(Minghui.org) It finally dawned on me that a type of negativity was influencing my thinking, and I had not considered it a problem until recently. I then decided that I would completely rid myself of all negative thinking. Once I made this decision, many incorrect notions, negative ways of thinking, and even negative ways of speaking become apparent to me. I suddenly saw them as third parties, and a separation of my true and false selves occurred.

My most significant finding was jealousy. But I did not find it right away. I had to undergo an unpleasant experience for it to be painfully brought to my attention. In hindsight, that unpleasant experience must have been carefully arranged by our benevolent Master. At the time, when I was in the company of others, I started to develop negative thoughts and feelings, especially after feeling I had been treated unfairly. I knew I shouldn’t allow for negative thoughts, so I did my best to suppress them, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling negative and irritated. No matter how I tried to negate the feeling, I couldn’t get rid of it, and I couldn’t ignore other people’s faults.

I know that as a cultivator, however, everything I run into is actually a good thing and conducive to my improvement. After returning home, I told my wife that I knew I was wrong to feel so negative about other people, but I just couldn’t get over their faults. That’s when she shared with me about her understanding of jealousy—and it was during this sharing that I became clearer on jealousy, more than ever before.

I realized that when I feel unbalanced at heart, look down on others, or have negative thoughts about others, this all stems from jealousy. When my mind was manipulated by jealousy, so were my feelings. I realized that jealousy was like an evil general, and its army is a person’s seven emotions and six desires, which the jealousy manipulates to make a practitioner forget his righteous thoughts. It’s true that all the righteous parts become fragile when jealousy hasn’t been eliminated.

I then saw an image of a red demon near my shoulder, feeding bad things into my mind. I realized that this was jealousy, and I had wrongly accepted that demon to be myself. I used to think those negative thoughts were a kind of dialectical thinking. For example, if someone said something good about someone else, I might agree, but in my mind, I might be thinking, “But that person is actually a bit such and such...” That was that demon talking into me.

Of course, there is a difference between factually analyzing someone or something, including weighing up their pros and cons, which is not a problem, and the negative type of reaction that jealousy reflects in one’s mind. A cultivator should be able to recognize this difference by sincerely looking within. As to those negative feelings, I thought they were just a “natural” reaction of mine. But “natural” doesn’t exist; there’s a reason for everything. I realized that jealousy had not only manipulated me for so long, it was trying to replace me.

Just like how many people today remain unenlightened to the evil influences of Marxist ideas in society, and in their own minds and just blindly follow along, jealousy had remained completely hidden inside me, and unknown to me, until that day of insightful sharing. I understood that this cultivation process is like a war, but one not fought like people who do not cultivate. I feel that the third verse in the third exercise sums up my understanding on how to approach this internal war: “心慈意猛,” which is translated as “The Heart is Kind and the Will is Strong” in Falun Gong.

I told myself that I would hereafter completely ignore, negate, and eliminate that demon of jealousy from my midst and strictly cultivate my body, speech, and mind according to Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

The clarity I gained on jealousy was very meaningful, and I felt a part of my being experienced a degree of enlightenment. I felt spiritually elevated, and a happiness from within arose. I knew it was a significant improvement in my cultivation. That night, I dreamt a practitioner jabbed a magical syringe into me, which extracted a heap of filth from my body, including from my internal organs. The suction was intense, but I knew my body had been cleansed. After waking the next day, I still had the feeling of something having been forcefully sucked out. It was truly as Master says:

“Once you upgrade your xinxing, your body will undergo a great change. Upon xinxing improvement, the matter in your body is guaranteed to transform.” (“Why Doesn’t Your Gong Increase with Your Practice?” Zhuan Falun)

Since both my wife and I made the resolution to be Dafa disciples with righteous thoughts and righteous actions and completely rid ourselves of negativity, I have been finding more and more impurities in my thinking. For example, the attachments to reputation, profit, protecting myself, and combativeness. Every time I find another one, I’m happy, because it means I can improve and become cleaner, purer, and closer to Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

I also came to understand that every time I find a problem, it was perhaps at first like how modern science sees but a particle. As a cultivator, however, I first identify the problem, then focus on upgrading my xinxing to rectify or eliminate the problem. But it doesn’t stop there. I then gain greater clarity of what I perceive to be an emerging plane of the problem, rather than just the point. In this case, the plane of jealousy. As I keep cultivating, I begin to see how the attachment manifests across a range of my thoughts, feelings, and conduct, and how it may even interrelate with other attachments like reputation, profit, or sentimentality. I then become clearer and clearer, and inevitably am able to rise above and beyond with the power of the Fa. This type of cultivation process bespeaks of how cultivation is, in fact, a process of recovering one’s true self, or true thoughts. Master wrote:

“Through cultivation his moral character will elevate, and once he has learned to discern what is truly good from evil, and virtue from vice, and he goes beyond the human plane, he will see and gain access to the realities of the universe as well as the lives of other planes and dimensions.” (On Dafa)

I now make a conscious effort to focus only on people’s good sides and ignore their shortcomings. If I can’t see a person’s good points, then I remind myself that the person might once have been an extraordinary enlightened being, who perhaps has countless sentient beings anxiously hoping for their Lord’s return.

Master said:

“Dafa disciples should handle everything positively. Don’t look at the negative side of other people. You should always look at their positive side. Actually, did you know that back when I was teaching you Dafa, during the classes a lot of human thoughts were sent out from the audience down there? The thoughts sent out by some people were really bad, but I didn’t look at any of that. I just look at your positive side, and thus I can save you. If I were to always look at your negative side, how could I save you? The more I looked at it the angrier I’d get, and then how could I save you?” (“Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference”)

Reflecting on how Master handles things, I understood this to be the mercy, compassion, and great forbearance of enlightened beings. I also understand that the process of ridding oneself of jealousy is a process of cultivating compassion, and that jealousy is the opposite of compassion.

I frequently remind myself, even often facing a mirror before I leave home, that “today I am going to be one wholly for others, a selfless, compassionate Falun Dafa disciple who assists Master in rectifying the Fa and saving sentient beings.”