Mahikari members are called kamikumite (kah-mih-koo-mih-tay), which means 'hand-in-hand with God', or kumite for short (koo-mih-tay).

They are generally lovely people, but there's a barb in the tail. These folks are all about being helpful, and have been trained to look for the painful (ie vulnerable) areas of your life (are you lonely, unwell, poor, recently bereaved, recently unemployed, generally stressed and in a bad place? Wonderful.) They will target their message accordingly.

There are a few things that will identify a kumite in public. They almost always wear their special badge, called a goshinmon (goh-shin-monh). It looks like this, and is worn on the left side on the upper chest, near the shoulder:

Unless they're swimming or playing contact sports (including sexy times!), they will be wearing their omitama, the pendant that gives them God's protection and channels the 'Divine Light'. You won't be able to see it, because it's wrapped in lots of layers to keep it dry and safe, and it's pinned into a pocket in their underwear.

They wear a strong necklace chain that is long, and leads to the pocket inside their clothes (so it doesn't swing free outside of their clothes).

The most basic form of this chain is the simple ball chain. Depending on people's means, they may have fancier chains, but they will always be strong. No light delicate necklaces here. That omitama is more precious than your own life, so you'd better put it on a strong chain!

Anyone wearing a bra will usually have the omitama pocket inside their bra, either on the left (spiritual) side or centrally. Adults and kids (from age 10) who don't wear bras will always be wearing a singlet or undershirt of some sort. The omitama pocket is sewn into this garment, either in the centre of the chest, or on the left side.

Women are guided not to wear black, generally, and the usual religious exhortation about modest outfits.

So, the main visible things to look out for are the Mahikari badge, a long sturdy necklace tucked inside clothes, and people who always wear an undershirt.

Plus, they're always smiling, and nothing is bad. And they're really nice and helpful (which sucks, because they are usually genuinely lovely people on the whole, but misguided and victims who have become unwitting perpetrators).

And one of their hands is often cocked at an angle (surreptitiously giving Light whether you want it or not). If they offer to give you Light, politely decline. Or go on, be rude ...

#mahikari #sukyomahikari #omitama #kumite #cult #truelight #influence

A small gem for you today. This is a teaching from the Advanced Kenshu (ie third and most advanced initiation) of Sukyo Mahikari.

“In the beginning God created millions of dinosaurs to solidify earth.”

So dinosaurs were created to stomp around and make the earth solid. Sounds like something my toddler would come up with.

Bit like making a nice pastry dough from a crumbly flour and butter mix, tampering coffee when making an espresso, or compacting a new road with a 30 tonne roller machine thingy ...

“Hey Fred, you missed a bit over there!”

“Fuck off Jim, you haven't finished that mountain range, who are you to talk?!”

They only 'reveal' these sorts of teachings at the most advanced level because anyone who is less brainwashed by this crowd would laugh hysterically and walk away.

Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

#Mahikari #dinosaurs #cult #JapaneseNewReligion #weirdshit

Mahikari has pretty sick teachings on charities. And I mean sick as in cruel, not excellent.

So here’s how this goes.

First of all let’s get one thing straight. You have heaps of sins and impurities, right? From previous lives, general sins of all humankind, and the crap stuff you’ve done in this life. Hell, it’s a lot. Trust me on this. Lots and lots of negative karma. Fuck you’re screwed.

However. God really wants you to erase this negative karma, and is trying to help you! Woo! How does He manage this? Well, by cleaning you up, erasing this crap ... by causing you suffering, or 'cleansing'. Pay back time. Illness, being poor, being beaten up, conflict, shit abusive jobs and relationships. That’s God showing his love. Honest. So you can erase your negative shit and make everything great. Eventually.

This ties in with their ‘have gratitude for anything and everything from morning til night, how gracious it is that nothing bad exists’ thought-stopping shit mantra, too. Lost your job and can’t feed your kids? Cool! You’re erasing heaps of sins and impurities! Got a dreadful disease? Congratulations! Begone, negative karma! Be grateful! Yaaaaaaaaay!

In normal life, someone who has fallen on hard times might be helped by a charity. Housing for women fleeing domestic violence, help for the homeless, food for the starving, toys for refugee kids, saving a forest. Heaps of stuff. Cos, you know, that’s the decent humane thing to do. To help each other. Actively. Doing stuff, donating stuff. Showing the fuck up.

However.

Mahikari teaches that charities and even hospitals interfere in God’s plans, stopping His cleansing, by making things easier for you, and lessening the suffering associated with whatever crap you’re going through. They ‘perpetuate the misery of mankind’. And when that happens, well, God’s got no other choice, does He? (Does He? I mean, being God and all … ? Maybe he could kinda not do that? No? Just me?)

