Life is a beautiful journey in mystery. In this journey we meet friends and fiends. Fiends encountered often surfaces as lessons or embodied principles that tempers you to turn inward and get to know yourself. Friends we meet in this journey can affirm your path – or just resonate with a particular sojourn on your path of self discovery. These meetings are important crossroads that affirms what we are and makes us move on - or stay...
Ifá is rooted in a solid belief in Fate – hence we can act in ways that brings us closer to Fate or remove ourselves away from it. Fate is in Ifá understood to be the summit of fulfillment and joy, so the counsel of Ifá is always focused on how you can reach this happy and joyous station.
We reach this station with the help from our friends and the communities and relationships we form. As our sense of Self and purpose grows in meeting with friends and fiends the underlying principle in Ifá is about developing good character (ìwá rere). A good character is a peaceful and loving character. This makes it easy to see if a gathering of people is of friends – or foes – look at the character you are developing. If misfortune, anxiety, negative thoughts and worry is the product – this is for sure a detour from your destined Happy Fate.
The journey is a complex of errors and gains, of falsity and conquest – the trick is to count the blessings and decide to take the track that reaps rewards. Negativity in all its forms so easily turn into ‘that one thing that makes the passions rise’ – in this we fail to see the hundreds of blistering dragon flies that points the way.
The path towards self knowledge is forged by the powers in the odu Eji Ogbe – that teaches us that life is plenty – of good and bad…The journey is an exercise in will, free or tied. We are free to bind our will to people of error or people that lead the light of the path onward.
The path of self discovery is the path of dew; it comes together softly and tenderly – like a good character strives to understand the world and its purpose. A good ori, meaning a harmonious consciousness that speaks with heart will radiate love – and love will touch everyone on the path. From love we can meet resentment for the provocative gospel we radiate – but most often it will lead to a greater gathering of what is good. Count your blessings and monitor your character, seek what is good so true friends can support the upright path to the good Fate – or as Ifá says in the odu known as Òsá’gúndá:
Bees form swarms
Eeran plants grow together on the farm
Brooms are formed from bundles of twigs
Eeran grass grows in bunches on the plains
And the eligiri bird’s form flocks
It is as a grouping together that we encounter
The grassland
It is as swarms the locusts consume
The farm
It is in several colonies that we find the
Termites in their mounds
It is in groves that we encounter the ekunkun
Trees on the water’s edge
It is in clusters we find oore grass at
The riverside
It is in schools that we find the egbele fish
In the ocean
It is in groups we encounter the dragon fly
And the adosusu leaf is never alone
Dews pouring lightly, pouring lightly
Were used to create the world
And likewise was done to create the earth
So that the goodness of togetherness could
Come forth at once
Indeed all goodness took the form of a
Gathering together in harmony
Now, if one ori (consciousness connected to soul and heart) encounters good
It will spread out and touch two hundred
If my ori is good
It will spread out and touch you
And if your ori is good
It will spread out and touch me
For it just one ori experiences good
It will spread out and touch two hundred.