Q: Sometimes we practice well, and so we feel easier and more comfortable. But sometimes we’re humans with lazy habits and karma from the earthly environment. Master, how can we overcome these kinds of difficulties?

M: Continue meditating and try your best to minimize the bad and maximize the good. Whatever you know is good, according to your conscience and moral understanding, continue to do it and develop it. Whatever is good for other people and good for you, at least you know it’s good so that’s easy. Whatever is harmful to other people or even harmful to you is something bad. So try to minimize whatever you think is bad. Whatever negative traces exist in you, minimize them. Always control yourself and say, “This is no good. I won’t do it. I shouldn’t and I won’t.” Use your will power to control your destiny. You walk this way all the time but don’t walk that way. The bad way, you should try to avoid, and the good way you should try to follow. That’s how you can minimize karma, help yourself and of course help your Master.

Q: My question is how can I balance meditation with work and responsibilities? Because according to Your teachings, whenever we do something, we should do it wholeheartedly. So if we’re too devoted to our job or work, meaning that we think about it all day, even during meditation, how do we balance this with meditation?

M: I know. You just have to try. There’s no other way — try. After a while, sometimes it works. It’s just like playing the lottery.

Q: Should we just put down our interest in work, or should we do something else?

M: You mean during your meditation time? (A: Yes.) If you have a big question about a job problem, then of course during meditation time you can ask about it or think about it for a while. Sometime you don’t have to ask; it just comes automatically. Sometimes you have a problem that gives you a headache, and you don’t know how to solve it. So you say, “Oh, never mind, just forget it. I need to meditate for a while.” Then during meditation or after you meditate you get the answer very clearly.

Q: But every job has endless problems. They’re never finished, and you always have to solve them.

M: Yes, but whenever you can’t solve them, the answers will come through meditation. You don’t even do it deliberately; you just try to meditate and whatever comes comes. If it doesn’t come, it doesn’t come. In this world; a thousand and one problems are unsolved so yours aren’t the only ones. Don’t worry about it. You’re not supposed to be a “Superman” in this world. Making a mistake is all right.

Q: Thank you, Master.

M: Just try your best.

Q: When they meditate, some people pray for something. From my understanding, if you’re really praying for the right thing, maybe your prayers can work out. But what if it’s for something that’s not good enough or not for a very good reason?

M: When you pray to the Master, most of the time making it come true actually depends on you. It’s not the Master. Whether you want a bad thing or a good thing, it will come true because you’re the one who’s responsible for your prayer. You’re the one who wants it. And you know because you’re the master, too. Don’t blame any other master. You know what you want, and your wisdom will know it and grant it to you because you want that experience. Maybe it’s a very expensive experience for you, and it costs you dearly in many ways, but if you want to learn the hard way, the Master will let you learn like that.

Because the Master isn’t a dictator, sitting there telling you what to do. The Master just assists you in growing, in mastering yourself and in making the right choices at the right times. And you sometimes learn to make them through mistakes and sometimes through hardship. It’s all right. No one is there to judge you except yourself, to know: “OK, I know that was bad, but I still wanted it because I was weak, I wasn’t strong enough to control my desire. So I take full responsibility.” That’s it. Next time, you won’t do it again because you already know it’s no good. But if you already know that something is good, and you’re really sincere and pray for it with full length and never change your mind about the desire, it will come true.

But sometimes it takes time because when something you desire involves a lot of other people, you have to wait until their minds get your message and tune in with your desire. They might not even tune in that quickly, or they might not even tune in at all. It depends on how strong you are to be able to maneuver other people’s minds to suit your desire. So sometimes your desire comes true quickly, and sometimes slowly. Because it depends on how large the scale is, how many people are involved and what the circumstances are in which your desire will be fulfilled. Suppose you have a girlfriend who already loves you and who you desire to marry and she’ll be OK with that. Even then, it takes time for her to digest the same idea and have the same desire. And then it will be quick because it involves only two people who are already going in almost the same direction. That’s why group involvement and group consciousness work wonders. That’s why when people pray together in a large group, even if they aren’t QuanYin practitioners, when they join minds and join in sincerity, it works because if everyone wants the same thing at the same time, it’s bound to work.

