(Minghui.org) I am a young Falun Dafa practitioner in China. Over twenty years of cultivation, my family and I have endured much due to the persecution; I have also encountered many tribulations. Under Master's protection, I have been firmly cultivating throughout, but I often feel a strong resistance that attempts to keep me from cultivation.　

A fellow practitioner's recent article, “Some Thoughts about Marriage,” really resonated with me. I want to share my own experience here as a reminder to young practitioners who may still be trapped in lust and unable to extricate themselves. Cultivation is really serious. We need to quickly rectify and cleanse ourselves.

I grew up during the popularization of television in China. My parents' advice to me on love and marriage came very late and was very simple and absolute: I was not allowed to date before college. And I did comply with this rule. But my parents rarely asked me what TV shows I watched. So romance novels, movies, and dramas accompanied me as I grew into an adult. 

In mainland China, where traditional culture has been destroyed, we do not understand how a woman should behave according to traditional values. We study and pursue the modern variant of a woman, which has been warped by the ideas of individual liberation and feminism. The lustful thought karma formed by this process is a dangerous pitfall. 

When I first began practicing Dafa, I was young and could not resist the great temptations of society. My cultivation was on and off for a long time. Although I did read Master Li’s (the founder) teachings on cultivating away lust, I felt that I wouldn't be able to hold myself to that standard. I was completely unaware of just how much this one flaw would affect my path of cultivation.

I married a non-cultivator. Since I was loaded with various mutated notions, I engaged in premarital intercourse with my then-boyfriend. I continued watching romance dramas after the marriage. I felt stuck within my desires and lust. 

Master had asked Dafa disciples who had made mistakes in this area to publicly admit their mistakes and not to repeat them in the future; afterward, Master would help to eliminate a large portion of their karma in this area. 

But with my cultivation state at the time, I could not publicly reveal my problems. For one, I was too ashamed to speak about what I did. Two, I simply could not meet the requirement back then. I even felt complacent and thought that I did well since I got married after only having one boyfriend, while many of my friends had many boyfriends without taking the relationships seriously.

Now that I think about it, this is all a psychological consolation for not being able to meet the cultivation standard. Premarital sex and whether or not to marry the person I had premarital sex with are two different issues. The fact that I did not follow the correct order that the divine has prescribed for humans is a big omission.

And although my parents (fellow practitioners) had warned me about this, they felt helpless with my cultivation state and just let me be. Their affection for me was a strong attachment of theirs. Before I got married, I brought my boyfriend home to live with us. Since we were not in the same room, my parents did not object.

Looking back now, this was negligence on my parents' part. They did not stand on the basis of the Fa or uphold the standards set by the divine. According to traditional culture, before a daughter gets married, parents must hold her to strict standards of discipline. Allowing my boyfriend to live at our home was a mistake. Reflecting now on the issue of cultivating away lust, I realized that, as a family, we never had a frank, in-depth discussion about the issue within the past 20 years. The fact that I didn't take a righteous approach regarding lust also affected the cultivation of my parents.

In the above-mentioned article, the fellow practitioner concluded that most divorced Dafa disciples either engaged in premarital sex or had affairs after marriage. Indeed, my marriage ended when my husband cheated and insisted on getting a divorce. In the midst of this tribulation, I was still entangled within my emotions and wanted to remarry him, so I made another mistake. But eventually, my husband still left.

Because my cultivation wasn't diligent or solid, I was completely unaware of what went wrong. Over the past 20 years, the difficulties we encountered on the path of cultivation showed us that we had attachments, but we never dug further. Only now did I realize that it was because I did not meet the standard regarding the issue of lust because my parents did not guide me well regarding the proper behavior before marriage, that the old forces were able to seize upon our loophole and persecute us. That was the main reason behind all these tribulations over the years. 

In the years after my divorce, I began to practice diligently and I also began to cultivate away lust. It was not an easy process. I went through the abnormal states of menstrual irregularity, discomfort in my lower abdomen, and not being able to reach tranquility during meditation. It took a long time to slowly break through this state with firm righteous thoughts and constant memorization of the Fa, as well as by consistently looking within. 

Master warned us:

“Whenever there is interference of one kind or another in qigong practice, you should look for reasons within yourself and determine what you still have not let go of.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)

Compassionate Master didn’t give up on me and helped me bear the huge amount of karma I had accumulated. However, my lack of seriousness in those years had caused many additional difficulties on the cultivation path of our whole family. Many of our relatives and friends were not saved, and it has been a serious lesson. 

I appreciate how the fellow practitioner mentioned the importance of parental guidance in his article. Our current society is really morally depraved. Pornographic content, including homosexuality and promiscuousness, has even made its way into campuses for elementary and middle school students. 

If we do not educate children using traditional values from an early age and strictly supervise them, if we allow them to watch ordinary films and television however they want, the degenerate culture will form many, many layers of thought karma in the child's mind and negatively impact their life.

When I was a kid, I did not receive a traditional education. Instead, I indulged in watching romance dramas. When I grew up to the age of marriage, my parents reminded me of traditional values then, but it was too late. Even though I began cultivating then, I did not solidly cultivate myself or cultivate away desire or lust. Facing temptation from ordinary society, it is easy to lose righteous thoughts and is difficult to pass the test of lust.

Of course, if the practitioner is indiscreet and misbehaves in marriage, the tribulations will be even greater. Some young practitioners around me passed away after a fatal accident; some lost control of their main consciousness and gave up cultivation; some suffered serious tribulations in other respects, which also affected their parents and caused huge interference in doing the three things. 

I wrote these painful lessons out as a way to encourage myself and to continue to correct my thoughts and deeds on the issue of lust. I also want to remind young practitioners that it is dangerous not to take cultivation seriously. In today's society, which is full of deviant pornographic culture, lust is the first big test for young disciples, and there will be temptation throughout our cultivation process. 

We must return to tradition and keep ourselves pure and clean. I also want to remind those fellow practitioners who have been struggling for a long time to look inward and see whether they have not yet identified the issue of lust within themselves, and whether they still have areas that need to be rectified in this respect. 

Please kindly point out anything improper. 

[Editor's note: Views expressed in this article represent the author's own opinions, for which the author is solely responsible. Readers should evaluate the article's merits on their own.]