PureInsight | September 20, 2026
[PureInsight.org] Something happened recently that deeply shocked me. It made me realize that if a cultivator does not strictly discipline and promptly rectify every thought and notion, terrifying consequences can result.
I am a young woman without a boyfriend and am at the age when ordinary people usually begin looking for a partner. Because I have cultivated since childhood, I have never treated romantic relationships casually as ordinary people do. At present, I also have no intention of looking for a partner, so I believed that I had largely let go of sentimentality between men and women.
One night, I dreamed about my future partner and mother-in-law. In the dream, they were both cultivators. After waking up, I did not promptly look inward, reject, or negate the dream. Instead, I accepted this interfering information. Since I hoped that, if I ever had a partner, he would preferably be a cultivator, I felt rather happy and reassured after the dream.
The next day, a fellow practitioner came to my home to copy a recently produced video that was very effective in awakening former practitioners and helping them return to Dafa cultivation. Our conversation naturally turned to whether any of her family members had once cultivated but later given it up. She then mentioned her son.
Her son is around my age. He had also cultivated with her since childhood, but after reaching the ninth grade, he became lost in ordinary society and stopped cultivating. He now works within the government system and feels very distressed. Because he does not want to accept bribes like his coworkers do, they treat him as an outsider and exclude him.
She also said that although her son no longer cultivates, he still holds himself to strict standards regarding relations between men and women. Although he had dated before, he insisted on not having sexual relations before marriage. When coworkers invited him to go out and engage in immoral activities, he firmly refused.
Hearing that her son was still striving to be a good person in today’s morally corrupt society, even though he had not continued cultivating, moved me. I consequently developed a feeling of admiration for him. I thought that when he returned home for the New Year, I could invite another male practitioner of a similar age and the three of us could talk together. It would be wonderful if this opportunity could help guide him back to cultivation.
At that time, I did not recognize that this thought of admiration was seriously inappropriate, so I did not promptly correct it. After I followed that thought, even more frightening thoughts arose: if he returned to cultivation, it would be even better if we could go to certain places together. I still did not immediately reject the thought. I only vaguely sensed that something was slightly wrong.
Soon afterward, another thought arose in my mind. I remembered a male classmate to whom I had not yet clarified the truth. The predestined relationship between us was somewhat unusual. We had once had feelings for each other, but for various reasons we ultimately chose not to pursue a relationship.
Precisely because of this unusual connection, I had always been prevented from clarifying the truth to him. Since I did not want to develop a relationship with him and feared that he might misunderstand me, I deliberately avoided meeting him.
Later, I felt that this was also wrong. All sentient beings are waiting to be saved. How could I give up clarifying the truth to him for this reason? I then began thinking about how I could avoid causing a misunderstanding while still clarifying the truth to him. I planned to hand him a truth-clarification letter and end the meeting quickly.
Then I worried that he might find my behavior strange. I wondered whether it might be better to briefly catch up with him at a coffee shop in a way that an ordinary person could more easily understand. At the time, I did not consider this thought seriously inappropriate. I only faintly sensed that something was not quite right.
By that point, I had accumulated three thoughts mixed with sentimentality between men and women, yet had not promptly rejected or eliminated them.
That night, I had a terrifying dream.
In the dream, I was told that a fox had arranged to come find me on a certain day. I felt puzzled and wondered why it had specifically chosen to come after me. Whenever I thought about it coming, I felt deeply troubled. Yet for some unknown reason, each day I would sign my surname on the fox’s head. I could not remember how many times I had signed it.
When the day arrived for it to come find me, I thought, “Today I won’t sign my surname. I’ll sign one character from my given name instead.”
Sure enough, it came for me that day.
I felt as though I were facing a formidable enemy. In the dream, I and the practitioners in my family began sending forth righteous thoughts in advance to eliminate the evil. I repeatedly shouted, “The Fa rectifies the cosmos; the evil is completely eliminated! The Fa rectifies heaven and earth; immediate retribution in this lifetime!”
When it arrived, I felt that my power was insufficient to withstand it, so I desperately shouted, “Master, save me!”
Immediately after I shouted this, I felt the evil force become much weaker. Soon afterward, I woke up.
After waking, I was deeply shocked and frightened. Had Master not protected me, I would have been controlled by the fox.
At that moment, I only realized that the two thoughts from the previous day had contained impure sentimentality between men and women. I therefore immediately began sending forth righteous thoughts to continue eliminating them.
After a while, I went back to sleep. In the dream, more information was added, and I dreamed about a male classmate whom I had once considered very handsome. After waking, I felt somewhat frustrated. I thought, “I had clearly just eliminated these things before going to sleep. Why are they still throwing filthy things into my mind? It seems I have not eliminated them completely.”
One day, I suddenly understood that I had already fallen into a trap beginning with the first dream. I had not promptly looked inward and rectified the wish in my mind for a future partner who was a cultivator. I had not rejected or resisted it, but instead had followed it. This was what attracted increasingly severe interference.
Master said in Toward Consummation in The Essentials of Diligent Progress II, “What is a fundamental attachment, then? Human beings acquire many notions in this world and are, as a consequence, driven by them to pursue what they yearn for. But when a person comes to this world, it is karmic arrangements that determine his course of life and what will be gained and lost in it. How could a person’s notions determine each stage of his life?”
