(Minghui.org) A conflict in my family troubled me for a long time. Even though all three of us, my husband, my daughter and I are all practitioners, we continued to fight and it’s recently been getting worse.

I had been depressed for a period of time until I encountered this paragraph while memorizing “The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be.”

Master said,

“This phenomenon indicates that Fa-rectification and Dafa disciples’ cultivation are in their final stages. And yet a small number of students—veteran students, even—have to differing degrees exhibited a despondent state and slackened in their resolve to be diligent. They haven’t realized that this is an attachment to the duration of Fa-rectification, or is caused by interference from incorrect, acquired notions, which results in their gaps being exploited by interfering factors that the old forces left behind early on in the surface of the human dimension, wicked specters, or rotten demons—things that have magnified and strengthened those attachments and human notions—all of which has brought about this despondent state.”(“The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress Vol. III)

The words “final stages” helped me enlighten to the fact that our cultivation has entered the final stage when attachments have to be eliminated; as a result, conflicts are popping up to let us cultivate away our attachments. The principle at play is that all debts must be repaid before one can leave.

I have experienced continuous family tribulations over the past couple of years, but they hadn’t manifested before in the past 20 years that our family took up cultivation.

My husband changed from being agreeable to confrontational and even hit me when I argued with him. He threatened to divorce me and drove our daughter out of the house. I couldn’t understand why he changed and why our family was on the brink of shattering after we all had practiced Dafa for two decades.

But I found a hidden attachment in myself: selfishness, and it manifested as being competitive.

Today my husband told me, “You are the chairwoman of our family and you decide what is good or bad.”

His words set off an alarm in my mind. I didn’t even notice that I had the mindset of being competitive. The selfish attachment of being competitive was hidden so deep that I didn’t really need to give it any thought and it’d just manifest on its own.

Master said,

“A person has many tests to overcome in the course of cultivation, one reason being, from the time of birth on, a person ceaselessly forms notions of every sort as he comes to an understanding of human society, and attachments result.” (“The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress Vol. III)

I believed his ideas were always inferior to mine and his ways of dealing with things were always wrong, so I never agreed with him. I noticed that I have been competing with him, but it was disguised as wanting to give explanations, suggestions, and comments.

Master said,

“mutual disrespect and not eliminating the attachment to competition can both easily lead to jealousy.” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)

Today, I found the root of the problem and I feel full in my heart after writing this experience sharing article.

Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!