(Clearwisdom.net)
The discussions and experience sharing at the Canada Fa conference have provided us with some insights regarding identifying and breaking through the old forces' arrangements, which I will share in this article. It is my most sincere wish that fellow practitioners would, out of their compassion, correct my mistakes.
As we all have noticed, at a time when Dafa disciples are sending forth righteous thoughts on a global scale to eliminate the evil factors that control the head of the evil of the human realm, it is scheduled to make frequent visits abroad. Many disciples have awakened to the fact that this is part of the old forces' arrangements. First, the trip is to make use of Dafa disciples' power to clear out those low-level beings that even the old forces believe should be eliminated. On the other hand, the countries he is going to visit share one similarity -- that is, a lot of evil factors still exist in those regions. The majority of them belong to the now-defunct communist bloc, and Hong Kong is heavily influenced by the head of the evil as well.
In "Lecture at the Conference in Europe", Master says,
"In order for anything to have a foothold in this world, to be able to hold up, and establish itself, there has to be a key factor: It has to form a field in this dimension, a field that's of material existence. Let's take religion for example. The reason it can be established is that during the course of many people's believing, their discussions in firm faith and their worship and so forth form an environment. At the same time, this environment in turn safeguards the religion."
This is the reason why it has been arranged for the head of the evil to visit those countries. Why did the old forces make such arrangements, then? Personally, I think there are two reasons. The first has to do with the fact that the old forces are still unwilling to admit their defeat, and are planning to oppose Dafa, or even persecute Dafa disciples in those countries by exploiting evil elements scattered around the world. Secondly, with these arrangements they hope to mislead Dafa disciples into acknowledging that the evil's head, now replenished by its possessing spirits, can make it to its scheduled visits. This second objective is also geared towards strengthening the environment for the evil's existence. Another question, however, comes up: Now that we have understood that when Dafa disciples send forth righteous thoughts in proximity, the evil's head could easily take its last breath and die at any moment, why do the old forces still do this? Don't they understand this too? The answer is no, they really don't understand it. In "Teaching the Fa at the Great Lakes Fa Conference in North America," Master said, "I told them not to do this. They didn't listen, even though I taught them the Fa, because they didn't believe all of the truth."
My personal understanding is that sending forth righteous thoughts in close proximity is very important. However, when we weigh these matters, the questions of whether to go or not and how many people should go are not the key. The key is about how each disciple should consider this matter from the Fa; how each participating disciple should progress continuously towards more purity; and whether or not he or she can pay full attention to sending forth righteous thoughts and go about it every day in a most serious manner. Of course, this is not inconsistent with the special circumstances where we take advantage of sending forth righteous thoughts in proximity or in groups. In addition, regarding sending forth righteous thoughts in proximity and sending forth "the purest and most determined righteous thoughts," there are also issues concerning whether or not every disciple's understanding from the Fa has met the basic requirements to successfully accomplish this mission, and whether or not disciples have collectively attained the state of non-omission, as required by the Fa at this level, to eliminate the evil beings in other dimension controlling the evil's head. If every Dafa disciple from this moment on completely denies the old forces' arrangements that have been in existence for a long time in another dimension, it is possible that we can get rid of the evil elements controlling the head evil even before these visits.
Besides, last time in Malta, only several disciples sent forth righteous thoughts nearby and the evil's head almost collapsed--how come he escaped this time in Germany from over 400 disciples? It is possible that the old forces are now desperate to sustain him at whatever costs, but I doubt this is the deciding factor. Rather, I believe the key to the success of our next endeavor is that every participating disciple will have attained a state of purity. Thus, it is truly important that disciples exchange their experiences from the Fa and make progress as one single body; otherwise, the old forces will probably "test" us and continuously exploit our loopholes.
The Fa, however, is also harmonized and constantly ascending. Even if the head of the evil did embark on its trip to Eastern Europe due to our inadequacies, we would still be able to root out the controlling evil elements, but the requirements for our whole body would be higher and there could be more technical difficulties. This is similar to "breaking through a pass" in cultivation, in that the next pass will be harder to deal with if the first pass has not been cleared out very well. This is the way the old forces believe it should be by their standard. For us, however, it represents something we should completely deny and eliminate from our minds, and so we should seek inside ourselves for any impurities, send forth righteous thoughts to clear out the evil, and prevent the old forces from exploiting loopholes and continuing with their vicious persecution.
Next, let me cite several examples to illustrate the importance of collective non-omission regarding some major Fa-rectification events. They are meant for reference only.
Earlier this year, in their application to participate in the Chinese New Year Parade, New Jersey disciples met with some severe interference from certain people. The disciples' efforts to get around the organizing committee by applying directly to the city government instead did not succeed. Later, they enlightened that this was a valuable opportunity for them to clarify the truth to those committee members, and so they started making phone calls to them. Still, their application was not approved. On the night before an assembly of all the organizations, which was put together by the organizing committee, several disciples studied the Fa together with tranquil minds and exchanged ideas. They reached a collective understanding that Dafa is most righteous, and that whether it is from the standpoint of higher levels or humankind, it was the duty of Dafa disciples to make an open and dignified appearance in the parade, as the organizing committee had no reason to block them at all. On this point, no one had any doubts. What is more, they concluded the meeting by sending forth righteous thoughts together, with each of them feeling that they had already accomplished their plan in other dimensions.
