(Minghui.org)
When I read a sharing article on the Minghui website about explaining the facts about Falun Gong, a quoted comment from an everyday person made me realize a common misunderstanding that people have.
When the author clarified the facts to an elderly woman, the woman said, “I have a friend who is a Falun Gong practitioner. He is a very nice person who used to have a good job and a good family. Then he was arrested several times, lost his job, and now his home is not like a home. You say Falun Gong is good. Then why, after practicing Falun Gong, is his life so miserable? If so many bad things hadn't happened to him, I would have started to practice. This is the part I don't understand.”
This is a typical way of thinking. Most people do not see that it is practicing Falun Gong that makes a person good, kind, healthy, etc. They are distracted by how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has "ruined" practitioners' lives.
Once I understood this, it was very clear to me how to explain the facts. We should first use everyday language and the most superficial principles to tell them how Falun Gong teaches practitioners to be good and how it can improve health. Then we can talk about the CCP's corruption and fraud, and why it can't tolerate Falun Gong's good principles, so it launched the persecution and campaign of slander. Then we encourage them to quit the CCP.
It's not until I realized this that I truly understood Master's teaching that we should not talk at high levels when we clarify the truth. Only when what we say is on a level that people can accept will it be easy for them to accept and understand.
On two occasions when I was talking to people about Falun Gong, the person I talked to said that a former colleague was persecuted for practicing Falun Gong and lost his job. Hearing this, I had mixed feelings. Not only was I sad for those practitioners, I was reminded of what the persecution had done to my reputation, my social status, and my finances. I got emotional and didn't clarify the facts well.
In the years that I have lived under the persecution, the “emotion” I developed from being unfairly treated, although sometimes hidden, has always existed. The manifestations of that “emotion” are manifold: hatred of the evil party, doing the three things with a combative mentality, being cynical, attachment to changes in society, attachment to when the Fa-rectification will end, and satisfaction and relaxation with circumstances easing up. All those are human thoughts that I haven't let go of.
Master said:
“If you are unable to look at things properly, if you are unable to regard yourself as a cultivator and look inside, you will really have no way to cultivate. And that’s all the more so during this persecution, yet instead of developing righteous thoughts, you have allowed a great deal of hatred to build up. The wicked CCP is indeed villainous, and in the near future it will surely be eliminated. But do you know what a bad person is and what a good person is? If your mind is filled with hatred and malice, think about it, everyone: what kind of a being would one be? And it will show in your conduct and even in your looks, and people will see evil in you. I’m not saying that some Dafa disciples have cultivated poorly. The part of them that has been fully cultivated is separated away. For as long as you have human things left here on this human side, you will have bad things and bad thoughts, and the closer things are to the surface level, the worse they appear to be. The reason Master teaches the Fa to you is to tell you about these things and help you understand.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2014 San Francisco Fa Conference”)
Master has explicitly taught the Fa on this, so we must seriously cultivate ourselves in this regard. After improving my understanding, I think I have enlarged my capacity and if I encounter a similar situation I will no longer be driven by emotion or affected by the psychological shadow of the persecution. I will be thoughtful of people and clarify the truth to them, because they have come for the Fa and to be saved.