(Clearwisdom.net) My mother and I are both Falun Dafa practitioners while my father is not. A few days ago, I had a dream. In the dream, I saw a fellow practitioner come to my parent’s home. My father lost his temper with my mother and I, and cursed the other practitioner. When I woke up in the morning, I talked to my mother about my dream. My mother said, "The evil beings are fighting at their last breaths. Maybe they have created some sort of interference for us since this kind of dream generally is a signs that your father will stir up conflicts." I nodded and agreed. Soon one night, my father started to talk about Buddhism since he had been studying books on Buddhism. He said Buddhism doesn’t talk about supernormal abilities and claimed that anything that talks about supernormal abilities is not righteous. However, I know the fact is that many of Buddha Sakyamuni’s disciples had very powerful supernormal abilities, like Kin Lian and Lotus Color. I couldn’t bear what my father said and I argued with him. My father got mad at me, cursed me, and drove me out of his home.
When I calmed down, I regretted what happened. I thought that I had removed my attachment to competitiveness. Yet what just happened exposed this attachment of mine. I had cultivated for nine years yet I couldn’t pass such a small test. I felt terrible. I sat down and looked inside and found seven or eight more attachments. It seems I had never cultivated before since I still had so many attachments. Eventually, I became very frustrated and lost the courage to continue cultivating. What should I do?
Suddenly, I became clear-headed and realized it was wrong to get lost. The evil in other dimensions was trying to make me lose my courage to strive forward, to lose confidence in the Fa. When I came to realize this, I typed the following words on my keyboard, "Now I see my attachments, however, I don’t acknowledge them. I don’t want them. I want to negate them." Then I sent forth righteous thoughts and asked Teacher to help me with this. I also eliminated the evil factors that controlled my father. After that, I felt that my body was very light and I no longer worried about anything. The next day, I went back to my parent’s home. My father was very nice and calm towards me as if nothing had happened between us.
When I shared my experience with my mother, she said, "You already got the hint in your dream, yet you still failed to pass the test. It shows that you have a strong attachment to competitiveness." I felt sad for myself. Yes, I had such a clear dream yet how come I didn’t pay attention to it? How come I couldn’t remove my attachments? When I came home, I casually grabbed a booklet and started to read it. It is called "The Difference of One Thought Between Gods and Everyday People." Some articles by fellow practitioners helped me enlighten to some things. I therefore reexamined my thoughts and I had a clearer understanding on what happened.
From the beginning, I had been walking down the path arranged by old forces without realizing it. The old forces’ arrangements are to destructively test us. Whether they tried to make us enlighten along an evil path, or lose confidence, their purpose is not to let us rise but to drag us down. If we acknowledge them, they would have excuses to make further arrangements for us. They would then create more interference and enlarge our attachments, which would make us pessimistic and eventually give up practicing Dafa. Teacher already reminded us about this,
"Don't think, ‘they want what's good for us and want us to rise through cultivation.’ That is not true! They are trying everything possible to bring you down and not let you rise. You need to keep that in mind, and that's how it is in reality." (Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles)
I’ve come to clearly realize that we need to look inside to cultivate, yet we definitely cannot cultivate under the old forces’ arrangements. Furthermore, we cannot lose confidence during the evil tests.
The right path becomes narrower and narrower towards the end and we can’t afford to make any mistakes. This requires us to study the Fa more and look at the situation as a whole when we have problems. We cannot take extreme actions. If we follow the old forces’ arrangements, the interference would never end. Then we wouldn’t be able to reach consummation and it would stop us from saving sentient beings. However, if we don’t look inside during conflicts using the excuses that the old forces created the conflicts, we are then covering up our attachments. Therefore, we need to balance the relationships in order to correctly handle our issues and cultivate ourselves with dignity.
The above is my personal understandings at my current level. Please correct me if I said anything inappropriate.
