having a superficial effect; the things that have not been destroyed are still functioning. As for what will happen to sentient beings, human beings in particular, the old forces couldn't care less."
Wasn't it the old forces' arrangements that the two practitioners were raped? How can we truly break though the old forces' arrangements and walk only the path that Teacher has arranged for us?
I would like to share my own understandings from my personal cultivation experience. I was a timid and dependent woman afraid of being mistreated by others before I started cultivation. This was arranged by the old forces to prevent me from cultivating. It brought fear into my heart in validating the Fa, and the evil used it as an excuse to have me sent to a brainwashing center. Because I had the Fa in my heart (I had just finished memorizing Hong Yin II and had memorized Essentials for Further Advancement long before) and did not acknowledge the evil's persecution, I came out of the brainwashing center in four days with the merciful protection of Teacher's fashen.
We do not want to cultivate in the persecution arranged by the old forces, rather, we need to deny the persecution at its root. If all practitioners could have righteous thoughts and righteous actions, the persecution would not have happened or exist, and not one single case of persecution would have happened. When I was confronted with the old forces' arrangement, I would not have been able to pass it if I had not had the Fa at heart.
"when Disciples Have Sufficient Righteous Thoughts, Master Has the Almighty Power to Turn the Cosmos Around" (Hong Yin II)
I could not have made it if I had not let go of life and death and sharply denounced their unlawful wrongdoings, if I had not clarified the truth to save those savable lives, or if I had not had Teacher's merciful protection. Because I did what a practitioner was supposed to do, the plan that the old forces made to try to persecute me failed.
Teacher has reminded us again and again in each of his lectures to study the Fa more and better. That is indeed to lead us on the way that Teacher arranges for us. Only by studying the Fa can we obtain strong righteous thoughts and walk well on the path to return to one's true self. Every single thought of ours comes from the old cosmos that is selfish and arranged by the old forces. When a hurtful thing happens, no matter how serious the pain, if we are always with the Fa, we will be able to let go of anything.