Learning to Look Inward to Find My Shortcomings

I started practicing Falun Gong in 1996. It has been over ten years since then, however, I often felt my xinxing (character, heart and mind nature) level had not improved that much. When going through xinxing tests, I was unable to control my emotions. When I ran into a conflict, my first thought was to hold onto my human notions.

On this issue, I asked myself why I couldn't pass a test even though I had cultivated for so many years. Teacher often told us that while facing a conflict, one should look inward to find one's shortcomings. Although I understood this aspect of the Fa, I was still unable to do so. Sometimes I even thought my inborn quality might be so poor that I was unable to cultivate to a higher level.

Recently, with a calm heart, I started to study Teacher's recent articles and also learned from fellow practitioner's experiences about looking inward to find one's shortcomings. I looked inward to find my own shortcomings. Why haven't I done the three things (study the Fa [the teachings of Falun Dafa], send forth righteous thoughts and clarify the truth about Falun Dafa and about the persecution to the world's people) well, especially when it came to clarifying the truth, for a long time? I only understood on the surface that truth-clarification is good for people, however, when people couldn't accept my truth-clarification, I became frustrated. In fact, I held my human attachments of sentiment while clarifying the truth to people, therefore I used human thoughts. However, human sentiment is not compassion, neither does it have the divine power of the Fa, therefore, it was unable to eliminate the evil factors behind people, so it could not save them. In these cases I was actually pushing people in the opposite direction rather than saving them. I feel really regretful when I think about it now. Sometimes I did not have enough righteous thoughts and compassion while clarifying the truth to truly save people. Why I was unable to improve my xinxing? By looking back over my entire cultivation, I realized that the fundamental reason I didn't improve was my many human notions and attachments. Although I studied Teacher's Fa, I only understood the surface of Teacher's articles. However, that is far away from what Teacher and Fa-rectification require.

Through learning to look inward to find my shortcomings, although while suddenly running into a conflict I still had difficulty enduring it, I was able to look inward later to find my attachments. By doing so, my angry heart began to calm down and my uneasy feelings also disappeared.