(Clearwisdom.net) Since 2001, there have been some local practitioners suffering from sickness karma for long periods of time. Some are in a bad condition and others are not as bad. The longest cases lasted for as long as three years. Even the shortest ones lasted for half a year. Since the beginning of 2007, there have been more practitioners who suffer from sickness karma. Currently, in our local area, there are several practitioners who are in the state of sickness karma and are in a very dangerous situation. For these practitioners, our local practitioners have been sending righteous thoughts as a group to help them, and have studied the Fa with them and shared experiences with them many times. They even formed Fa-study groups in their homes, but the effects have not been very obvious. Seeing these practitioners become more and more frail is painful. As fellow practitioners, we are very worried but don't know where the problems are and how we can help. I want to talk about my personal understanding on this phenomenon. If there is anything inappropriate, please kindly point it out.

Why do these very few practitioners suffer from sickness karma for long periods of time? The reasons are very complicated. Some cases are due to factors arranged by the old forces; these practitioners are seized upon by the old forces when they are a bit careless when going through tribulations, causing sickness karma. After the sickness karma occurs, due to the fact that their righteous thoughts were not strong enough, they cannot get through the tribulations for a long time. Thus they seem to be in the state of sickness karma for long periods of time. The biggest cause is that they cannot put off the attachment of healing illnesses, especially when the sickness karma makes them seem to be in a very critical condition.

Master said:

"The sickness karma that appears in your body manifests as a test. Of course it appears to be sickness karma, as it definitely won't have the appearance of a god getting ill. So you should handle it with righteous thoughts. You are a cultivator, so it is definitely not in fact sickness. But it won't come across that simple." ("Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles")

I enlightened from the Fa that the main reason that these very few practitioners are in the state of sickness karma for long periods of time is that they cannot give up the attachment of healing illnesses. For these kinds of practitioners, although they've done a lot of things relating to validating Dafa, and maybe even have a very good reputation among local fellow practitioners, since they cannot give up this attachment, the tribulation of sickness karma is worsened and they will not be able to get through it. There is only one subtle difference between the human mind and the divine mind, but this subtle difference can result in different consequences.

There is a middle age female practitioner in our local area. In 2003, her stomach suddenly hurt so much that it felt like a knife was cutting it. The sickness karma came so fiercely. But at that time, she remembered Master's teaching: "Having heard the Dao in the morning, one can die in the evening" ("Melt Into the Fa" from Essentials for Further Advancement). She kept her mind righteous: "I already obtained the Fa, what am I afraid of? I'll leave everything to Master and I'll just do things a Dafa disciple is supposed to do." She studied the Fa and did the exercises just as before. Without her even noticing it, the stomach pain disappeared.

Looking at it from another perspective: The fact that very few practitioners appear to be in the state of sickness karma for a long period of time is often related to the overall cultivating state of all practitioners in the area. These few practitioners' situations will in turn affect those practitioners who are not very diligent. When these not-so-diligent practitioners have some thoughts on the practitioners who are going through tribulations, they may then affect them.

Master said:

"There used to be some students who would often say, "So-and-so at our practice site has done so well! We'll do whatever he does." Let me tell all of you that you absolutely must not do that and absolutely must not think that way. Cultivators can't take other human beings as their role models. They must take the Fa as the teacher! (Applause) As soon as you start doing things [like I described] and thinking in that way, two problems will surface. One is that you will likely push that student to a place where there is no way out for him. And it's likely the old forces will lead him to have problems and even make him leave us early in order to test other students. [They'll think,] "You're all looking to him. With things like this, are you still going to study, and are you still going to cultivate?" Under circumstances like this, there are really some students who think, "If even he couldn't make it, will I be able to?" They waver. Isn't that the old forces taking advantage of gaps? [In that situation] even I, your master, can't say anything! The old forces say, "Take a look. See how that test ended up? What we did was right, wasn't it?" So when the righteous thoughts are not strong, people's minds waver. You absolutely must be on guard against that! You should take the Fa as the teacher. You can't look at how well a certain individual has cultivated and as a result learn from that person instead of the Fa." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York")

When we hear about practitioners being in the state of having sickness karma for long periods of time, we should use righteous thoughts and divine thoughts, and truly understand, based on the Fa, that fellow practitioners do not get sick; they are being persecuted by the old forces. We should send righteous thoughts to clear away all the evil beings and factors behind these practitioners. This will help fellow practitioners to get through tribulations with righteous thoughts. At the same time, we should all search within ourselves to see whether we have any human attachments that we could not give up for a long time, especially the attachment of healing illnesses; to see how well we got through every recent tribulation and whether our xinxing improved in each tribulation. If each of us could do this, it will be very good for those practitioners to break away from the sickness demon as quickly as possible.

From our local situation, we see that some of the practitioners have suffered from sickness karma for too long. They have a limit of bearing the pain physically and mentally, and thus are forced to go to hospitals by their relatives, whose actions are controlled by the old forces. This is only a state of being on their cultivation paths. As long as they do well afterwards, they are fine. They should not suffer more because of this and form new attachments.

There is something we must understand clearly based on the Fa. When some individual practitioners went to the hospital and their situations seemed to get a bit better (actually because the sickness karma was pushed to a later time), the practitioner himself and other practitioners around him who have not studied the Fa well would think that the hospital had cured the illnesses. They did not realize that this is an illusion created by the old forces in order to destroy practitioners' firm beliefs in Master and in the Fa. If someone became stuck and cannot pass through, then he would become an ordinary person.

Master said:

"But how could a divine being have ordinary people administer treatment on him? And how could ordinary people heal a divine being's sickness? (Applause) (Teacher laughs) These are Fa principles. But often the case is that you really don't come across as having all that strong of righteous thoughts. When you can't handle yourself well, then go ahead. If your mind is unsteady, that means you are not meeting the standard to begin with, and prolonging the process won't lead to any changes. And if someone holds out for the purpose of saving face, that is adding attachments on top of attachments. In such cases there are only two choices: You either go to the hospital and thus give up on trying to overcome the test, or you completely let go of everything, behave like an upstanding and noble Dafa disciple who has no resentment or attachments, and leave it to Master to arrange whether you stay or go. When you are able to do that, you are a god." ("Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles")