Breaking the Cocoon to Become a Butterfly

To be honest, true cultivation is very different from what most people imagine it to be.

Many people talk about Nirvana Rebirth after enduring hardship.

They say things will get better after this or that.

And then there's talk of enduring torment and suffering, like being skinned alive.

Honestly, none of that even counts. It's just a temporary situation, a hurdle you can't get over mentally, and it fades with time.

True cultivation, Nirvana Rebirth, Breaking the Cocoon to Become a Butterfly – it's about completely shattering and overturning your own thought habits and perceptions.

If you compare these thoughts, ideas, and notions to the human soul.

Then cultivation is about completely shattering that soul and reassembling it.

What does it mean to be reborn?

It means extinguishing your original self and creating a new one.

Breaking Illusions isn't simply about having different thoughts than others, or about your perceptions being unique, or about being superior or inferior.

It's about shattering your entire mental framework into pieces. People who haven't experienced this torment can't possibly imagine it.

The simplest way to break illusions is to see all beings as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, as beings sent to guide or test you.

Simple words, right? How many people can truly achieve this?

Do you know how awkward and unacceptable it felt when I was doing this?

When someone provoked me, I had to let go of my resentment, be grateful, and treat them like a Bodhisattva. My goodness, that's not something a normal person could do.

Doing it for one or two things is fine, but it requires viewing every situation this way.

Whether it's an ant, a mosquito, a person, or even a plant – viewing them all like this, can you imagine what that state would be like?

A chaotic and troubled mind – this chaos and trouble are tests from the Bodhisattvas, testing whether you can remain calm and avoid emotional reactions.

It's like biting your own teeth and swallowing them, all while saying, "This is truly wonderful."

This kind of suffering isn't about accepting difficult things or feeling hardship; it's about doing things that are utterly impossible in the eyes of ordinary people.

I endured that process.

I genuinely treated everything as a test, and all beings as Bodhisattvas. My parents and family too – I treated them all equally as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Of course, they aren't always in the form of a Bodhisattva. When someone helps you, it's the manifestation of Guanyin Bodhisattva, the rescuer of the suffering. When someone gives you money or lends you money, it's the manifestation of the God of Wealth, and so on.

I don't know many gods and Buddhas, so I categorize them simply: all of them are Bodhisattvas.

Being at odds with people is a test of whether I can control my own mind. They are helping me train not to be influenced by external appearances, to avoid emotional reactions, and to see the other side.

After persisting for a while and forming a habit, your thoughts and perceptions undergo a massive shift. The world, the people you knew, the entire environment, everything you see and experience – the answers in your heart are no longer the same as before.

It's like suddenly falling into a strange world, where everyone seems like a puppet or a machine.

Everyone operates according to a pattern. When they're happy, when they're sad, what they're thinking – it's all within this pattern.

The sense of loneliness is incredibly intense. You desperately want to wake up the people around you, but you can't. Instead, they'll think you've become strange.

It's only then that you truly understand the meaning of being alone in the world, and why some people compare life to a game, with most people being NPCs besides yourself.

Think about it: if you could see everyone's thought patterns, know exactly when they should think what and do what, according to the pattern, how would that feel?

Someone is in front of you, says a word, even makes an expression, and you can already guess about eighty to ninety percent of what they're going to say.

Furthermore, you can deliberately say things to guide them into saying what you want, or to make them think in a certain direction.

It's completely uninteresting.

What seems magical is merely small tricks and minor arts; the principle behind it is incredibly simple.

You first analyze a person's personality through details, then, based on that personality, you figure out how to communicate with them so they say what you want to know, or guide them to think about certain things.

You even know how to express yourself to make a person happy or to make them suffer.

Sometimes you don't even need to look at their personality because ordinary people's thought patterns are the same.

For example, if their close friend dies, they will definitely be sad. If they win the lottery, they will definitely be happy.

Sometimes, these things don't even need to happen in reality. You just need to subtly hint for them to think in that direction, and they will naturally develop emotions.

Simple principle, right?

They have too many distracting thoughts, and they can't help but overthink, their mixed emotions making them uncomfortable. They go to the hospital, but nothing can be found.

Then you hint to them, tell them they have a spiritual connection, that the spirits behind them are testing them, and that they need to establish a Spirit Mediumship altar for the spirits.

They can't come up with any other reason. When they recall their discomfort and the fact that no medical issues were found, they might not believe it, but they don't know what else it could be.

If one person says it, and then another, and another, they start to believe it.

Then, with a flourish, you perform a bit of illusionary magic, chanting and going through a very serious and proper ritual, making them deeply convinced.

Once they believe, their minds become at ease.

It's all like this, exploiting the patterns of the human heart.

The human heart has a special pattern: the more you believe in something, the more it becomes real for you.

Otherwise, what? We all live on the same planet. If you have the Heavenly Court here, does he have Heaven over there?

If you have the Underworld here, does he have Hell over there?

If you have these gods here, he has those gods over there.

You go and believe in his side, and then your perception includes his side. He comes and believes in your side, and his perception includes yours.

This is due to cultural attributes. It's like if you were raised abroad, you'd become a foreigner. You wouldn't believe in the Underworld until you died. You wouldn't believe in the God of Wealth either.

Similarly, if you drop a foreigner here and raise them, their perception won't include foreign angels and such.

People are things that form different perceptions under different cultural attributes.

A frog in a well doesn't know how big the sky is, and a sheep in a pen doesn't know about the existence of grasslands. The pig being slaughtered doesn't know that the one killing it is its adoptive father.

If I tell a frog the sky is vast, it won't believe me. But if I tell it this well is the best place in the world, it will believe me wholeheartedly.

If I tell a sheep there are grasslands outside, it might call me stupid. But if I say sheep should live in pens, it will strongly agree.

It's the same for people. It's hard for people to recognize things beyond their own perception.

When they don't understand, they blindly believe in certain things.

Cultivators borrow your own blindness to help you overcome your difficulties.

Because blind faith is also a form of believing in yourself.