(Clearwisdom.net) After reading the article entitled: "Reflections After Being Persecuted While Holding a Hunger Strike and Being Force-fed," I felt that the fellow practitioner's understanding is very good. As the Fa-rectification is disintegrating the evil thoroughly, we should have new thoughts and understanding regarding working against the persecution by going on hunger strikes. I'd like to share my experience of being arrested and tortured.

Teacher gave me a hint about being arrested in a dream about a month before it happened. However, I did not take it seriously, which led to my actually being arrested. In their effort to save me, three fellow practitioners were arrested, which caused a great deal of damage. My feelings of guilt and regret kept me from sharing this experience for a long time. Now I am writing it down in order to give witness to our Teacher's boundless compassion towards us disciples and to discuss the above referenced topic.

In 2005, I was illegally arrested. I kept clarifying the truth in the police vehicle and at the police substation, and did not comply with the police's efforts to take my picture and get my fingerprints. At the detention center, I sat in the lotus position while sending forth righteous thoughts and went on a hunger strike to resist their persecution.

I went on a hunger strike several times in the past few years, but never carried it through until I was released. Once I could not overcome my fear of death, and other times the evil made some concessions and I did not feel like persisting. Since my understanding on the Fa and the purpose of hunger strikes were not the same each time, my physical experiences were different. One thing I did understand was that in the initial stage of persecution, if our understanding was within the Fa and our motive was pure, we could indeed reach the xinxing level required by the Fa and force the evil to release us. As a result, we could disintegrate the evil and break out of the detention centers and labor camps. However, when hunger strikes are widely used as a means of resisting the persecution, many practitioners have not done well and some have even been tortured to death. Isn't the Fa's requirement higher at different stages of Fa-rectification? The old factors saw that this has become an almost fixed form when many practitioners use hunger strikes as a means of opposing the persecution. Did this then become a major excuse for them to continue the persecution? This was a question that I pondered a lot.

On the fourth day of the last hunger strike I held, I felt especially awful and very thirsty. In the afternoon, members of the 610 Office came to the detention center and force-fed me a bottle of salty water, which I threw back up. They then sent me to a provincial brainwashing center several hundred kilometers away. When the vehicle was halfway there, I wanted to stop the car and the policemen with righteous thoughts, and even shouted out some things, but it did not work on the surface. The police stared at me in surprise, not knowing what I was shouting about. However, I did not have the slightest doubt about sending forth righteous thoughts. I was very clear that the supernormal power wouldn't work fully as long as the big omission which caused my being arrested was not identified and my mindset was unstable.

To my surprise, the police at the brainwashing center planned to force-feed me with powdered milk. I realized that this was to lengthen the duration of torture. I felt too thirsty to carry on the hunger strike and found an excuse for myself. I thought, "The reeducation center failed to 'transform' me, so what more harm can a brainwashing center do to me," and thus I decided to eat and drink again. However, on the following day, seeing quite a few Dafa practitioners carrying out hunger strikes to resist torture, I felt regretful as I went to the cafeteria to eat next to the people who were responsible for the persecution.

I calmed down quickly and started thinking about things based on the Fa. I thought of what Teacher said in Zhuan Falun:

"They’re your own tribulations, and we use them to improve your character. You should be able to overcome all of them. As long as you improve your character, you will be able to overcome them—it’s only that you might not want to overcome them. If you want to overcome them you can."

I thought that although I carelessly fell into the hands of the evil, I want to walk the path that Teacher has arranged for me, with righteous thoughts and actions based on the Fa. The key is to improve xinxing, and even though improving xinxing involves suffering hardships, that doesn't mean I need to passively suffer this persecution. So I looked inside and located three of my biggest attachments and omissions. Afterwards I made some fundamental changes within myself and cleansed my thoughts. Meanwhile, I did my best to negate the old forces' arrangements. I knew that I had already overcome the persecution in the brainwashing center, and the persecution cannot go on indefinitely like this. I recognized this as persecution that should be negated completely, but I still gave up the hunger strike.

At that time, a person who had turned against Dafa under pressure brought me a copy of Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival by Teacher in order to get closer to me and to prepare me for further brainwashing. I started reading it.

I read the sentence,

"Dafa Disciples' sending righteous thoughts is fundamentally rejecting the old forces' arrangements and eliminating the evil's persecution."