He has to make your suffering more severe, seeing as what you were going through before was the ‘easiest option to erase your karma’. But you’ve chosen, fuckwit that you are, to use useless human knowledge to ‘solve your problems’. And now He has to step you up a notch to the Next Level of Erasing Karma. You might get incurable cancer, or have your kid killed, or go bankrupt, or something much worse than what you were already going through. You idiot.

So, members are actively discouraged from supporting ‘hypocritical’ charities. It’s much MUCH more important to support the TRUE charity of spiritual awakening and purification to save humankind and the environment — Oh wait! Is that us in Mahikari? It IS? OMG! Oh guys, I don’t know what to say, I’m just overwhelmed, we’re the one true path to God and we’re the one true charity? Oh wow. I don’t have a speech prepared or anything. AND we have tax-free status as a charitable organisation? Oh, this is like the best thing ever!

So. Donate your time and money to Mahikari! It’s that simple really. Don’t waste your time or money on actual charities, which only make people accumulate more impurities and the need for more severe purification. You’re actually being kind to people by offering to give them True Light (the highest form of altruistic love, by the way, in case you didn’t know), and helping them learn how to offer Divine Service too! Offering more and more money to them is the ‘true charity work’.

Besides, God is the one who gave you any money you have in the first place, so it’s only fair that you give a whole lot of it back to Him! You selfish arsehole.

When I was in, we never did fundraising for anyone or anything outside of the cult. Build a new temple, sure! Help anyone else ... yeah, nah.

Hmmm 🤔

Just to show I’m not making this fuckery up, here’s one of the founder's 'Mini Teachings'. Note: ‘charitable work’ = them.

“To build hospitals in order to save sick people, to collect money to do so ... just increases the number of patients who are poisoned by medicines*. They are far from charities. I would call them hypocritical charities, which accumulate sins and impurities. 'Charitable work' is the deed to rid mankind of disease and poverty, and actualise truly peaceful and safe civilisation on this earth.

“In order to spread heavenly civilisation, it is also a 'charitable' work to correct clearly the mistakes which are considered as common sense at the present time. To offer more and more money for that work ... this is also charitable work. The flood of hypocritical charities is too much now and the world is deteriorating more and more.

“For these reasons I wish, all the more, for those who work hard in hypocritical charities, to be awakened to the real charities and to introduce people who are suffering in poverty and sickness without tranquillity of mind to real salvation.

“Suppose one person has donated one hundred million yen* [to Mahikari]. Imagine how much this will cause the circle of salvation to expand. That can be a great salvation, can't it? I call this 'charitable work'.”

How charities should be, Sunkyo, pg 82–83

This cult presents a benign face to the public, trying to look less fucking insane, but I can guarantee you that the founder’s teachings and their prayer book and ‘bible’ won’t have had a single word altered. Don’t trust these fuckers.

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1. Medicine = toxins, which build up in the body to cause diseases. Obviously.

2. ¥100,000,000 = about $880 USD (Nov 2021)

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Do More photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash

Seeking Kindness photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

#Mahikari #cult #charity #medicine #money #donations

Did you know that in the first 49 days after you’ve died, you can do anything you like and go anywhere you want in the world, just by thinking about it? On the 50th day, your arse is hauled off to your ‘training place’ in the astral world (probably some abyss, let’s be honest here). Yup, Mahikari knows the real deal.

So if in life, you hadn’t been able to get to the Main World Shrine (see this post), or got to the Dojo (Mahikari Centre) a whole lot, you could do that. All the time. For 49 days. Sounds like fun, huh?

And if you’d spent your physical life being a diligent kumite, attending Dojo, and ceremonies, and going to Suza, and doing all the Good Kumite Things, then after death you can do everything. Go to the movies for free because ha ha ha they can’t see you. Visit your family (they also can’t see you, maybe that's a plus?). Go to art galleries and Disney World, see dolphins swimming. Stay at the most luxurious tropical resort for free because ha ha ha they can't see you. Party hard. Zoom around the solar system. Fuck it (literally), visit a brothel while you’re at it.

They never explicitly said which category you should be in, but it was pretty fucking obvious. You should stop wanting those stupid worldly things like going on holidays, seeing your family, travelling, doing frivolous fun stuff, going to the movies, visiting art galleries, getting drunk and paying for kinky sex. Offer Divine Service now. Catch up and do that other stuff after you’ve died. Without the pain of actual travel or lost luggage or expensive flights!

