(Minghui.org)Greetings, revered Master!Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I began cultivating in 2020. Today, I would like to share my recent cultivation experiences to report to Master and to elevate with fellow practitioners in Finland.
I grew up in a communist country and was deeply influenced by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) culture. For a long time, I believed that after nearly 10 years in the West — and after reading the four books from The Epoch Times on communism and party culture (Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, Disintegrating the Culture of the Chinese Communist Party, The Ultimate Goal of Communism, and How The Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World) — I had already shed most of the Party culture within me. In hindsight, that thought was naive. I was in complete denial.
In this sharing, I want to talk about how CCP culture has been influencing my life and how I intend to eliminate it through genuine cultivation.
The Attachment to Power and Self Interest
After reading the first chapter of Disintegrating the Culture of the Chinese Communist Party, I came to understand that one of the CCP’s core values is the pursuit of power and self interest. Within that worldview, people’s worth is measured by how much money they earn, what positions of authority they hold, and how many influential or wealthy people they are connected to.
Growing up in a lower middle-class family, my parents had neither money nor connections to offer. As a result, we were often looked down upon. Over time, this environment shaped me deeply: I developed a sense of inferiority and a victim mindset. I longed for recognition and validation, and I believed the only way to obtain it was to acquire power and pursue self interest myself. Therefore, I became emotionally attached to the ideas of power, reputation, fame, personal gain, and getting ahead in life.
This gave way to many attachments, including being cunning, calculating, lying, jealous, being competitive, resentful, and arrogant, etc. For example, I often created power struggles in my relationships. I came to see life as a zero-sum game— if someone else received praise or achieved success, I felt jealous and fearful as though I were losing something myself.
Master says:
“An everyday person cannot see this point and always believes that he should do exactly what he is able to. Therefore, he competes and fights all his life with a badly wounded heart. He might feel very bitter and tired, always finding things unfair. Being unable to eat or sleep well, he feels sad and disappointed.” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)
Before I obtained the Fa, I was feeling tired, dejected, and disappointed in myself and in life. I’d found it so difficult to get ahead of others. I recall that after I obtained the Fa, I felt happy that I would no longer have to struggle to the point of exhaustion for power and interests, thinking that if I just cultivated in Dafa I could gained all I wished for naturally. This attachment to power and self interest, fueled by selfishness and Party culture, is my fundamental attachment.
After six years of cultivation, I had not truly let go of this attachment. I used Dafa to lift myself up and get ahead in life. I wanted to join prestigious Dafa projects so that I could feel important. I wanted to impress people and make a name for myself, and I would lose motivation for doing the actual work itself. And the actual work ended up being pushed to other people. I would be very enthusiastic in the beginning, but couldn’t follow through in the end. My motivation for the work was fame and gain.
I bragged to everyday people that I could meditate for an hour and that I played in the Tian Guo Marching Band, which made me look cool. I looked down on ordinary people and carried myself with a sense of superiority, thinking that because they did not have Dafa, I was somehow above them. Being a Dafa disciple became something I used to feel unique, to build up my self-worth, and to satisfy my own interests.
This was so far away from what Master requires. The starting point was selfish. I didn’t balance the relationships between me and Dafa, me and Master, and me and sentient beings correctly. As a Fa-rectification Dafa disciple, I am here to help Master save lives. I am not here to gain something in ordinary life. People are waiting for me to save them, rather than me waiting for them to love me and fulfill my selfish human wishes.
Lack of Discipline and Accountability
The Party culture shows itself very prominently at my everyday job. I mostly work from home, and many days I don’t begin until 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., sometimes even noon. During working hours, I often allow myself to get distracted: watching videos, sometimes movies, doing personal tasks, or switching to Dafa project work. I make plans but rarely follow through. I promise deliverables yet frequently miss deadlines—or fail to deliver entirely. I procrastinate constantly.
On top of that, I tend to be either confrontational, passive-aggressive, or uncooperative with my managers. I resist their direction and prefer to do things on my own terms. Because I’ve been at the company longer than they have and because I believe the CEO values me, I can be arrogant.