The next day, Dafa disciples showed up at the assembly with openness and dignity, and their righteous thoughts and benevolence finally touched the hearts of committee members, who on that day gave their permission on the spot for Dafa disciples to join the parade. As it turned out, Falun Gong's section in the parade won a lot of praise from the public, but even more importantly, the arrangements of the evil forces on this matter were broken. However, when it came to applying for a stage performance at the end, an oversight of the disciples led to a loophole that was exploited by the old forces. In the face of a test that appeared all of a sudden, the disciples had different understandings, which created a loophole in them as a single body. As a result, they didn't pass that test. This, however, didn't prevent the Fa from revealing its harmonizing and compassionate nature, as the local TV station later covered in great detail the Falun Gong practitioners' participation in the parade.
Another example involves a Chinese parade earlier this year in Flushing, New York, that the practitioners there had wanted to join. Again, they had to cope with serious interference from the Chinese Consulate as well the organizations under its supervision. Before this time, Falun Gong practitioners had participated in the parade for three years in a row. This year, however, on the issue of whether Falun Gong should be allowed to participate, there were at least three turns as the situation developed. At last, under pressure from the Chinese Consulate, the committee held a secret ballot that resulted in Falun Gong being banned from the parade. Among the practitioners, some were frustrated but couldn't think of any remedies, some thought about giving up outright, and some were undaunted by the challenge and determined to give it another try. Upon hearing the news, a couple of New Jersey practitioners made phone calls one night to exchange ideas with practitioners in New York City, including some of their experiences from the Fa resulting from their own application for a local parade.
The next day, before the parade started, every practitioner planning to join the parade attended a group Fa study, which was followed by experience-sharing and a consensus that Falun Gong, as it had in the past, should make its appearance in the parade with openness and dignity as an independent entity. Moreover, the disciples concluded that neither the interference from the Chinese Consulate nor the decision by the organizing committee amounted to anything, because they themselves were not correct, and therefore there was no need to follow the dictates of the evil forces. Then, those Dafa disciples sent forth righteous thoughts together to completely eliminate the arrangements of the evil forces. Right after this the disciples held a press conference to expose the secret scheming and despicable actions of the Chinese Consulate. The press conference had not even finished when the committee sent in a representative to extend a voluntary invitation for Falun Gong practitioners' participation. The arrangement of the evil forces had been completely shattered once again. Even more important, the disciples by then had accomplished another collective ascendance from the Fa.
Looking back on those episodes, the passes that had to be broken through still look very imposing, so much so that they would have become very hard to overcome in the absence of a collective breakthrough. As a result, the disciples involved have come to truly understand, from their own experiences, the importance to major Dafa events of collective ascendance and non-omission--and the immeasurable power that will manifest when this state is attained. Notably, the exchange between the New Jersey and New York City practitioners on this matter also constitutes a prime example of how Dafa disciples can break through boundaries defined by geographic areas and seek collective ascendance on a larger scale.
Through these two incidents, those disciples also came to the following enlightenment, which has to do with how to discern the interference from the old forces when doing Fa-rectification work. Specifically, whenever we encounter tribulations or passes, we should consider what we would have been able to attain in the absence of this vicious persecution campaign. For example, we might ask ourselves, "Were it not for the persecution, would the Chinese Consulate be meddling with Falun Gong's parade?" Wouldn't Falun Gong normally participate in the parade, as would other groups? Having established that interference exists, aren't they all from the evil forces then? And isn't it true that we should be progressing in Fa-rectification cultivation by constantly breaking through the arrangements of the old forces? Only when the arrangements of the old forces have been broken through can we truly fulfill the Fa's requirements for Dafa disciples in the Fa-rectification period.
There was another episode that was sort of related to the above. It was about the commemorative activities for World Falun Dafa Day in New York City on the 12th and 13th of May. The weather was pretty bad on those two days. It was overcast and chilly, so the practitioners started sending forth righteous thoughts. However, among the practitioners present, half of them had brought their rain gear along after checking the weather forecasts. From the perspective of human principles, using rain gear should be perfectly all right, but for practitioners, if this stemmed from a less than solid belief in the power of sending forth righteous thoughts, or if it indicated a passive reliance on human methods, then it suggested a collective omission. In other words, at the bottom of our hearts, we had already come to terms, unwittingly or otherwise, with the arrangement that there could be rain on the day when Falun Dafa Day was celebrated. Given this, isn't it true that the evil would have a pretext to 'test" and interfere with us? During the parade on May 13th, when those human dregs hired by the Chinese Consulate appeared on the streets to meddle with the practitioners' parade, and when policemen used this occurrence as a pretext to ask us to change our route and finish early, did we try to enlighten to this from the Fa and immediately correct any xinxing problems in our minds? Was it possible that we, at a time when our collective main consciousness was not at its strongest, passively accepted the arrangement of the evil forces? (I am only presenting the facts and some disciples' experiences as reference, with an eye towards promoting the collective ascendance of Dafa disciples. It is not the purpose of this article to criticize anybody.)
Now, this said, let's take another look at the trip by the evil's head to Eastern Europe. Perhaps this article has drawn some analogies that can help us to better understand the situation from within the Fa.