Brilliant way to keep your slaves working hard, eh? Enjoy your life when you’re dead! Til then — offer more service. Cos you have to Save the World now. Have fun in the afterlife!

For 49 days, anyway ...

(Photo credits: Party: Michael Discenza on Unsplash Tropical resort: Photo by Daniel Klaffke on Unsplash Dancers: Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash)

#cult #SukyoMahikari #Mahikari #death #afterlife #mindcontrol

Mahikari’s great at thought-stopping catch phrases. One of their absolute favourites is ‘Be grateful for anything and everything, from morning til night.’

This is very handy for stopping people complaining about, well, everything.

It is good to be awake, it is good to be asleep and it is good to be living. All is good. How gracious it is that nothing bad exists.*

Fucking gracious, eh?

Anything ‘bad’ is happening to you to erase your negative karma. So that’s good, right? And if you complain, that’s only going to erase the positive effects of your suffering. You’d just go backwards, you idiot.

If you’re still suffering, it’s proof that you are basically a bit evil:

If the suffering from disease, poverty or discord continues for a long time in your life, you should realise that it is a sign of much spiritual impurity.

If disease, poverty, conflict or disaster linger on, you shall understand that it is proof of your living in pseudo-truth [Shin-nyo] and the adverse way [Gyakuho].

[Norigoto [Prayer Book] Mahikari no Waza, pg 132 (verses 87-5 and 87-6)]

Did you stub your toe? Don’t complain. Have the flu? Great cleansing, removing impurities from your body. Be happy you’re sick! Congratulations!

You lost your job? Great! Your kid had an accident? Get cancer? House burnt down in catastrophic bushfires (we see you, Australia ❤️)? Child drowns? Family crushed in a landslide? Woo hoo! Keep on smiling! It’s great, nothing bad to see here!

People literally congratulated you for being sick or having some misfortune. They would sympathise, but basically, it was a good thing that's happened to you, even if it was hard. Even shockingly awful stuff. A friend of mine died in an awful accident, a lovely gentle intelligent man, who only did good in his life — and I was told that he deserved it. He was erasing his karma.

Nothing bad exists. NOTHING. So that’s great.

I think the worst one is that if you’re being abused by your partner, you should stay with them, let them keep abusing you, and be grateful to them for helping you to erase your obviously deep negative karma. Once you finally elevate yourself enough, and erase enough karma, then their abusive behaviour will naturally improve. Because everything is in balance. If you're being treated horrifically badly, it's effectively your fault. I don’t see how that message can be acceptable at any fucking point.

Shallow is the heart which makes judgments of good or bad. It is like a shallow river where many ripples of problems always appear.*

Don’t want a shallow heart, hey? Be always smiling yokoshi**! Always present a positive face to the world, to show how great Mahikari is! Keep smiling through the blood and tears and cuts and bruises. We got really good at wearing our masks. They were grafted on.

When one regards illnesses and misfortunes as bad phenomena, he has already forgotten the Principle of MISOGI (the cleansing of one's spiritual contamination) which is brought about by the Great Love of God.*

I for one can do without the Great Love of God, thank you very much. He can fuck off.

========================================================

[*These quotes are from the Mahikari Prayer Book, Norigoto, and the particular prayer: Yoshi Ashi — Good and Bad, pg 177 (verses 115-3 – 115-5)]

** Yokoshi = sun light children

#Mahikari #cult #gratitude #thoughtstopping #abuse #cleaning

Spirits and ancestors are a big deal in Mahikari. Spirits attach to your body, and cause diseases or other ailments. But that’s another blog post.

What I want to talk about today is the obsession with a special sort of spirits — your ancestors. In Shinto tradition, ancestors are revered. A great deal of Mahikari is based on Shinto.

In Mahikari, if you’re really devout, you have an ancestor’s altar, and then a second one for your maiden line, so both parts of your family are covered and you have twice as much to do.

The altar sits on a high shelf in your living room, usually. There are all kinds of rules about where in the house it's allowed to be located. Can't have any beds with their feet pointing towards it, for instance.

The alter contains name tablets. There’s a main one for all ancestors who died more than 30 years ago. Those who have died more recently get their own name tablet, inscribed with a new name, to help them give up attachment to their past life. There should always be a tiny vase with some scented flowers in it, too. There is also a Japanese-style bell.

Ancestors require constant attention. Their altar has to be opened every morning, the light turned on, with a good morning greeting. If you go out, you need to tell them. And tell them when you’re back home too. Introduce them to any visitors to the house. Inform them of any major events. Close it at night, turning off its light, and wishing your ancestors a pleasant evening. So civilised.

