One year.
That’s what it took for me to change my life, and it started with a dream, and one conversation. It was the pebble that started an avalanche.
It’s interesting how, for me at least, life often echoes the Lord The Rings–or moments in the story where I identify with the senses evoked in characters on the page. My brother says that he doesn’t think that Tolkien wrote LOTR, he thinks Tolkien channelled the story from either another time in human history, or from some other dimension. It’s a challenging book, but the rewards are immense.
(Ooooh boy, I am feeling another read of LOTR coming up, That’ll be the tenth time, but it’s just to rich a story to savour once. Actually want to re-read Stephen Kings Dark Tower again as well, haven’t been counting how many times I read and read the first four book-chapters before the last three came out.)
But I digress.
It’s interesting how a part of this is that I am finding the people who practice my tradition who can help me. Again, I am quite moved by the things Astra told me. Whether she say these things, or she was more in tune with the Spirit that has wisdom (Osun, Isis, Pista Sophia,Wisdom) it’s quite reassuring to know that she has not led me wrong. She has been kind and wise, but also accurate. That in itself is a blessing, but what happened after is just the way life works when you open yourself to the power of Spirit. At least it has for me.
So back in November, shortly after my first White Bath, I met up with the Santeria/Orisha Meetup.com group. (Meetup.com is a great site.) I had made friends with two of the members and they’ve turned out to be part of a solid support system here that saw me through the worst of the hard times.
Now, yet another of this group’s members, a priest of Ochoosi has reached out to me, because of my participation in another online community The Organization for Lukumi Unity otherwise known as OLU.
There was where I first got kind words from Mama Ochun Kofa De, the ‘Big Mami’ over there. She and this guy are tight, and she’s been harassing him to look out for me, to help my way. He has a reputation for being a stickler for the rules, and his house being one of the most upstanding and for doing things by the book.
When I told him about my One Hand of Ifa story, like everything with what was going on with the ile I was in in Trinidad, he was quite horrified to hear about some of the details surrounding the ceremony, as well as other things. I also told him about my experiences within the ile, and the painful, spiritually confusing trial of faith that it was as well as the treatment I received from my Elders there. My Elders (internal laugh) who were so dishonest and so selfish it shocks me that they can still hold their heads up and walk the roads of Trinidad claiming to be ‘spiritual’ and on the road of iwa pele.
It’s amazing how when you’re in a situation, it’s so easy to think you’re doing the right thing, when you are ignorant to the truth behind things. I look back over the last year, and it is with both awe and gratitude at the way Spirit moved in my life to extricate me from a precarious situation and led me on to higher ground, led on by the truth and faith.
So the priest of Ocoosi (The Divine Hunter) is taking me to see a babalawo who is part of his Lukumi family. I am going to get a reading done. We’re going to fix my Hand of Ifa. Beyond that, we will begin to see what will happen.
I guess it all had to be that way to force me confront it, and to choose another a way. Nothing is an accident. No person you let in to hurt you or love you a wrong choice. These are karmic debts accumulated and paid.
So I have been fighting this battle, oui? Fighting against negativity I am sure I created for myself, either in this life or in this one, through my own inertia, irresponsibility and selfishness, and here I am trying to make it right as much as I can in this lifetime. I am blessed, because I chose these experiences for myself, both consciously and subconsciously to give myself the opportunity to develop both strength and wisdom.
Not just on the level of my experiences within the Orisha community in Trinidad. But truthfully, through my last decade or so of life.
When I was in Barbados, and not working, can’t find work. Writing proposals and trying to find ways to launch myself, to build the kind of life I wanted for myself. I was thwarted in one way or another. Either by external forces or my own fears and insecurities.
I didn’t pray for things. but began to reach out in the world and focus my mind on drawing a solution to me. I prayed for strength and wisdom to face my future. So life gave me opportunity after opportunity to learn strength and wisdom. Trial after trial, difficult relationships with my entire family, with men, with money, with my business and friends.
As much as I possibly could, I chose to be strong. I was weak too. I lost a couple of serious fights. Yet, I won a number of major ones as well. Wisdom was gained by fighting specific battles without losing my temper and concentrating instead on the best way to diffuse situations without damaging either myself or that with which I was engaged; be it kith, kin or beast.
So after all that, exhausting myself to the point of exhaustion from the fight, I have indeed learned a great deal. Yet, I know less than when I began, thinking I knew something. I am like Gandalf and Gondor, weakened by the onslaught of Sauron’s Orcs, the Gate of Gondor broken, retreating circle within circle of the city. The night has been dark and all is despair before me.
Wisdom alone cannot fight all fights. Strength alone cannot win.
In LOTR, it was the arrival of the Rohirrim (cavalry) and the dead army (Egun) of, that came to the rescue of Gondor.
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