In the comments under my recent post about the horrific Chinese organ harvesting programs - @greenbeans highlighted the Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) website and that they are a cult like group with many brainwashed members.. I have found something very important for us to understand here.
I highly suggest first reviewing the post I have linked above as you really need to see it to understand this and it is very important to read and watch the video there anyway. The very short version is that the Chinese government has been apparently organising the rounding up of large numbers of practitioners of a Chi Gong (energy work/exercise and spiritual) system, putting them in slave camps and then selling their organs to whoever will pay. They are often killed during the extraction surgery.. So in short, people are being murdered in large numbers for profit.
As terrible and tragic as this is, I feel it is absolutely essential to learn every lesson that can be learned from this situation. Karma is the process of DRAWING experiences that teach us how to be in balance. Karma is not a 'balance of payments' - it is a natural and intelligent process that results from our own magnetic/attractive/repulsive capabilities as a free will being. If we deny something, we will draw a reflection of that denial so that we can learn from the experience and decide whether we really want to continue denying reality or not. I have written on this already in great length on Steemit and elsewhere. Denial is at the root of all of our suffering on Earth - when we end all of our denial, we can heal.
Since I know that we are always attracting to us our experiences and have the capacity to change what we are drawing by changing our state of being, I wondered what was drawing this evil to the Falun Gong, Tibetan and other groups in China. I am well aware that those who follow 'spiritual teachings' tend to end up denying important things and losing personal power in the process. It IS great to develop compassion but you cannot have compassion without having respect for your own needs, desires and feelings. If you overpower your own needs, desires and feelings you are not being compassionate with yourself and thus you cannot be truly compassionate at all. You might give the image of the light, but you will not be able to hold as much as you think.
Falun Dafa's FATAL Spiritual Error
As with many spiritual groups, Falun Dafa explicitly state that they teach that to be perfected, you must be mind focused and deny your own human/physical desires:
The focus of Falun Dafa practice is the mind, with the cultivation of one’s mind and thoughts, or “Xinxing,” being singled out as the key to increasing Gong energy. The height of a person’s Gong is directly proportionate to that of his Xinxing. The concept of “Xinxing” encompasses the transformation of virtue (a white form of matter) and karma (a black form of matter). It also includes forbearance, discernment, and abandonment—that is, forsaking ordinary human desires and attachments, and managing to endure the most trying of ordeals. Much is encompassed by the concept.
Source: Falun Dafa
Think about this and feel it. What are you resonating/creating when you deliberately and regularly perform energy work and exercises while focusing on thoughts that include the ideas that:
- Total focus on minds and thoughts are your path to salvation.
- To do this you need to block out and reject all human desires.
- Enduring the most trying of ordeals is needed too.
- You will somehow be perfected in this way (end of suffering).
I'm sure many of you will see straight away that this is a huge contradiction. How can you end your suffering while denying your own will and needs? How is 'enduring trying ordeals' even remotely equal to ending suffering and being perfected? They are opposites.
In fact, the 'frequency' that is created within self when focusing in this way is guaranteed to result in a loss of power, will and freedom. Yes, the body will get stronger through the exercise, but we are more than a physical body. We also have felt needs, emotions, desires and a will. These are our way of being guided to safety, to what we need and to a right destiny path for our continued evolution. As soon as we deny our real feelings, desires and will - we are lost and more than this, we will draw to us a reflection of our own unlovingness that we have mentally allowed into our own beings.
I am fairly clear now that the extremely unloving treatment of many of these people is a direct result of the teachings they are applying and their resulting loss of personal power. The magnetically drawn reflection of evil is only a mirror being held up to the evil that is being perpetuated in their minds which denies their emotional needs. They have enslaved themselves and now they live that reality - seeming to come from 'someone else'.
Falun Dafa also includes the cultivation of the body, which is accomplished by performing specific exercises. One purpose of the exercises is to strengthen the practitioner’s supernatural abilities and energy mechanisms by means of his or her powerful Gong force. Another purpose is to develop many living entities in the practitioner’s body. In advanced practice, the Immortal Infant will come into being and many abilities will be developed.
Source: Falun Dafa
How many of these people are 'immortal'? There is no 'inner child' that can sustain having desires denied, period.
I will go as far as to say that the cult leader of this group is knowingly or unknowingly practising what amounts to 'black magic' - dressed up as a healthy pursuit done by loving people.
It is not enough to know just some of what is needed for spiritual balance and to then proceed out into the world to live and impress publicly these ideas. We NEED now to learn also how to have complete balance WITHOUT DENIAL.
How do you FEEL about the idea of abandoning personal desire? Imagine how insidious it is to actually deliberately aim to do that - you would be absolutely ignoring and overpowering all of your feelings - leading to your own psychopathy.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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A very interesting read that I felt was personally relevant.
However I have to admit that your message does raise questions as to whether you are indeed blaming that group's members for bringing it upon themselves - perhaps due to pacifism or an instilled cattle mentality.
But is this not exonerating those who decided that their oppression and harvesting is OK? Does this not have broad implications on a lot of other touchy subjects where one party is clearly a victim?
Other than this, much of your analysis seems spot on.