And they need dinner every day. They have a tiny set of dishes, glasses and cutlery, all bought new (second-hand is not acceptable, not pure enough). These are all put on a small tray. Mahikari members are forever seeking out cute tiny crockery and cutlery. Liqueur glasses are popular as wine glasses. Miniature cutlery sets are the best. All sorts of tiny things, like this ...

For dinner, they should be served a small part of your meal, and the best part of it, too. Don't forget the wine. And don't cook anything with a microwave oven, because that destroys the spiritual aspect of the food, which, after all, is what your ancestors are 'eating'. And they should be served before you eat. The bell is struck to get the ancestors’ attention, to call them for dinner.

When cleaning up after dinner, don't use your usual dishwashing things, either. Special washing up cloths for the special ancestors' crockery and cutlery 🙄

Their altar also needs to be cleaned regularly. With special purified altar cleaning cloths (Mahikari has a lot of purity rituals!). And they need to have Mahikari prayers and teachings read to them regularly. Don't ever sit with your feet pointing towards the altar, either. So rude.

Ancestors send warnings too. If you get headaches, or head injuries, or eye problems, or anything like that, it’s your ancestors telling you to ‘look up’ and pay heed to them. Aren’t you glad you know that now? Feeling guilty yet?

Looking after an ancestors altar or two is a shitload of work, and keeps you very involved in daily ‘cult tasks’, all the time. I still get nightmares about the fucking thing. But maybe that’s my just my poor imaginary ancestor spirits having a bit of a grizzle about my neglect?

Aaaw, diddums.

Quite a responsibility, really. I'd rather have a dog.

#Mahikari #cult #ancestors #rituals #warnings #karma

I’ve been thinking of writing about Mahikari for some time now. I was in Mahikari for just over a decade, and got out many years ago. I’m surprised at the recent lack of public discussion or revelation about this group. Are ex-members too scared to say anything? You can write your experiences anonymously in many places, like here … telling people your story helps to educate and protect. It helps other ex-members to understand what they went through. It helps people avoid joining up in the first place. While it is classified by scholars as a ‘Japanese New Religion’, it is in reality a religious cult, and a damaging one at that.

I joined Mahikari when I was really young, only 19. I had some chronic health problems, and a very friendly neighbour a few doors down the street introduced me. He was so nice. Sucked me right in 🤦🏻‍♀️

Mahikari practices ‘spiritual purification’, where ‘Divine Light’ (okiyome or True Light) is ‘radiated’ from the palm of the hand. I became convinced that this Light could cure my health problems (spoiler alert, it couldn’t). True Light is supposed to heal all kinds of conditions, and it could also be radiated at your groceries to purify them of the ubiquitous ‘toxins’, and purify accident sites (to release the suffering earth-bound spirits), and could even make radioactivity poisoning an environment disappear! MAGIC. Fucking magic 🙄

To radiate True Light, the Mahikari member (kumite) has to wear their special Divine Pendant (omitama) around their neck. They are told that this pendant is more precious than their own life. This does a bit of a number on you.

The pendant must never touch the ground, a bed, or a seat, get wet, be put on back-to-front, or touch your body below the waist (pure body is above the waist, impure body is below the waist, where all that sex and poop and yucky things happen, and feet touching the dirty ground. Dirty dirty dirty.). The omitama has to be kept wrapped up in multiple layers (plastic, cloth etc), and pinned into a pocket in your bra or singlet. Members often had nightmares about their omitama getting wet, or broken, or damaged, or dropping onto a bed, or some other 'omitama accident'.

If, horror of horrors, an omitama accident actually happened, it was a reflection on the state of your soul, and a negative reflection at that. A warning. Although sometimes in unusual situations it could be deemed a sacrifice, sacrificing your omitama in place of your LIFE — so maybe if it got wet while you were in the process of nearly drowning, the Mahikari staff would say it had been sacrificed in place of your life. Not so much shame associated in that case.

But usually it was a warning. Because we all had a lot of negative karma. It was time to reflect on your sins. It would have to be sent away to be specially re-purified. You had to make special donations, of grovelling apology and significant funds. The other members would whisper about you. It was all quite humiliating.

I actually never had an omitama accident, yeah bitches, that's how 'pure' I was (what a fucking joke). But even now I still get the occasional 'omitama accident nightmare', and I haven't had one of the bloody things in my house, let alone strangling me around my neck, for years.

More to come. I need to get this shit out of my head.

#Mahikari #cult #omitama #pendant #warning #purity #rituals #JapaneseNewReligion