(Clearwisdom.net) Recently the Minghui/Clearwisdom website reported a case where Wang Congzhu, head of the Wanquan County local government in Hebei Province, died from karmic retribution after following Jiang Zemin's regime and organizing the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. After looking inward, I have the following thoughts to share with my fellow practitioners.

1. If We Fail to Do a Good Job in Clarifying the Truth, More Sentient Beings Will Be Eliminated

The death of Wang Congzhu and others from karmic retribution is undoubtedly a real example of "Good brings rewards, while evil brings retribution" and it will play a role of awakening the local people. However, as a practitioner, what should we take away from the retribution that has happened in our local area?

In such a small county, so many practitioners have been arrested, sentenced to forced labor or prison terms, or died as a result of persecution. One can well imagine the pain and pressure endured by the local practitioners and their families. We can see the way it has hindered the salvation of the local sentient beings and damaged the Fa-rectification period cultivation environment.

However, we should not dwell on the pain and suffering of negative lessons. We must think of the experience from the angle of learning a positive lesson and treat it as a stepping stone for our future improvement. If the practitioners had clarified the truth better, then maybe the number of sentient beings who persecuted the practitioners and Dafa would have been reduced. So too would the losses to Dafa be reduced, and more sentient beings would have been saved.

The essence of cultivation in Falun Dafa is to look inward and discover the things that we haven't done well. I think we should give up the hatred towards those who joined the persecution as well as change our concepts and think of the problems from a positive angle. At the same time we must change our position from that of being persecuted to the position of saving people and look at what we have done. Are we genuinely saving people? Have we reached the requirements for saving sentient beings? Have we really fulfilled our responsibilities? What were our attachments and human thoughts that resulted in the current situation? If we truly improve, then the whole environment will change for the better.

2. The Incorrect Understanding of the Persecution Is One of the Reasons for Failing to Totally Negate the Persecution

In some areas the practitioners had different understandings on exposing the evil factors for a long time. Some thought we must redouble our efforts to expose the persecution and must not be soft and show mercy--that we must not give the evil forces any breathing space and completely disintegrate and eliminate all the evil factors that have been involved in the persecution. Some thought we should expose the persecution in a compassionate way, such as avoid naming the perpetrators and not talking to their families, and thus avoid spurring the evil to extend the persecution. Since we failed to reach a common understanding, we left loopholes for the evildoers to exploit, thereby seriously weakening our effectiveness in exposing the persecution. The result was that we could not make our efforts hit home when exposing their crimes. This failed to reach the goal of deterring the evildoers, and they were able to persecute practitioners in an unbridled manner.

Why did some of our practitioners ease up on exposing the evil? I think the root cause of it was a lack of understanding of the persecution. They failed to get a clear understanding of the nature of this persecution rationally, and treated it as a persecution in the human world. As a matter of fact, this is not a persecution of this dimension, but the persecution of practitioners who are on a divine path, manipulated by the old forces in other dimensions. Their purpose is to destroy sentient beings. Therefore, easing up on the evildoers is actually supporting the persecution. If we get stuck in human emotion and do not see the persecutors and their actions for what they really are, we may well not expose the persecution to the fullest extent. As a matter of fact, those people are being controlled by evil factors in other dimensions. Without these behind-the-scenes factors, the people in this dimension would not be able to do anything. After such a long time, why can't we totally negate the arrangements of the old forces and disintegrate them? The root cause is that some of us do not have a correct understanding of the persecution.

3. Out of Fear, Using Money to Prevent Further Persecution Amounts to Encouraging the Persecution

When facing the persecution, the family members of many practitioners use money to bribe the officials involved to rescue their loved ones, so that they would not suffer further. With the moral standards of society having deteriorated to where they are today, the family members who do not practice Falun Gong did this because we failed to successfully clarify the facts to them. However, some practitioners also had this type of thought when confronting the persecution, so they yielded to the arrangements made by their family members, albeit reluctantly. Although the money might buy them some temporary freedom, it is likely to add fuel to the deterioration of human moral standards, as well as the audacity of the evildoers in their persecution.

In addition, by giving money to the evildoers, we will make them think that persecuting practitioners is profitable. To gain more profit, they will continue to arrest practitioners and extort money from them. This makes them commit more crimes against practitioners and leads them further down the path of destruction. It was us, the practitioners, who would have helped bring about this result. In that case, are we really saving the sentient beings or destroying them?

4. Failing to Have a Clear and Righteous Understanding of the Fa Principles Is the Fundamental Cause of Failing to Walk on a Righteous Path

Teacher has urged us again and again to study the Fa well in almost all the Fa lectures. Have we had a clear and righteous understanding of the Fa principles? How can we have a righteous understanding of the persecution if we ourselves do not know the nature of the persecution? Why did the old forces arrange this persecution? What is the relationship between Teacher and the old forces, between practitioners and this persecution, and between sentient beings and this persecution? What are the responsibilities and mission of practitioners?

Over the 11 years of resistance, there have been countless painful lessons. Among the lessons, the most painful were the ones where the practitioners failed to have a clear understanding on Fa principles and used their human thoughts and concepts to deal with the persecution. They failed to have a righteous understanding and therefore could not have righteous thoughts and righteous actions.

I myself have been through a lot of painful lessons. Today I want to share this with fellow practitioners so that we can turn these previous lessons into our motivation for advancing forward and to walk our path better to accumulate more mighty virtue.

Kindly please point out anything inappropriate in my sharing.