When Jesus said, “When two or more sit together in my name, I am with them,” that’s what He meant. When two or more people agree on one thing, it will definitely come true. If they’re both of the same mind, the same sincerity and the same desire, it will come true. But it takes time. Some things take time. If you desire to have a cake, I don’t think you should pray. Just go to some shops and see who has one. That’s quicker.

Q: Recently, I was wondering how to distinguish between negative thinking and when the Master is trying to warn us about something bad that will or could happen. I’m having trouble distinguishing between them.

M: What does the Master tell you?

Q: Well, sometimes an intuition comes, and it’s hard to tell if it’s the mind engaging in negative thinking about a certain situation, or if it’s an intuition coming to warn me about something.

M: It depends. If you’ve encountered that kind of situation before and it came out negatively, it could be your prejudice. But if it’s brand new and your intuition comes suddenly from nowhere, then it’s true. It depends on the situation. If you’ve already been talking negatively about the situation with someone else, or someone else gives you this negative thinking, then maybe it’s from that. But if it just comes instantly out of nowhere, then it’s all clear.

Q: There’s just so much noise going on that it’s hard to distinguish sometimes.

M: Well, then — too bad! Then you have to wait to find out. If you think the Master is warning you that you’re going to fall from a ladder, then wait until you fall and you’ll know.

Q: Exactly.

M: But take precautions, anyway. If you feel that way, take precautions as much as you can. Do what you have to do, but think about whether there’s a better way that you might have forgotten to look for, or some detail you may have overlooked that’s important.

Re-check; always re-check. Make sure and there will never be any harm. Make sure. For example, you want to do some project and you think it’s OK, but suddenly you have a pre-warning or bad feeling about it. Then you need to re-check the details of your project one by one to see whether you’re missing something, or if something should be changed. When you re-check it, you’ll know.

Q: Also, I had complained last time about not having too many experiences, and Master fixed that because now I’m having a lot of experiences. But they’re not very pretty. So I’m thinking maybe Master was protecting me from seeing that before. Mostly, even in dreams or in meditation, I’m at a place where things are really flimsy and it looks like everything I touch turns to dust. Even buildings; the rail and the staircase are alike.

M: Don’t touch me, then. Get away from me! (Master and everyone laugh.) No, that’s just your past negative actions.

Q: I was wondering what this signifies. Could it be that my past framework of life is being demolished?

M: No. Your past destructive patterns come back sometimes so they have to be erased by dreams. Otherwise, you’ll keep doing that again. You used to use magical powers to destroy things and now, if we don’t resolve that, they’ll stay there.

Q: I did that?

M: Yes, in the past.

Q: Really? Oh! That’s not nice.

M: It’s OK. It’s in the past. Everyone has had a past at some time; every Saint has a past. So now we’re just working it out so that everything happens in dreams, and there’s no trace left of that karma. So you can elevate yourself.

Q: I’m glad that it’s happening, and I’m willing to go through it.

M: It’s OK; it won’t be long.

Q: OK, thank you. Also, when I’m in a dream or in meditation, sometimes I’m not very nice to people. I wouldn’t act like that here, right now, but in a dream, it’s like I’m running on automatic. I can’t really control anything.

M: I told you, you’re working out the past. It’s OK. At least you see something that’s interesting; it’s better than nothing.

Q: That’s what I say.

M: Yes, sometimes when you’re bored, a bad movie is better than no movie.

Q: I just worry a little bit: I’m not hurting real people in that experience, right?

M: No, no.

Q: It’s just a vision or a dream, right?

M: It’s just working out your past tendency to clean it out. It’s not that you want to do that now, but just that you have some residue. And you have to clean it out so that you can get rid of it, and then you can go up a little higher.

Q: OK. Thank you very much, Master.

M: You’re welcome.