Eliminating attachments

Venerable Master, dear fellow practitioners.

My name is Sofia and I started my cultivation of Falun Dafa in 2001. Today I would like to share my understanding and experiences on the issue of eliminating attachments.

Master says in the first chapter of Zhuan Falun: “To tell you the truth, the entire cultivation process for a practitioner is one of constantly giving up human attachments.”

For a long time in my cultivation, I didn’t really know how to give up attachments. I could look inward to a certain extent, but once I identified an attachment or a problem, I didn’t know what to do with it or how to get rid of it. I felt a bit at a loss, and when the attachments weren’t eliminated, they continued to bother me and my progress was somewhat slow. Because I didn’t know how to remove an attachment, I could even be afraid of it and suppress it by, for example, controlling myself on the surface or trying to be a good person.

I later realized that I had not had enough righteous thoughts to only have cultivation in mind, but also had thoughts of solving various problems on the surface. This thinking has gradually, and over time, been replaced by a purer state of mind and a stronger wish to cultivate and raise my level when faced with challenges.

It has been clear to me that attachments cannot be eliminated by reasoning with myself or trying to persuade myself to be more compassionate, tolerant, etc. This can only have a slight effect on the surface, at best.

Master says in the 20th Anniversary Fa Teaching in New York: “I’ll tell you, for years I have been continually saying that Dafa disciples’ abilities are tremendous, yet many people don’t believe this since those abilities were not allowed to be seen. Under the effect of righteous thoughts, everything around you, as well as you yourself, will undergo changes. Yet you have never thought to give it a try.”

In the same lecture Master also says: “When you have addressed the factors behind the scenes, take another look at the surface and see what happens.”

At one point in my cultivation, I made an attempt to simply eliminate an attachment and I discovered that it actually worked. Since then, I have continued to work on this and it has meant a lot to my progress in cultivation.

The process often begins with me noticing that I have a problem by sensing some type of negative reaction or feeling inside my body. I can feel it in my heart, it feels like my heart is tense and it can beat faster, even really fast. I can also feel it in my breathing, I can't breathe in properly, it's like a ceiling that prevents the breath from moving freely upwards. I then start to look inside myself and sometimes I ask myself questions to try to understand what the problem is about. Gradually I can start to see the attachment and identify the problem. It can have a form, sometimes it looks like me. It's not me but a body that consists of the negative substance. When I have grasped the substance and have a clear image of it, I can see it from a distance, and I can step out of it. Then, for example, I imagine that I am catching it in my hand and thinking about eliminating it. Or I just think about eliminating it. It can then, for example, turn into smoke and disappear, or explode, or simply cease to exist in some other way. After this, I immediately feel a relief in my heart, it becomes calm again, my breathing is released and I can breathe without restriction. This process may be needed more than once for some attachments, as they are eliminated one layer at a time.

In order to identify an attachment and see it clearly, I have often had to look deep within myself, asking myself one question after another until I come to what seems to be the end, which has often been fear of death or fear of separation from the divine. When I have reached this point, I have not necessarily had to eliminate the attachment, it has simply dissolved and my mind and heart have become calm. At that point, it feels as if I have made contact with the divine and things become clear and distinct in my mind.

Sometimes the attachment may protest when I try to eliminate it, especially if my righteous thoughts are not sufficient. The attachment may try to trick me into thinking that I won’t be able to do without it, that I don’t know who I am without it, that it’s perfectly natural to be this way, or even unreasonable to think otherwise, or come up with other arguments to make me insecure. I’ve learned not to fall for these tricks, but I’ve also noticed that I need to be in a stable and upright state to be able to make it.

Master says in the lecture at the Conference in Singapore in 1998: “When a person feels hurt, or when he encounters misfortune, it’s really difficult for him to still examine himself and see if he’s done something wrong. If a person can do that, then I’d say that on this path, on this path of cultivation, and for the eternity of his existence, nothing can stop him.”

This passage has made a deep impression on me ever since I first read it many years ago. I have truly experienced how it is a magical tool to look inward and that nothing can stop a practitioner who has righteous thoughts. I now have more confidence in the process of eliminating attachments and feel that I can do it as long as I set my mind to it. Sometimes it is actually not as difficult as it may seem at first glance. In fact, it reminds me of the passage in chapter seven of Zhuan Falun, about the man selling his liquid medicine and the tooth coming out easily with just a light touch: “The man would then take out a matchstick from his pocket. While talking about his drug, he would push the bad tooth with the matchstick and it would come out.” If I just do as the Masters say, without involving any human thinking, things often go smoothly.

