(Clearwisdom.net) I recently gained some understanding after reading some fellow practitioners’ articles. The several articles I read were all about how the practitioners broke out of the dens of evil and exposed the persecution that the practitioners had experienced in detention. All these articles had the same premise; that is, the concerned practitioners were sent to the detention while doing the three things well. The articles described how cruelly the practitioners were tortured and how they sent righteous thoughts to disintegrate the evil, offered salvation to sentient beings, and finally broke out of the detention under Master’s protection. The articles further described that some of the concerned practitioners were sent to detention again, and they again, through their righteous thoughts and actions and under Master’s protection, broke free. I am eager to understand what caused the practitioners to be repetitively persecuted. While these articles emphasized how they broke out of the dens through their righteous thoughts and actions, the articles just slightly touched or even did not touch on the fundamental, underlying causes of the persecution.

When I read such articles in the past, I usually unknowingly placed myself in the position that I was about to be persecuted, so I had not completely negated the old forces’ persecution. 

Master told us,

“Master doesn't want you to always take the wrong path, and even less can he bear to see you being persecuted. Oftentimes the hardships you endure really are brought about by human attachments. When your human attachments are strong and you don't realize it, the old forces' factors will use the evil to capture you and send you to labor camps for persecution.” (“Cleaning Up”, Master’s Commentary on the article “Don't Be Self-Indulgent and Draw Demons to Ourselves”)

I read this Fa and then thought again about the persecution that fellow practitioners have suffered in detention. It felt painful to do so. From the Fa I understand: Master does not acknowledge this persecution, and Master increasingly wants to see us be mature, rational, and steadfast in our walking on the path of assisting Master in rectifying the Fa. While facing tribulations and in order for us to accomplish what Master wants, the best way to eliminate the evil is for us to always look inward.

I know a fellow practitioner who lives in the countryside. The evil abruptly seized her and repetitively interrogated her, but she just did not say a word. The police became very frustrated and angrily asked her, “Why can’t you say a few words?” After she saw the police becoming so frustrated, she said in a very calm and simple way, “Our Master told us not to cooperate with the evil.” She said only those few words. Finally the evil let her go. A great way is simple and straightforward. This practitioner did not think about how to get out of there. She just wanted to follow Master’s words and did not cooperate with the evil. Of course, what she said was not just something superficial. What was critical was her righteous mind and cultivation state when she made that remark. So I want to remind fellow practitioners that we should cultivate ourselves solidly.

There is a practitioner in our region who did the three things very enthusiastically. During the period of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, she was sent to a forced labor camp for clarifying the facts to people, This was the superficial reason that the evil persecuted her. In the detention center, she shouted, “Falun Dafa is good” all the time. In a month she walked out of the labor camp via the way of her being “sick”. She shared with other practitioners her experience of how to get out of the labor camp with righteous thoughts and actions, and many practitioners admired her. However, she did not realize what really caused her to be persecuted in the labor camp. She did not know the cause even when she passed away one year later from “sickness.” Thus because the practitioner, after walking out of the labor camp, failed to look inward and cultivate herself solidly, she fell into another form of persecution.

Cultivation is not about the glorious acts of those ordinary people’s heroes. It is the elimination of human notions in a solid way. It is about a Dafa practitioner having all the maturity and rationality that he or she should have.

What happened has become the past. However, we may indeed continue to have the unrealized attachments that have been exploited by the evil. It was extraordinary that we could, during the process, act with righteous thoughts and disintegrate the evil that attempted to persecute the practitioners via forced labor camps. When the Fa-rectification has reached the present stage, if we all can find in ourselves the fundamental causes for the persecution and then eliminate and disintegrate them, the evil will be gone naturally. We can naturally achieve this state if we study the Fa well and cultivate our hearts solidly.