For many years, I kept wondering why, as a grown woman and a Dafa disciple, I behaved this way. I was in a constant state of stress and felt a lot of guilt and shame.
I explored modern psychology, trying to address issues like self-worth, self-sabotage, using self-compassion, and learning to love myself, hoping to improve. But none of those approaches seemed to have reached the core issue. Through many hints from Master, I eventually saw that the root of the problem lay in the Party culture that had shaped me, and in the bad habits I had absorbed from it.
Master said:
“Sometimes when a media outlet utilizes you or when a project lets you participate, your ways of thinking, those extreme ways of doing things that come from Party culture, your lying, and your halfhearted way of working really exasperate [others]. If you interact with Americans or people from free countries around the world, they will find you odd.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2014 San Francisco Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XIII)
In communist societies, lying and deceiving others is acceptable, and working halfheartedly is acceptable. But those notions are very twisted and wrong. Once I recognized this, it really hit home for me. I am not fundamentally flawed; I have just been poisoned by the Party culture. That is persecution from the old forces. I need to eliminate the Party culture within me.
Moving Forward: Eliminating Party Culture
This Party culture has influenced my life for so long, and I believe the magnitude of its impact is enormous. It took me many weeks to write this article; I kept circling around issues of self-worth, self-sabotage, and procrastination. Only three days ago did I finally recognize the role that Party culture has played in all of this, and I rewrote the whole article. I believe I have only scratched the surface with these recent insights.
The evil communist specter is very sly. It hid itself well and worked hard to keep me from recognizing and exposing it—from creating resistance that made me avoid reading the four books from The Epoch Times, to generating thought karma that blamed and guilt-tripped me, to producing intense distractions whenever I tried to write this sharing article, among other things.
My understanding is that if a practitioner still carries Party culture, it will seriously interfere with their ability to understand the Fa from the Fa. These elements of the evil specter within me must be eliminated. To do that, I need to:
1. Read the four books earnestly to identify and eliminate traits of CCP culture.2. Return to traditional culture.3. And last, but most importantly, study the Fa well.
About Fa study, Master said:
“Now you can see why I have often told you to read the book more, right? The Fa can break all attachments; the Fa can destroy all evil; the Fa can shatter all lies; and the Fa can strengthen righteous thoughts.” (“Drive Out Interference,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress II)
Concluding Remarks
Three weeks ago, during our weekly group Fa study, our main coordinator asked whether we still wanted to hold the Fahui, since very few sharing articles had been submitted and the event was scheduled for the following month. Her question struck me. I realized that I had not taken the Fahui seriously.
Fahui conferences are one of the formats Master has left for us. It is a sacred opportunity for practitioners to elevate together as one body so that we can better save sentient beings in Finland, and so that Shen Yun may come to Finland. As a practitioner in Finland, it is my responsibility to ensure that the Fahui takes place and that it succeeds. I knew that I needed to write my sharing article.
For me personally, during the writing process, I noticed the attachment to perfection, the attachment to saving face and showing off (I wanted the sharing to be profound), and the desire for quick fixes (I wanted to identify some “big,” fundamental attachment that would supposedly solve all my problems).
In the end, I chose to let these attachments go and simply wrote down what I had already discovered, whether big or small. Cultivation happens in the small details of daily life.
Eventually, with Master’s guidance, I found the Party culture issue and now know how to move forward. This is such a major breakthrough for me. The process of writing a Fahui article is a sacred cultivation process in and of itself, and is a precious opportunity that Master has given for his disciple to elevate.
Everything I am today is due to Master’s tireless guidance and tremendous suffering. I am still far from meeting Dafa’s standards, but I will do my best to step forward, truly cultivate myself, and help Master save lives.
The above is only based on my current understanding. If anything is not in accordance with the Fa, please kindly point it out.
(Presented at the 2025 Finland Fa Conference)
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