Are We Letting the Old Forces Take Advantage of Us?

For quite some time I did not understand the Fa principle of "being taken advantage of by the old forces". In some serious situations I could not keep my righteous belief in Falun Dafa. I always thought that if Dafa is as solid as diamond, then how could it be that the old forces can take advantage of us? If this is the case, didn't it mean that the old forces were very capable? One way or the other, however, it's always the practitioners who are wrong. For example, when we had too much admiration for a particular practitioner, the old forces would cause this practitioner to be persecuted or get into trouble. When we held that a practitioner who was arrested had loopholes, the old forces would redouble its persecution of that practitioner. If we looked towards an everyday person to help stop the persecution, the old forces would turn them against Dafa, rather than let them play a positive role. When we hold anger and resentment towards those who badly beat practitioners, the old forces make that person even worse in an effort to eliminate him. There are so many examples like that.

I was puzzled by these questions for a long time. Today, while studying the Fa, I asked Teacher these questions in my mind. Teacher answered me by saying that I should study the Fa a lot. All of a sudden, I thought of the Fa Teacher taught us in Zhuan Falun about the person who cultivated into an Arhat after much difficulty. When he became excited he failed and had to start over. When he became fearful, he failed again. This Fa helped me understand the differences between a human being and a divine being. A divine being would have no human thought. Were the examples that I gave earlier of human thoughts or divine thoughts? They were absolutely human. The old forces do not really care what thoughts we have. As long as they are human thoughts, they latch onto them and will not let go, since their purpose is to ruin sentient beings, including practitioners.

Looking back, I felt very ashamed. It is not that the Fa is too weak. It was us who failed to think from the perspective of the Fa, and it was us who were not doing well. The reason Teacher did not intervene was because Teacher would not protect the human thoughts that we must abandon. If we could think from the perspective of the Fa, do the three things well and harmonize everything to save more sentient beings, then we would have no human thoughts like the ones I mentioned. That would leave no loopholes for the old forces to take advantage of.

The so-called "sensitive days", "Olympics" and the "political bureau has formed..." were the subjects on which we would easily focus our human thoughts. As for the so-called sensitive days, some practitioners intended to use the time to make an all-out effort to do something. This was actually a human thought of competitiveness. Other practitioners would be worried and hide at home. This was also a human thought of acknowledging the persecution.

The repeated lessons and suffering should make it possible for us to become more mature. If we can stick to saving the sentient beings, ignore everything else no matter what, and do a good job on the three things, then everything will proceed towards Consummation. We must shift from being passive to active and look for the loopholes that the old forces are exploiting. Take for example the evildoers that used the Olympics to persecute us. Why can't we use the Olympics and those evildoers to save more sentient beings?

From the Fa we know that the old forces should not have existed in the first place. It is not accurate for us to say that we are "being taken advantage of by the old forces" because the old forces have been cleaned out a long time ago. Then why does the persecution still continue? Maybe it is the result of our human thoughts. The dark minions and rotten ghosts have used our human thoughts to perpetuate the persecution arranged by the old forces, so we must cultivate ourselves if we want to stop the persecution.