Ilchi Lee’s New Zealand dream: The First Once-a-year Earth Citizens’ Peace Pageant

On the very first working day of the competition, just prior to sundown on a late summer’s night, the Earth Citizens stood jointly in a general public park, keeping wands to their belly buttons.

It was 2017, and Kerikeri in the Significantly North had been decided on to maintain the “First Once-a-year Earth Citizens’ Peace Festival”. The stated goal of the pageant: Triggering the best change in human background, ultimately bringing about world peace.

The folks in the park were practising “belly button healing”, which includes stimulating the navel in a rhythmic trend, ostensibly to crystal clear the entire body of toxic compounds. Undertaking so includes the use of a “healing wand”, a yellow, plastic machine shaped like a pickaxe which can be purchased on the web for all around $140, accompanied by an illustrated e-book and an on the web training course.

This curious physical exercise was invented by Seung-hun Lee, a South Korean non secular master greater acknowledged as Ilchi Lee.

The Chinese characters on which “Ilchi” is based mostly indicate “finger pointing to the truth”. Lee adopted the name many several years ago, soon after he returned from a non secular quest into South Korea’s Moak Mountain. In his telling, he meditated for 21 days without the need of ingesting or sleeping, which drove him to the brink of demise.

As he fought to continue to be alive, the cosmos opened up, and a voice emerged from within: “I am cosmic electricity,” it mentioned, contorting Lee’s tongue to sort the words and phrases. “My energy is cosmic electrical power, and my thoughts is the cosmic mind.” In accordance to Lee, he could listen to the universe breathing, and hence realized it was time to descend from the mountain.

In the decades considering that, Lee has reaped the fruits of his enlightenment. He amassed a fortune and legions of devoted followers from all-around the earth.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the body weight of that empire descended on to the Considerably North of New Zealand.

When Lee initially arrived to New Zealand 6 years in the past, a hub for bringing about environment peace was not on the playing cards.

Lee was not even meant to go to Kerikeri. Although travelling New Zealand, he experienced acquired an e mail from Gina Garcia, a Kerikeri resident whose granddaughter is a Brain Training adherent in the US.

Garcia’s granddaughter had requested her to glimpse following Lee “she asked me to be form to him, make him some tea,” Garcia recollects.

She was not common with Lee or his Mind Schooling philosophy. Nonetheless, at her granddaughter’s behest, she contacted Lee and invited him to Northland. When Lee and his entourage arrived, Garcia could convey to he was right away taken with Northland.

“When he very first arrived up, he bought out of the car or truck in entrance of the motel I’d booked for them and mentioned ‘We’re likely to stay right here for a couple times. I could see that he was impressed.”

At Garcia’s residence, Lee hosted a screening of his documentary LifeParticles: The Modify Influence for all-around two dozen locals.

LifeParticles, in Lee’s teachings, are a compound that make up all objects and can be channelled with one’s head. The concept bears a resemblance to Ki, a thought in some jap philosophies which broadly translates in English to “energy”.

When targeted at particular thoughts, those people ideas can come to be manifest the documentary involves accounts from people who cite LifeParticles as partly liable for their restoration from actual physical disabilities, which include a brain tumor and paralysis.

Whilst she did not go on with Mind Instruction, Garcia thought Lee experienced been an asset to the neighborhood. “I was very amazed at assembly him,” Garcia states. “He’s very gentle and he came across incredibly humble.”

She was not surprised he experienced been taken by the Bay of Islands – she and her spouse, the late environment-renowned composer Russell Garcia, had felt the identical when they visited for the very first time.

“There’s just an energy right here.”

After the belly button healing celebration in the park, the Initially Annual Earth Citizens Peace Pageant moved indoors, to the most important theatre of Kerikeri’s Turner Centre.

The next working day opened with a flurry of cultural performances South Korean drummers, a kapa-haka group, b-boy breakdancers.

A recording of the celebration seen by Stuff confirmed the proceedings had an air of great importance, potentially belied by their surroundings. The area, which has seating for around 400 persons, was mostly entire, but not entirely organisers later on claimed about 1000 folks attended the pageant. The too much to handle greater part of attendees have been both South Korean or American, already adherents of Lee’s Mind Schooling philosophy.

There were a few locals in attendance, some of whom were being presented star treatment, declared as distinctive guests.

Among them was Tim Couling, an teacher at the community taekwondo centre.

His impression was that Lee commanded a terrific perception of regard from his followers. “He appeared like a person with a good deal of [authority] who required to produce this area of peace, the place all people gets on and performs in terms of the Earth and stuff like that,” Couling recalls. “I assume it appealed to a whole lot of people today.”

Another regional VIP in attendance was Andrew McNaughton, a dentist in Kerikeri. He was asked to perform a critical purpose in the festival: reading a segment of the Earth Citizens’ Declaration, a document which serves as a pledge of allegiance to the values of Earth Citizenship.

Men and women from 10 international locations took to the stage, just about every looking at a area of the declaration.

“I am an Earth Citizen,” McNaughton mentioned, for his area.

“We choose element in the operate of developing 100 million Earth Citizens with the evolution of the human consciousness and the advent of a new period of civilisation on Earth.”

McNaughton stated he, like Couling, had develop into concerned with the Earth Citizens by means of his affiliation with the Kerikeri taekwondo club. “The philosophy at the rear of the bit I was studying fitted quite perfectly with my beliefs in any case,” he claimed. “It was pretty an occasion. It was good exciting.”

McNaughton held in contact with Lee and his associates, and took up methods including tummy button healing.

Afterwards, he would provide as a character witness for Lee.

“It is in fact a privilege and a humble assistance to be equipped to supply a character reference for Mr Ilchi Lee, an individual of whom background will probably recognise as a vivid and sizeable luminary on the planet stage,” McNaughton wrote.

Just after introducing the community VIPs, the presenters – just one talking English, the other Korean – reeled off a list of worldwide figures who had supposedly despatched messages of congratulations.

There were being 165, including prominent political and media figures in North America and South Korea amongst those people outlined have been the Governor of the US point out of Maryland, Canada’s minister for the surroundings, a previous key minister of South Korea and various members of South Korea’s congress.

The most important event, nevertheless, was a keynote lecture from Lee himself.

Lee was released with a lavishly made 10-moment animated movie summarising his lifestyle: his struggles with finding out disabilities in his youth the numerous books he had written.

In hushed tones, a voiceover in English quoted Lee’s lofty ambitions for the festival. “Let’s make this party, right now, the beginning of the best transform in human history, a person that will improve the globe and save the Earth by way of the ability of 100 million Earth Citizens,” the voice reported, as Envision by John Lennon performed by way of the speakers.

When he took to the lectern, Lee obtained a raucous standing ovation. In Korean, as a result of a translator – Lee does not discuss English – he talked about why he came to Kerikeri.

“Kerikeri is a area wherever you can truly feel peacefulness within your total overall body,” he stated. “When I looked about listed here and fulfilled with the individuals and spoke to them and felt the power, I considered, this is a location that is completely ready for the Earth Citizen spirit.”

Lee inspired the group to pick up their therapeutic wands. And so they did, urgent the plastic in opposition to their stomachs in unison.

The concentration of Lee’s speech was to unveil the job he had been working on in New Zealand. An Earth Village, which would provide as a hub to unite 100 million Earth Citizens, unshackled from any sense of nationality or geographic boundaries to convey about globe peace.

At the conclusion of the lecture, the viewers was explained to anyone would acquire a gift a hat, showcasing a logo built by Lee himself.

The brand spoke for by itself a silver fern and a stomach button wand, entwined.

In the yrs afterwards, Lee’s vision to build an Earth Village to convey about environment peace has faced recurring roadblocks, and remains in a state of uncertainty.

He has found himself embroiled in battles a person that pretty much led to his deportation, and another that may well close the aspiration of his worldwide Earth Village.

Even so, Lee has been influential. He has observed new adherents in Northland, and continues to unfold his Mind Education philosophy in rural sections of the location.

Brain Training has since been utilized in an anti-suicide programme for at-danger Māori youth, and adherents have taught Mind Schooling procedures to community college lecturers for use in the classroom – a technique that groups affiliated with Lee have also used abroad, predominantly in creating nations.

Advocates say the philosophy of Brain Training can help its believers stay extra snug life. Lee’s things to do in Northland have also prompted a small increase in economic action many organizations have come to count on adherents of Lee checking out the country on meditation excursions, guided tour groups comprising site visitors typically from South Korea and the US.

“I really like this space and am committed to staying a part the Significantly North group for many decades to arrive,” Lee instructed Things in a statement.

“Obviously the recent Covid-19 pandemic will effect the abroad customer quantities we can appeal to for now. However, I keep on being dedicated to the region and New Zealand and intend to carry on to commit into the company for the lengthy time period.”

An evaluation of Lee’s earlier, nevertheless, shows he has designed an array of strange statements, some of which border on the paranormal, and his organisation has confronted, and denied, accusations that it is a cult.

In this sequence, Stuff explores how a well known figure of new age spiritualism remaining the US for a bucolic daily life in Kerikeri, and how his arrival has altered the Bay of Islands. It is based mostly on hundreds of web pages of files from Government businesses, and interviews with these familiar with Lee’s actions and beliefs.

In portion two, we take a look at the philosophy of Brain Training, a journey that incorporates psychic powers, South Korean pop stars, and a really, pretty high priced golden turtle.