These pleasant longings and wishes are precisely what Master asks us to cultivate away.
Before this incident, I had never realized that someone cultivating the Great Fa of the universe could attract animals merely because the heart had deviated slightly.
Master said in Zhuan Falun, “It is only because the person’s thoughts aren’t wholesome that he attracts bad things.” “But they won’t be scared off even if he in fact has a master.” “Animals can’t see the realms of higher beings, and so they aren’t afraid of those beings and exploit one of the laws of the universe, namely, that normally nobody should try to stop someone from going after what he wants. So animals figure there is nothing wrong with giving the person what he wants, and they do just that.”
Thinking about it afterward was truly frightening. Cultivation is so serious.
From the Fa, we know that cultivation during Fa-rectification is even more serious, because the new universe is absolutely pure and therefore has higher requirements for us.
What made these three thoughts especially deceptive was that they were all related to cultivation or truth clarification, yet each contained impure elements. Without carefully examining them, I did not think they had deviated very far from the Fa. Yet they still attracted a fox.
Through this experience, I personally came to understand just how serious cultivation during Fa-rectification is and how strict the requirements are for cultivators.
Looking back over the many years of Fa-rectification, I have seen many male and female practitioners working together on Fa-rectification projects without paying attention to the proper boundaries between men and women. In the end, one or both developed romantic feelings, and quite a few were persecuted or even lost their physical bodies as a result.
The corrupt views regarding relations between men and women in ordinary society are also influencing cultivators. As Dafa disciples during the Fa-rectification period, these are precisely the things we must distinguish and rectify.
Some people believe their daughters cannot find partners because they are not proactive enough, and that if a daughter took an interest in a man, she could win him over in no time.
Some believe that because two people differ greatly in age, there is nothing wrong with an unmarried man and woman staying overnight together in a room, especially if they traveled there for Fa-rectification work.
Some believe that because they personally have no romantic feelings toward the other person, there is no need to observe boundaries between men and women.
There have even been unrelated male and female practitioners who treated each other as brother and sister. Under the name of being siblings, unmarried male and female practitioners ate all three daily meals together and effectively formed a household together.
When other practitioners reminded them, the corrupt notions on the human side led them to believe that it was the other practitioners whose thoughts were impure.
These behaviors may appear completely normal by the standards of ordinary society today, but can we measure ourselves by that standard? When we strictly compare such behavior against the Fa, it is truly frightening.
Master said in Zhuan Falun, “Many people have become morally corrupt amidst larger changes in the universe, with people in China, as it grows increasingly commercialized, being a prime example; they are drifting further and further from the universe’s qualities of zhen, shan, ren. Yet those who have become caught up in these secular trends can’t sense how badly values are changing. Some even think things are great. Only those whose minds have elevated through spiritual refinement can recognize the woeful state of people’s values today.”
Master said in “Buddha Nature” in Zhuan Falun, Volume II, “A notion, once formed, will control you for the duration of your life, influencing your thinking and even the full gamut of emotions, such as your happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy. It is formed postnatally. If this thing persists for some time, it will become part of a person’s thinking, melding into the brain of that person’s true self, at which point it will shape his temperament.”
“But it is very hard to vanquish thinking and notions acquired after birth, for that is what cultivation is all about.”
“As the notions get progressively stronger, the person’s real self truly ceases to exist.”
Master said in Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital, “From what is transpiring in ordinary human society we can see the overall state of the entire universe's Fa-rectification. Even though it's not a grand and spectacular display, something far-reaching and soul-stirring--as it is in the universe--it is the manifestation of the showdown between good and evil condensed down into human society, and one can see the interference that warped beings have caused during the Fa-rectification process.”
I enlightened that every thought and notion reflected in our minds may be a miniature manifestation of the universe’s Fa-rectification within the small universe of ourselves.
If we do not strictly discipline ourselves, are we not allowing evil to run rampant within our own universes? Are we not failing to assist Master in Fa-rectification?
Every thought that does not conform to Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance is an impure thought originating from beings of the old universe. Each one is a manifestation of the universe’s Fa-rectification within our own universes and part of the battle between good and evil.
If we do not strictly rectify every thought according to the Fa taught by Master, but instead follow those bad thoughts, are we not failing to save the sentient beings within our own systems? Would that not amount to violating our vows?
At the same time, such thoughts may attract even worse spirits, causing our true selves to become buried even more deeply. In this regard, we may become ordinary human puppets without independent awareness, controlled by various human attachments, emotions, notions, and even malevolent spirits.
I enlightened that when we do things related to cultivation and Fa-rectification, we must not mix in any impure factors. We must be especially vigilant regarding proper boundaries between men and women so that the evil cannot exploit loopholes.
We must cultivate every thought well and not allow them to affect the saving of people.
Time is passing faster and faster, reminding us that the end of Fa-rectification is drawing nearer. This experience reminded me that I must become serious, discipline myself even more strictly in the final days, and strive to catch up on the path toward divinity.
Only by diligently elevating my cultivation level can I fulfill the great responsibility of assisting Master in saving sentient beings and avoid wasting the time that Master has obtained for us through tremendous sacrifice.
This is only my personal understanding at my present level. Please compassionately point out anything inappropriate.
Chinese version: https://www.zhengjian.org/node/303476
