For example, when listening to songs, reading novels, or watching films and TV dramas, lyrics, melodies, plots, and so on could stir your mood, thereby affecting your emotions.
They could make you excited, angry, sorrowful and upset, joyful and moved.
You would follow those elements of empathy and develop the emotions the author wanted you to feel.
Then you would be pulled along by external energy. This was the best manifestation of the heart turning with circumstances, of being driven by external things.
Yet cultivators shut out everything external and sought inward. In other words, all their actions were determined from within.
When hurt, they felt no pain; when suffering, no sorrow; when encountering joy, no delight. Or rather, whatever state they wanted, they could arrange it for themselves at will.
No matter what they heard, saw, or thought of, it was useless. They would change the outcome by changing their own thoughts.
So-called cultivation was, in truth, cultivating one's true self—also called the real self. As I said, it was the self that completely controlled its own thinking.
If you could completely control your thoughts, you could see the so-called laws of Karma and completely grasp your own fate.
You would then know what causes you planted today and what fruits they would bear another day.
This kind of law was also common in life; it was simply that many people had not observed it carefully.
If you wished to cultivate, you must remember three things: innocence, purity, and childlike innocence. You had to possess them.
These three forms of innocence were actually innate. They arose from instinct—the things you were born with—and were not influenced by what came later.
No matter how much hardship or pain a person experienced, if those three things still remained within them, they were surely someone with an affinity for immortality cultivation.
If people wanted to make a single cry that startled the world, they had to have their own distinctive traits—or labels, points that let them break out of the circle. This was what I called The movement of Dao is reversal: the trait of being different from everyone else.
For example, wearing a cassock and burping nonstop, wearing a Daoist robe and yanking at it wildly, livestreaming while yawning and farting, and all that.
Was that fucking normal? Not normal, right? Heh heh. But in some people's eyes, that fucking meant something divine and strange—ability, supernatural powers, immortals, gods, and fucking farts too. They believed, watched, and gladly fell into the pit. Whatever he sold, they bought, because it was miraculous and had magical power. Buy a stone and you became awesome; buy a piece of wood and you became God.
Why? Because whether it was a stone or a piece of wood, they said it had been endowed with magical power.
It could help you improve your education and even help you get married and find a wife.
Fun, wasn't it?
Why did some people truly feel that their luck had improved, while others felt it did nothing?
It followed the same principle as what you believed in.
But some people said they believed in it too, so why didn't it work?
Because this was fucking probability. Out of a thousand people, there would always be someone whose luck improved during a particular period, and there would always be someone who stayed the same, with no change at all.
If you asked them why, they might tell you that your heart was not sincere, or give some other reason.
They raised another point to shift attention away from the fact that the ritual item did not work, and then you kept believing.
When you had been fooled until you truly no longer believed, then that was that.
There were also people who used the excuse that you had an affinity with immortals to take your money, set up a hall for you, and give you a few books. Then they had you practice mystical stuff wildly on your own.
Heh heh. Put bluntly, they were forcing you to indulge in wild thoughts. Once you had thought about it for long enough, you would naturally become a little different from ordinary people.
If you thought about one thing all day long, after enough time had passed, you would even dream about it. It was a very simple principle.
It was the power of belief and the Law of Universal Attraction at work.
But some people ended up thinking up nothing but farts and still could not become Spirit Mediums, so the person teaching them told them their time had not yet come.
What did "your time hasn't come" mean? If the time had not come, why set up a hall? If the time had not come, why did your lower back and ass keep hurting, and why did you sometimes fart in your sleep?
In truth, it was just because you were fucking lazy and had stayed idle for too long.
Then some people said they were not lazy, so why did they also have those symptoms?
It was related to your own behavioral patterns. The energy in your body was unbalanced. It was that simple.
Look at the Spirit Mediums everywhere these days, whose hair had not even fully grown in. They had spread from beyond Shanhai Pass to all across the country.
What sort of people generally became Spirit Mediums?
Idle little punks who farted around at home, housewives, receptionists at beauty salons, technicians at massage parlors, and all kinds of strange characters.
It was all people's hearts making trouble. Their hearts were unsettled and restless, throwing the body's energy into disorder and causing all kinds of reactions. Hospitals could not find anything wrong. Do not ask—if you did, the answer was always that you had an affinity with immortals, someone behind you was tormenting you, and you needed to spend money setting up a hall and walk this path.
The people who generally told you such things all said exactly the same thing, because these were the industry's standardized lines for fooling people. If one person said it and you did not believe them, several more would say it and you would surely believe. In the end, one of them would definitely make money off you; it just depended on whose scheme hit the mark.
Of course, they would surely tell you that the money was not for them, that it was what setting up the hall necessarily cost, and so on and so forth. In truth, they were also instilling other ideas into you, making you willingly hand them the money and then thank them for it.
Some friends might ask: were there any real Spirit Mediumship Disciples?
There certainly were, but very few. And true Spirit Mediumship Disciples were more like inheritors of a faith.
But there were truly not many left, because the real thing simply did not make money.
The same was true of genuinely cultivating Buddhism and understanding the Dao. They would not seek wealth while helping people, much less set up some offering supposedly for gods, immortals, or Buddhas.
In the end, didn't those fuckers spend it all themselves? Did you even need to think about that?
They told you they had bought incense, bought offerings, and that they themselves also needed to eat, and so on.
You thought that sounded completely right, didn't you? But what was the truth? Which immortal or god wanted your mortal objects? Fold up a pile of paper and it became gold? Light a bunch of incense and stick it in place, and it became worship?
Tell me, were you crazy, or were the gods crazy?
If they were truly divine themselves, they could just draw a hundred wealth-attracting talismans, or use some Five Ghosts Transport Wealth ritual. Wouldn't the money come by itself? Why ask people for it?
Put bluntly, wasn't this just business?
You bought, she sold. Understand?
Why would a true great cultivator care about the money in common people's pockets? Any big boss could become their disciple, and the offerings they gave in a year would be more than you could earn in a lifetime. Would they be short of your tiny bit of fucking money?
The more capable a cultivator was, the less they cared about anything in the world, including money, beautiful women, fame, and power.
Because all those things belonged to desire. Cultivators needed to break desire; only by breaking desire could they avoid even the slightest touch of Karma.
Even if they touched another person's Karma, they would not suffer backlash.
Also, the true meaning of incense and worship was continuation—or inheritance. It was not fucking just burning incense and lighting a fire.
And merit was not taking money to handle affairs. What kind of merit was taking money to handle affairs? That was fucking business, okay?
Merit meant helping people without seeking repayment, helping people solely in order to help them, without the slightest demand or desire for gain. That was what merit was.
With such great virtue, people would naturally make offerings. If you fucking put a clear price on helping people solve problems, why would anyone need you? Wouldn't it be better to burn offerings directly to the gods? What bullshit were you trying to spin?
What, were you Niu Huanxi? Were you more useful than the gods?