Tenrikyo-Ofudesaki - Curses, Demons, Evil Spirits

The "model story" demonstrated by Miki Nakayama provides an honest and forthright before and after view of the events surrounding Miki's awakening and the model story makes it very clear that prior to awakening, Miki Nakayama firmly believed in the existence of curses, demons and evil spirits. They were a real and present truth of Miki's world and she suffered under the burden of those truths of her world by sincerely believing that her family was under a supernatural attack that only supernatural counter measures could alleviate.

In plain language once she awakened, as if from a dream, she was no longer troubled by those common imagined truths. Although the physical ills of her family remained, she alone in her family was unburdened of the mental anguish that had weighed so heavily on their minds.

There is an important warning attached to this insight. When we look all over the world and through all ages and ponder, which unusually is something that we are encouraged to do in the performance of this "service", we find that there has often been the tendency of human imaginations to change the names of gods, spirits, curses, demons and the like, while retaining their attributes in our imagined truths of our world. Namely their imagined answers to the questions, "why illness?","why weakening?", "why troubles?", "why death?","what happens to me after I die?" and "what can I do to avoid evil and guarantee prosperity and good things for myself?".

 To avoid that kind of simple transference, this path is guided by a "model of parental love" and we are advised to look to our own parents to gain an understanding of its intention this model. There is no dark, scary or threatening aspect or use of force in this model other than what might be erroneously mixed in by adding imagined truths of the world from the past.

Sure Guide Table of Contents IVb