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Cultivating Myself Through Editing Fact-Clarification Materials

Sept. 27, 2011 |   By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) I have been editing fact-clarification materials in my area for a long time. In addition, I write articles to expose the persecution. I would like to share some of my cultivation experiences with fellow practitioners.

When I first began editing articles, I had difficulty even typing in Chinese. I only have an elementary school education and did not know pinyin romanization. Since then, I have learned “five-stroke typing,” which is a method of Chinese input without needing to know pinyin. I found it extremely difficult. Actually, the difficulty I felt was a form of interference aimed at making me give up. After a month of learning, I still couldn't type properly. I almost quit. In my heart, I told Master, “Master, I can't seem to learn anything well. I am unfit to work on this project. I don't know even the basics of writing articles and news reports. Maybe I should be doing something else.” That night, I dreamed of a big classroom, where all students were studying except I was playing on the side. My seat was empty. This was a reminder that I had not put myself in the right position. When I woke up, I understood that this was my cultivation path. No matter how hard, I should persist. Because my heart was firm, I was suddenly able to type the next day. When editing articles to expose the persecution, I realized that everything came from the Fa.

Over the last several years, I have gained many insights into the persecution in our local area through editing articles. I have also recognized many of my shortcomings. From the perspective of cultivation, because I was not mature in my cultivation, I used to always focus on the form and was only doing the projects without cultivating the heart. For example, I cared about how well my article was written, whether fellow practitioners cooperated with my information collection, how widely the materials were distributed, and how well they exposed the evil-doers. I felt as though the more truth-clarification materials I sent out, the more the evil would disintegrate. Although the approach itself might not have been wrong, I had attachments and expectations. As a result, I was looking outward instead of inward during the cultivation process. Sometimes I even blamed fellow practitioners for not cooperating with me. I had a lot of conflicts with fellow practitioners, and had no divine thoughts. There were many obstacles in my path. Although Master has imparted the Fa to us, my divine thoughts, even when there were any, were only momentary.

After studying Master's articles, I began to cultivate myself when cooperating with others. Thanks to Master's enlightening me, I understood my responsibilities. Now I know that an article or a piece of material is not so simple. Tremendous responsibilities and missions are involved, including being responsible to the Fa and for a group of sentient beings. After I came to realize this, I had firm righteous thoughts of eliminating the evil in other dimensions. With this understanding, when cooperating with fellow practitioners on exposing the local evil-doers, we were able to collect a lot of information about them extremely quickly. Although we were using the same methods as before, distributing stickers and fliers in large quantities, I was no longer attached to how other practitioners were doing it. I was no longer focused on the results on the surface. I truly had the righteous thought of being responsible for this group of sentient beings. I continued to strengthen and send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil in other dimensions. When an article was publicized, or a booklet delivered, I no longer felt that the mission was accomplished and all the rest depended on others' cooperation with me. I have consistently used righteous thoughts to treat the matter. Although I heard through the grapevine that the evil-doers were going to be more rampant in my area, my heart was not moved. I felt that everything was under the control of the Fa. The righteous thoughts of Dafa disciples controlled everything in this dimension.

Actually, we have only used a few methods when exposing the persecution locally. What really worked was practitioners' divine thoughts. As Dafa disciples, when we work together on a project, we are often emphasizing how to do it better. The goal was to do it well. However, we sometimes forget the issue of individuality. During the process of cooperation, when we see a fellow practitioner with a little bit of attachment, we feel dissatisfied and are afraid of it affecting the final result. Although our goal was to be responsible to the Fa, with such a mentality of nit-picking, we cannot truly act responsibly. We emphasize to others the need to cooperate well, but in the end, we cannot cooperate well with others. With this approach, it is easy to develop gaps and misunderstandings among the practitioners. Our efforts to disintegrate the evil and save sentient beings would be thwarted.

I understood that to truly cooperate well, we must not pay attention to other practitioners' attitudes. Instead, we should watch if our thoughts are in conformance with the Fa. We must not be moved by human attachments. Do well what we should do. We can only cooperate well with others when we truly look inward to cultivate ourselves.