(Clearwisdom.net)

When I telephoned randomly into China and said that I was a Dafa practitioner living in Germany, a voice full of great joy as well as surprise came from the other end of the phone line: "This is great! This is terrific!" She went on, saying, "I feel so much sorrow at this moment, that I almost cannot carry on!" and she was then unable to say anything more, for she was overtaken by tears.

Not long ago, she was forced into writing a "letter of guarantee" against her will in a brainwashing class. After being released from that "class" she regretted her actions very much. There was no one to talk to or share her thoughts with, nor were there any means to see any of Teacher's new articles. She could not sleep, lost her appetite, and was feeling unsettled all the time. Thinking that after making such a big mistake, she could not muster the courage to return to the path of cultivation, her life seemed no longer worth living. She told me about her month-long experience in the forced brainwashing class, stopping quite a few times when she was overtaken by tears. We chatted for over 90 minutes on the phone. She said that her phone could be bugged, but she did not care anymore, because no matter what, she will openly and nobly tell others that she is still cultivating. She also asked me to send her solemn declaration to Clearwisdom.net, invalidating the "letter of guarantee" she was forced to write.

When we talked about "sending forth righteous thoughts," she was very pessimistic, not knowing whether she still counts as a Dafa Disciple or if she is still worthy of "sending forth righteous thoughts." I said to her: "Teacher will not casually give up on any disciple. Teacher said: 'Although they had attachments, were momentarily taken advantage of by the evil, and did what a cultivator should not, a cultivator ought to be looked at in his entirety. I do not acknowledge any of those things. When they return to their senses, they will immediately start doing again what a Dafa student should do during this time, and, in the meantime, will declare as null and void everything that they said and wrote when they were not in their right minds due to intense persecution, and will declare that they are determined in cultivation' ("Coercion Cannot Change People's Hearts"). I think, that as long as your heart still wishes to cultivate, Teacher will help you." She exclaimed aloud firmly, "My heart has not changed! It has never ever changed!" I said to her, "Then do not think of anything else any more. Send forth your purest righteous thoughts; they are sure to be powerful!"

When we bid each other farewell, she said she would be going to the "610 Office" to claim her "guarantee letter" back. She will not let a single word fall into the hands of the evil. She thanked me for calling her, and I said we should all thank the Teacher. It's the Teacher who has arranged for us to help each other by walking this section of our cultivation journey together.

Later, I called another person. He had been to Beijing to appeal, was captured and imprisoned. A few months ago he was forced to "transform." In our conversation I discovered that he seemed to have lost all hope. He started to doubt everything he had done in the past, yet in his heart he knew Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truth-Compassion-Forbearance) is good, and was unwilling to help the evil persecute other Dafa students. He was just passively not doing anything. I said to him, "I once called and talked to a practitioner who had taken the wrong path. She originally stepped out with a mentality of trying her luck, thinking that a redress was not far away. As the persecution was far more severe and lasted longer than she'd expected, she despaired, and went totally over to the other side." He was silent for a moment on the other end of the line, then said slowly, "Nobody ever told me these things before."

We chatted for 40 minutes. At last I suggested to him that he should read the book more. He said: "Maybe I am a cultivator, maybe I'm not. Words are not important." I said to him, "Words are very important." When he did not respond, I repeated with emphasis, "Words are very important." Finally, he said: "Maybe you are right."

Putting down the phone, my tears came down. "The biggest sorrow is the death of one's heart" (an old Chinese saying). I witnessed a living being whose will was being totally wiped out by the evil torment and persecution. In each and every one of his words I could tangibly hear the deeply hidden despair and helplessness. From a certain perspective, this kind of torment is even crueller than physical torture, as it is directly destroys the will of a sentient being and drags him towards the gate of no life.

Although practitioners are "transformed" due to their own attachments, such as the pursuit of comfort or stepping out with an attachment to being lucky; nevertheless, the evil force's making use of the remaining attachments of Dafa practitioners to persecute Dafa and Dafa Disciples absolutely cannot go on.

I feel sorry for those who took a wrong step and momentarily went astray. My heart is hurting for their loss and their pain. For the very first time, I took a very serious review of my own 3 years plus cultivation and Fa-rectification journey, and in a flash I saw that in so many instances I could have put in more effort and done better. I realised that if I could have done better, if I could have been more strict with myself, maybe the practitioners in China would have been under a little less pressure. Still, we must let bygones be bygones: we can only ask our own hearts, "How we can do better in the future?"