Suddenly my thoughts were cleared up and brightened all of a sudden, and I truly felt as if I had found the key to overcoming the evil. The regret and guilt I felt from giving up hunger strikes vanished. It felt as if I had never such a deep and clear understanding of Teacher's words. I began to eliminate the evil every chance I got through righteous thoughts.

Whenever I ran into a policeman in the hallway, I would immediately send righteous thoughts to eliminate all the evil behind him. When two former practitioners were sent to try to "transform" me, I sent righteous thoughts. One of them got so drowsy that he could hardly raise his head, and the other was rendered speechless after his words were refuted. After two attempts, they gave up.

One day during lunchtime, I sent righteous thought to make the people guarding me fall asleep so that I could escape. However, the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch time, as I was walking to the door. The following day I was able to walk out of the room during lunch time after sending righteous thoughts, but the first floor was full of policemen when I came down the stairs. I had to come back to the room. How come I did not succeed? I looked inside but failed to find the reason.

At that time a steadfast fellow practitioner came, and we shared experiences briefly. His understanding was that in order to break out of here, we must break through the evil's sphere of power in other dimensions. Otherwise, the evil could easily summon people to block me in this dimension. I felt that what he said made sense. I began sending righteous thoughts intensively and for long periods of time, strengthening my main consciousness and expelling any thoughts that could interfere with righteous thoughts. Sometimes I stood in front of the window for over two hours, looking as if I were watching the scenery outside. Actually I was sending righteous thoughts all the time. Little by little, I felt purer and the power of my righteous thoughts grew stronger.

At noon, the people watching me brought me a handful of dates and two pears. I realized that it was a hint from Teacher. (In Chinese, the word for "date" is a homonym for "early", and the word for "pear" is a homonym for "departure".) At 6 p.m. we went to the exercise yard in a group. I knew that many fellow practitioners were helping me to disintegrate the evil with their righteous thoughts. As soon as we came down the stairs, I saw that the people assigned to guarding us were distracted. The exercise yard was ringed by a metal picket fence, and only the tall gate was approachable. I decided to break through it.

At that moment, I felt a lot of pressure and walked back towards inside, begging Teacher in my mind to give more chances. Then I decided that I cannot keep doing this, and made up my mind. I climbed onto the gate quickly. The guard saw me and started running over as I was atop the gate.

I jumped off the gate and ran for it along the planned route. I kept sending righteous thoughts to enforce the idea that I must be able to escape. Probably because I was still weak from the hunger strike a few days before, I fell into a ditch on the hillside when I was climbing over a metal fence. I thought: "Teacher, I can run no further," and sent righteous thoughts so that the people pursuing me could not see me. A little while later, I heard people stopping very close to where I was and then leaving.

After eight days in the brainwashing center, I returned to the body of practitioners, where I can continue to save sentient beings. Afterwards I realized the importance of righteous thoughts—sending righteous thoughts intensively has a better effect. Of course, my being able to escape was closely related to fellow practitioners' righteous thoughts.

After I escaped and before Teacher published "Thoroughly Dissolve the Evil," I often dreamed of being chased by others, and sometimes I ran until I was exhausted in my dreams. At first I thought it might be due to my despondence or having some remaining fear, but it was not quite right. Later I sent righteous thoughts while facing the evil in such dreams, and they either disappeared or were defeated by my righteous thoughts. This made me further realize the importance of facing the evil with righteous thoughts.

The Teacher mentioned supernatural powers many times in the Fa: "She would undo the chains with a mere shake." "When he did, the chair would—'Crash!'—break to pieces." Greater abilities will show; "they gave this person gong proportionate to the level of his character." "When he wanted to send out some gong, gong would come," "I subdivided my gong to my disciples, each has a share which is an energy ball composed of hundreds of abilities."

Teacher said in "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Experience Sharing Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.": "You are Gods, and you are the rulers of different cosmoses in the future, so who would you count on?" "Gods walk the earth, validating the Fa"("What’s to Fear?" Hong Yin II)

The other day when I was reading the word "god" while studying Teacher's Fa lecture, I really felt that it was not referring to a name or title, but the omnipotent, omnipresent and invincible sacred power. So as Dafa practitioners as a whole body are passing the phase of individual cultivation, let's have our righteous thoughts play a greater role at this special historic phase of disintegrating the evil thoroughly and saving sentient beings!