Waking Up

Something happens to me when I wake up in the morning. It happens often, nearly every night, that I wake up in the very early hours of the morning and cannot sleep any more. Yesterday unrolls all over again in my mind’s eye and this time I can see when and sometimes also why I have not behaved as a practitioner should have.

It is painful to hear again the unnecessary things that came out of my mouth only a few hours ago and to know again what I was thinking in those moments when I uttered those words or when I have done something wrongly.

As I lay unhappily with pain in my heart and tears in my eyes in the quiet of the morning, night after night I see my unrighteous thoughts, wrong notions, desires and pursuits running again in my head.

I see how I was evaluating those situations at the time, what I was feeling, and what I hoped to accomplish by doing this or that. Now many hours later in the warm comfort of my bed and in the quiet of the night I see the undesirable outcomes of those behaviours of mine. It was clear to see how the evil forces, how the demons using my loopholes jumped into my attachments and notions and expanded them to bring about negative results.

The pain of witnessing myself falling short made me wish I did not wake up and had behaved better. Only the things I did well yesterday do not come to haunt me in the morning.

The ocassions when I have failed were knocking urgently at the door of my fresh morning awareness as if to say,
“So you would like to consider yourself a practitioner? Really? Look how you have actually behaved yesterday! And that is not the first time you did that! So what will you do about it?”

My conscience would not let me sleep - it went on for months.

I would get up later all broken up and unrefreshed for the next day. I hated this process and would do anything to get away from it.

I asked other practitioners, who were clearly also making mistakes and in my opinion also stumbling and not behaving as practitioners should, if they were waking up in the morning like I did. I thought everyone had. Some looked at me a bit strangely, no, this was not happening to them, and some said how lucky I was to be aware of what I was doing wrong. It was good even though I could not perhaps yet manage to change my behaviour to my satisfaction. I became convinced my cultivation was a long chain of very painful mistakes.

What was more, my work with the translation of Master Li’s words, which I have considered very important and responsible work, regularly ground to a halt and I could not make any headway. Then I knew I was not doing so well.

Out of pain and desperation I started to read three chapters of Zhuan Falun a day. My sleep went down to four or five hours a day and I begun to understand that I have to think differently.

I realized that if I look at another practitioner and say, “That person is not behaving like a practitioner should and is doing this and that and anyway he must have a low xinxing and that is why he does not behave right and acts in such and such way," then in that very instant, in that very moment, I have already failed.

Why have I failed? I failed, because I did not look at myself first. I did not examine myself first. Instead I tried to examine someone else, and just then I, myself, have not behaved like a practitioner should.

The question is, “Why am I seeing that practitioner’s behaviour in the first place?”

If it was not relevant to me, would I even see it? It would not be in my face with such urgency and I would not have even noticed it. There is something in me that needs to see it, so that I can change and behave like a practitioner should. Instead of focusing on someone else, I must focus on myself first, before anyone else. If this person is behaving in such and such way, then when and how am I behaving in the same way? I must find that in me and I must change it in me.

I would just feel compassion for that person’s difficulties.

When I began do this consistently I started to experience the great power of our cultivation that directs me to go inward first. My might is now directed inward to change me. That gives me access to an incredible power in any situation. I have the power to change myself regardless of what is going on outside me and regardless of how other people behave and what they do. And I have the power to change that situation.

So now, when I see other practitioners say or do things I think are wrong – behaving in the way I think is unacceptable - then the only question I have to ask is, “Am I doing that as well? And if I am, don't I have to correct it?

Or is there something else I am doing? Something else I need to enlighten to or let go of? Or is it that I have to stay unaffected, compassionate and forbearing?”

The questions are:

“Am I going to correct my own behaviour or do I want the sentient beings in my universe who I am responsible for, to perish, because I have not changed, and hence they are still saddled with that same wrong behavior? How much longer do I want my fellow practitioners to suffer in torture camps, because I have not changed myself enough? When I notice others having unrighteous thoughts, am I having them as well? What are my righteous thoughts? Am I using them to dissolve my loopholes? How many Dafa projects do I want to withhold my support from, because I am judging they are going about things in the wrong way? How many practitioners do I want to be unhelpful to? Are my righteous thoughts taking care of other practitioners’ bodies? Are my righteous thoughts supporting other practitioners and their projects? How much further do I want this to be prolonged?”

So the only question that remains is, “How could I not be willing to do what it takes to be a true Fa-rectification Dafa disciple?”

As my level is limited, I am grateful for any correction.