I will give some examples.

I work full-time at the Swedish Epoch Times and do the layout of the paper. One of the paper’s supplements has only one contributor, who is a non-practitioner. This supplement was started shortly after I started working at the paper. Usually we work with layout templates to make the layout go faster, but after a while it turned out that this contributor could not adapt to our working method. Therefore, the layout in this supplement needed to be custom designed instead. Without any real experience or training in layout, this was challenging for me. It was stressful to never have any idea of what the week's design would be like, and on top of this, the contributor had difficulty submitting the content according to the deadline. This led to me having less time for the layout and sometimes having to work on the weekends, which was the time of the week I wanted to dedicate to my family.

Many times I was frustrated because of this and felt annoyed that this person indirectly could decide how my life would be structured. After weeks of frustration and no improvement in the situation, I decided to look inward more seriously.

When I looked inward, I could see the attachment in the form of a person who looked like me, but with thoughts of selfishness and resentment. The being was dissatisfied and annoyed that someone else was dictating her life and forcing her to work on weekends, the time she should be with her family. I could see the selfishness and human thoughts and decided to eliminate them. I thought about eliminating this figure and immediately felt my heart become calm and my mind relaxed. I have realized that regardless of whether I am right or wrong in the matter itself, or whatever the outcome of the process will be, my priority should be to eliminate the attachment and to raise my Xinxing. Sometimes I have been tricked into settling for the idea that I am right on the matter after all and thus missed the opportunity for cultivation. These are two completely different things.

On another occasion, I had a Xinxing test involving a practitioner at work. The situation upset my heart. Soon it was time for FZN, and after sending forth righteous thoughts, I immediately took the opportunity to look inward. I put myself aside and began to talk to my heart:

– Oh, what’s going on here? What’s the problem? The answer was that the heart was upset with the other practitioner because of “this and that”. I let the heart speak its mind while I listened.

– Okay, is there anything else? I asked the heart after a while,

– Yes, it answered; I feel like I’m not being respected, not listened to, and not taken seriously.

– I understand, I said to the heart, and my memory recalled a sentence from Master’s Fa that helped me to look at the situation with righteous thoughts. This short moment of reflection was enough for my heart to suddenly become as still as water, my breathing opened up and everything seemed to be gone. When I thought of the practitioner again, my heart was calm, there was nothing there.

In my work, I sometimes need to replace pictures that writers have submitted, because they are not of good enough quality. On one occasion, the writer had submitted a picture for a book review about angels. The chosen picture was of too low technical quality. It was a painting by a modern artist and depicted three angels in the form of children. I thought the picture was “kitsch” and that the angels/children did not seem to have any angel-like qualities at all, but looked like just ordinary children. The book being reviewed was about how angels watch over people and I thought: “How could these three little self-absorbed children ever be able to watch over people?” My negative thoughts about the picture and the writer then took off: “This writer often posts pictures with a strange feeling”, “These ‘angels’ do not look divine at all”, and so on. I felt really upset and I decided to replace the picture. I looked up a beautiful ceiling painting from the Palace of Versailles outside Paris with what I thought was a motif that “befitted” the title of angels. I thought it made a nice page in the paper.

However, shortly after the paper was published, I received an email from the writer asking who is making decisions about pictures that are to be replaced, such as in the article about the angels. I replied that it could be the culture director, editor-in-chief or layout designer, that is, myself, who can make the decision, and that in this case it was me who had replaced the image. After sending the email, I immediately felt that I had something I needed to adjust within myself. I looked back at the moment when I had replaced the picture. I remembered my negative thoughts and the figure I saw sitting there at the computer had black elements with pointed details and a grayish face! “Oh, so that’s what you look like,” I said to the figure. I immediately understood that this was the manifestation of the negative thoughts I had sent out when I was working with the picture. I calmly and resolutely decided to eliminate this figure and immediately I saw an incredibly sweet and beautiful figure sitting there at the computer. It was bright, almost transparent, had a friendly expression, and was full of goodwill. My heart became still, and love and compassion flowed through my body. I thanked Master for sending the writer to help me look at myself, and go through this process.