I am not blaming anyone here - I am describing non judgementally, the reality as I understand it presently. This is clearly an extremely disturbing situation and blame will absolutely not help anything. I mentioned 'black magic' here, though it can just as easily be called 'mind control'. Whether this is being done knowingly and deliberately is not clear to me, but it is being done.
This does not exonerate those who vampire others in any way. I can drawer an analogy here of a person who jumps into the sea and refuses to swim due to religious/spiritual beliefs. They will most likely drown unless a good natured dolphin or other human happens to help them... Sharks may eat them and that is that for them. I do not blame the shark for eating them and I do not blame the individual for not doing what will keep them alive - I simply seek to draw focus into the problem so that others make wiser choices that sustain life.
Groups who hold the belief that the human form is somehow 'beneath' them do not understand what life is and thus are not supporting life themselves - they cannot then expect to have life sustained.
You seem to have changed course, from support to not supporting Falun Dafa or Falun Gong.
The concept of the main teachings of Falun Dafa comes from the Buddha (Sidharta Gautama), they close the desire to love the world, simple life and loving fellow.
However, any religious sect is inevitably contrary to the life of the general public, not to mention Falun Dafa, another sect even more terrible, to mass suicide.
However, Falun Dafa has long existed, and it still exists to this day.
This is not a question of support or not support. I support all beings to reach balance, wellbeing and wholeness to the best of my ability.
In this case I am simply describing what I understand to be part of the cause of their problems here.
It is not possible to love anything while we are denying our desire. Denial of desire is what is being promoted by this group (along with actually promoting the endurance of ordeals).
There are many things we do not understand from Chinese culture and customs. Actually they are a loving and closed people. Sometimes I love them, especially on ethnic Han and Uighur.
What I am describing here (which I have posted many times about in detail) is that sometimes what we think is loving is actually not loving. It is not loving to put people in slave camps and kill them for organs. It is not loving to have festivals of killing dogs. It is not loving to have large fur farms where animals are skinned alive and left to die in large numbers. These are realities in China - as evidenced from many sources. This does not mean that there is no love in China, it simply means that there are many who are hugely lacking in love.
Anyone who is thinking that they are more loving when they deny their own will is deeply confused and definitely will not be able to manifest love.
Only the communists committed the massacre. I'm sure the Han and Uighur ethnic have never done that.
I am describing the way that only we are ultimately responsible for what we draw into our own life experience. Other people may be allowed by us into our lives and they may overpower and abuse us - but they cannot get close to us if we are aligned correctly internally in such a way that prevents them.
Supernatural powers are described by the Falun Dafa website. What I am describing is our own natural ability to determine what we attract into our lives or what we do not attract.
Yes sir,
That's the conclusion, whatever we experience, we are responsible for ourselves. It is the teachings of the divine religion, and we are accountable to God for what we do while living in the world.
Much of what you describe here sounds like FG is a derivative of Buddhist beliefs. I might be wrong since my understanding of both of these is limited, but this is my perspective. In particular the "Fatal Error" sounds like the second Truth of Buddha.
I'd like to get your thoughts on this, in particular how there two differ.
This is the text of the four noble truths as listed on Wikipedia:
My comment:
Suffering is the having of experience that you don't want to have. Birth is not inherently suffering if you want to be born. The same goes for all else. When aligned desires are manifested there is no suffering.
By defining birth is inevitable suffering, the falsehood has been created immediately that life as a human is itself inevitably suffering and that to end suffering means to end being human as we know human to be. Buddha's version of suffering is lacking the depth needed to understand the origins of why birth CAN be suffering and why some are being born when they don't want to be.
By defining the cause of birth as sensual desire and birth and life themselves as being suffering, no space is left for change which could teach how to live on Earth with desire and without suffering. The door has been closed on all evolutionary possibility here - a line has been drawn which simply says "You cannot change things for the better and also have desires".
The reality is that when the mind/spirit is aligned correctly with the feelings/will in the heart - there is balance in all of self and we are capable of manifesting what we need in a way that feels good, without suffering.
There is no way to end death and end suffering while denying real feelings and our own will.
I guess the question I had was, if Falun Gong's fatal flaw is its definition of life as suffering, or desire for self as suffering, does Buddhism share the same fault?
Anyone who judges that life is suffering and that desire is suffering or is a cause of suffering is going to be causing suffering.
I thought that the quote from buddha was that 'unenlightened life is suffering', not that 'life is suffering'.. However, the issue is how to achieve total enlightenment, to end suffering - my point is that total enlightenment cannot be achieved through denial of desire. Mechanically, this is the case since - for one - we contain will/emotions which themselves need to be accelerated into light/understanding - for us to be totally enlightened. Attempting to drop off the physical and emotional bodies is not total enlightenment, rather - it is death.
So if I understand right, Buddhism teaches that desire is suffering, but that we cannot simply eliminate suffering by denying desire. There is instead a path of right living that allows the ending of suffering.
In your assessment, the big difference between Buddhism is different from Falun Gong and others in as much as it doesn't deny desire, but it has some other set of paths.
(I don't understand Buddhism well enough to know if the eight paths do or do not deny desire.)
Thank you for taking the time to visit with me.