(Clearwisdom.net) I used to be a very emotional person. After starting to cultivate in Falun Dafa, I began to be able to let go of being excessively emotional, which had controlled me in the past. For a time, however, I felt quite pleased myself, thinking that I was better than everyone else. The evil saw my human mindset and persecuted me severely.
The Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom) published an article last month that put information about Dafa on a calendar. I felt the design was very elegant and thought that people would love it. I thus bought expensive materials and made a calendar, which I showed to a fellow practitioner. That practitioner loved it and gave me quite a bit of money to produce a lot more copies.
My attachment of self-validation emerged, and I bought the most expensive equipment I could find to make these calendars. I made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of the materials that I bought. I didn't think much of it, telling myself that this happened because I was tired and over-worked.
One evening, I dreamed of someone sitting in a wheelchair, and I told him to say, "Falun Dafa is good," but he said that his mind was blank. The following day, I found that my printer nozzle was plugged. When I took off the nozzle, I saw that it looked similar to the wheelchair I saw in my dream. I followed the instructions in the manual and bought tools for cleaning the nozzle. I had spent most of the money and only completed a few calendars. Then, the nozzle broke because of my carelessness. I looked at the printer, the Fa-implement that had become my companion. I was in a bad mood and spent days trying to think of a way to repair it, and did not study the Fa.
On the day when the printer nozzle was broken, my child had a fever and was coughing. I wasn't too concerned about it. After I bought a new nozzle, I decided to no longer make calendars because it would use too much yellow ink. I worried about wasting materials. My child's coughing got worse, but I still didn't realize what was going on. For several nights, I didn't sleep well. I read the Fa to my child, sent forth righteous thoughts, asked Teacher for help, and recited "Dafa is good." Yet, my child did not get better and ignored me. After studying the Fa, I realized that my child was enduring on my behalf. I got worried and decided to take my child to the hospital and spent quite a bit of money.
As soon as I got home, I felt ill and couldn't even sit up straight. While lying in bed, I thought, "Teacher, I'll bear the suffering I deserve." When I woke up, I asked myself, "Could I be like people that practice reverse cultivation, those who couldn't maintain their xinxing, so their levels dropped to that of everyday people?" I opened up Zhuan Falun and it went straight to that section. I was stunned. Did the reverse cultivation that Master talked about refer to me? I was happy when the practitioner gave me money. Why was I happy? It was just like an ordinary person being delighted in receiving money unexpectedly. Isn't that the mindset of fame and gain? The evil saw my attachment and persecuted me.
After I realized this, I felt well again and no longer had a cold. After suffering and almost botching up the project, I finally realized what I had to give up. As we validate the Fa, we need to cultivate ourselves well, especially in terms of money. We should not use a human mindset to carry out projects and thus allow the evil to persecute us.
Category: Improving Oneself