Again, I could see that it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong on the surface, what is interesting is the actual cultivation and elimination of negative elements within me. That is, I may still think that the picture needed to be replaced, but my thoughts about it have been neutralized and no longer contain the negative elements that they did when I replaced it.

I have come to understand that when it comes to cultivation in Dafa, sometimes one is faced with situations that seem unreasonable. By all human standards, you are treated unfairly or subjected to something that is undoubtedly wrong. The trick, however, seems to be to not get caught up in superficial thinking about what is right and wrong, but to really see what human attachments or thoughts arise inside oneself and eliminate them. In other words, cultivation is not for human life. It is the path to divinity. So things one encounters will not always be logical or consistent with everyday people's ideas.

Before, I could get scared and nervous about my attachments because I didn’t know how to remove them. Nowadays, I no longer look at this process with so much emotion. It feels simpler now; I cultivate in this body and am faced with various situations where my attachments become visible, I identify them, and I eliminate them. Then I move on. The purpose is to build up strength to help Master save all beings.

In Critical Times Reveal One’s Spiritual State, Master says: “You are in effect doing the evil’s bidding when you allow any selfish motives or thoughts to seep into your mind while doing things at critical times.”

I have been aware that I have had selfishness, even sometimes when doing Dafa-related things. I have thought that it is part of my cultivation to get rid of this, but I have not really prioritized it, and many times instead have prioritized “getting the job done.” But when I read this, I understood that I absolutely cannot have selfishness in my Dafa-related work. So I immediately became very attentive to my thoughts and reactions that appeared in connection with Dafa work.

For example, around the same time as reading that jingwen for the first time, I started working on the production technology and theatre teams for Shen Yun’s performances in Stockholm. As usual, some obstacles and things that couldn’t at once be solved at appeared. I felt stressed. Then I looked inward to see why I felt stressed. It was because I was afraid of failing in my responsibility. Afraid that mistakes in what I was responsible for would cause problems for the performance, the audience, or Shen Yun in some way. And why was I afraid of that? I was afraid of getting hurt myself, of having to face the shame of having caused or not being able to solve problems. This was selfishness and an attachment to protecting myself. I understood that this was exactly what I had to get rid of, so I focused on eliminating this fear and the selfish elements. It worked quite well, even though I had to do it in stages.

The old way of doing things involved selfishness and gave the illusion of being in control of the situation. After doing things that way for so long, I didn’t know how to do things any other way and was afraid to let go of selfishness and the feeling of being in control. At first, it felt like doing things with my eyes closed. But in the process of gradually letting go of the selfishness, I opened up to a greater force in which I was just a small part, a piece of the puzzle that did my part in the bigger picture. I no longer limited the grand force with my selfishness, but it was given free rein to operate, and I operated in harmony with it. I felt more like a true Dafa disciple and could feel the power of Dafa flowing through me. I was light, happy, warm, and calm all at once.

It is very obvious when I go from being in the Fa and having righteous thoughts to falling into human thinking. All of a sudden, when I am in a very upright state, a small thought may pop up about something practical that needs to be resolved. When I want to look at the details of the situation, the human thoughts start to activate and all sorts of things come in, such as worry, frustration, confusion, and so on. This means that some attachment has been activated and is causing me to be in the human realm.

Master says in Fa Teaching Given at the Washington, D.C. International Fa Conference in 2001 “You can’t do Dafa work without studying the Fa, or it would be an everyday person doing Dafa work. It has to be Dafa disciples who do Dafa work—this is the requirement for you.” I have read this so many times and understood it to a certain extent, But now I understand that it is not enough that I studied the Fa a while ago and was in an upright state most of yesterday, but now my thoughts are a bit off and I am working on it anyway. It is not enough. I have to actually be in an upright state. I have to be in the Fa whenever I do anything Dafa-related, and of course preferably all the time.

The expression “the journey is the destination” is often used among ordinary people and may sound watered down. However, when I look back on the path of cultivation I have walked, I can understand the point of this expression. When you are clear about something, it is not difficult. The difficulty lies in still being able to move forward in the illusion despite having a limited level. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to become a Dafa disciple in the Fa-rectification, and I will do my very best to live up to the title.

Please let me know if you’ve identified anything not in line with Dafa or that I could improve.

Thank you, venerable Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.

(This article was presented at the 2025 Nordic Fa-Conference)