Understanding Your Ori

Your Ori is your Spiritual Master and the Manifestation of Olodumare that is attached to you. Your Ori is your Guide during your journey in the marketplace. It is your Ori that works to navigate you towards the fulfillment of your Divine Destiny. Ori in the Yoruba language means head and in the language of Ifa it means more than your physical head. This traditional Ifa saying highlights what should be understood about your Ori.

Ori inu wa maba tode je!
May our Spiritual Ori not be in conflict with our physical Ori.

It can make you feel like a divided person. As though forces inside of you are pulling and pushing in different directions. You can feel a lack of fulfillment even when appearances would suggest that you should be content, even happy. A feeling that there is still something that remains to be done even though you have no idea what it is. A feeling like whatever it is, it is right there on the tip-of-your-tongue, or on the edge-of-your-thoughts but it just hangs there, unclear. Conflict between your Spiritual Ori and your physical Ori is a product of the body and the marketplace.

The marketplace is full of temptations, distractions, delusions, tricks, and traps that can entice your physical Ori to make decisions and choices that obstruct your progress towards the purpose for which you chose to come into the world. The noise of the marketplace can drown out the messages that your Spiritual Ori is sending to you to assist you in staying On Path. Since the physical body is rooted in the physical world and your physical Ori is seated in the physical body, it (your physical Ori) is sensitive and responsive to all of the drives, appetites, and emotions of the body and the marketplace. But you and I did not choose to come into the world simply to satisfy and appease our own drives, appetites, and emotions. Creation has a higher purpose and so does your life.

It is your Spiritual Ori that is sensitive and responsive to the Ase Orun (the Spiritual Energies of Heaven). It is your Spiritual Ori that connects you to your Eleda, Olorun’s righteous and observant presence in each Human Being. Since your Spiritual Ori and your physical Ori have different sensitivities and respond to different calls, you, the devotee must apply effort to bring the physical Ori into alignment with the Spiritual Ori. This is the purpose of mindfulness, prayer, ritual, ceremony, divination, and sacrifice. In my last Post I offered you an Adura to your Ori. Let me invite you to go back to that Post and think about the words of that prayer in light of my comments in this Post.

Aye L’oja, Orun N’ile!
The world is the marketplace,
The Spirit World is Home!

Ohun Ori wa se,
Koma ni s alai se eo!
What Ori comes to fulfill,
It cannot but fulfill it!

Ka maa Worisha!
Let us keep looking to Orisa!

Ki Olodumare, Orisa, ati Egun fifun e ni
Itona, Imoye, ati Opo Ire!

My Olodumare, Orisa, and Ancestors bestow on you

Guidance, Wisdom, and Abundant Blessings!

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Adura: An Ifa Prayer Book For Beginners (Preview)