u/We_aint_cool_

I’ve been thinking about the people who have been struggling for years.

People who have tried everything they were told would make them whole like therapy, medication, religion, self help, meditation, relationships, careers, distractions, and endless attempts to reinvent themselves.

And somehow, underneath it all, that quiet feeling remains:

Something is missing!

I’m not saying therapy, medication, or professional help don’t matter. They can be necessary and lifesaving. But I think there’s another question we don’t ask enough:

What if we keep trying to fix the person without asking whether they’re living a life that feels true to them?

We are born into boxes.

Before we even understand ourselves, the world tells us who we should become like what to believe, what success looks like, what to want, who to love, and how to live.

And when we step outside that script, we’re often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe sometimes the better question is:

“What happened to you that made you forget yourself?”

Not every sadness is a spiritual message. Not every depression means your soul is speaking. But we also shouldn’t assume every form of suffering is simply something to suppress, medicate, optimize, or escape.

Sometimes the deeper question is much simpler:

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

This is one of the reasons I find the wisdom of IFA so powerful.

IFA doesn’t reduce human existence to one universal formula. It speaks deeply about Orí which is our inner head, consciousness, destiny, discernment, and personal path.

Our relationship with our own Orí and destiny matters cos your life cannot be fully understood through somebody else’s blueprint. Your journey is yours. Your questions are yours. Your relationship with the Divine is yours.

There is destiny, circumstance, and then there is what we choose to do with the life we have been given.

And this is where I think the idea of a Personal Legend becomes powerful.

Call it destiny. Purpose. Calling. Orí. Whatever name speaks to you, the question remains:

What is mine?

Not your parents’ dream.

Not society’s definition of success.

Not religion’s expectations.

Not the identity the internet handed you.

Yours!

So, if you’ve been lost for years, I’m not telling you to abandon therapy, medication, or anything that genuinely helps you. I’m asking you to look deeper.

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

What have I abandoned in myself?

What keeps calling me?

What makes me feel alive?

Sometimes healing isn’t only learning how to tolerate a life that doesn’t fit. Sometimes it is having the courage to build one that does.

Find your roots. Find your people. Find your creativity. Find your history. Find your spirituality. Find whatever brings you closer to yourself.

And listen to your Orí.

Because maybe you were never meant to spend your entire life decorating a box that was built for you by somebody else.

Maybe it’s time to step outside.

Take your power back.

Find yourself. Find your Orí. Find your way home.

I’ve been thinking about the people who have been struggling for years.

People who have tried everything they were told would make them whole like therapy, medication, religion, self help, meditation, relationships, careers, distractions, and endless attempts to reinvent themselves.

And somehow, underneath it all, that quiet feeling remains:

Something is missing!

I’m not saying therapy, medication, or professional help don’t matter. They can be necessary and lifesaving. But I think there’s another question we don’t ask enough:

What if we keep trying to fix the person without asking whether they’re living a life that feels true to them?

We are born into boxes.

Before we even understand ourselves, the world tells us who we should become like what to believe, what success looks like, what to want, who to love, and how to live.

And when we step outside that script, we’re often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe sometimes the better question is:

“What happened to you that made you forget yourself?”

Not every sadness is a spiritual message. Not every depression means your soul is speaking. But we also shouldn’t assume every form of suffering is simply something to suppress, medicate, optimize, or escape.

Sometimes the deeper question is much simpler:

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

This is one of the reasons I find the wisdom of IFA so powerful.

IFA doesn’t reduce human existence to one universal formula. It speaks deeply about Orí which is our inner head, consciousness, destiny, discernment, and personal path.

Our relationship with our own Orí and destiny matters cos your life cannot be fully understood through somebody else’s blueprint. Your journey is yours. Your questions are yours. Your relationship with the Divine is yours.

There is destiny, circumstance, and then there is what we choose to do with the life we have been given.

And this is where I think the idea of a Personal Legend becomes powerful.

Call it destiny. Purpose. Calling. Orí. Whatever name speaks to you, the question remains:

What is mine?

Not your parents’ dream.

Not society’s definition of success.

Not religion’s expectations.

Not the identity the internet handed you.

Yours!

So, if you’ve been lost for years, I’m not telling you to abandon therapy, medication, or anything that genuinely helps you. I’m asking you to look deeper.

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

What have I abandoned in myself?

What keeps calling me?

What makes me feel alive?

Sometimes healing isn’t only learning how to tolerate a life that doesn’t fit. Sometimes it is having the courage to build one that does.

Find your roots. Find your people. Find your creativity. Find your history. Find your spirituality. Find whatever brings you closer to yourself.

And listen to your Orí.

Because maybe you were never meant to spend your entire life decorating a box that was built for you by somebody else.

Maybe it’s time to step outside.

Take your power back.

Find yourself. Find your Orí. Find your way home.

I’ve been thinking about the people who have been struggling for years.

People who have tried everything they were told would make them whole like therapy, medication, religion, self help, meditation, relationships, careers, distractions, and endless attempts to reinvent themselves.

And somehow, underneath it all, that quiet feeling remains:

Something is missing!

I’m not saying therapy, medication, or professional help don’t matter. They can be necessary and lifesaving. But I think there’s another question we don’t ask enough:

What if we keep trying to fix the person without asking whether they’re living a life that feels true to them?

We are born into boxes.

Before we even understand ourselves, the world tells us who we should become like what to believe, what success looks like, what to want, who to love, and how to live.

And when we step outside that script, we’re often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe sometimes the better question is:

“What happened to you that made you forget yourself?”

Not every sadness is a spiritual message. Not every depression means your soul is speaking. But we also shouldn’t assume every form of suffering is simply something to suppress, medicate, optimize, or escape.

Sometimes the deeper question is much simpler:

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

This is one of the reasons I find the wisdom of IFA so powerful.

IFA doesn’t reduce human existence to one universal formula. It speaks deeply about Orí which is our inner head, consciousness, destiny, discernment, and personal path.

Our relationship with our own Orí and destiny matters cos your life cannot be fully understood through somebody else’s blueprint. Your journey is yours. Your questions are yours. Your relationship with the Divine is yours.

There is destiny, circumstance, and then there is what we choose to do with the life we have been given.

And this is where I think the idea of a Personal Legend becomes powerful.

Call it destiny. Purpose. Calling. Orí. Whatever name speaks to you, the question remains:

What is mine?

Not your parents’ dream.

Not society’s definition of success.

Not religion’s expectations.

Not the identity the internet handed you.

Yours!

So, if you’ve been lost for years, I’m not telling you to abandon therapy, medication, or anything that genuinely helps you. I’m asking you to look deeper.

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

What have I abandoned in myself?

What keeps calling me?

What makes me feel alive?

Sometimes healing isn’t only learning how to tolerate a life that doesn’t fit. Sometimes it is having the courage to build one that does.

Find your roots. Find your people. Find your creativity. Find your history. Find your spirituality. Find whatever brings you closer to yourself.

And listen to your Orí.

Because maybe you were never meant to spend your entire life decorating a box that was built for you by somebody else.

Maybe it’s time to step outside.

Take your power back.

Find yourself. Find your Orí. Find your way home.

I’ve been thinking about the people who have been struggling for years.

People who have tried everything they were told would make them whole like therapy, medication, religion, self help, meditation, relationships, careers, distractions, and endless attempts to reinvent themselves.

And somehow, underneath it all, that quiet feeling remains:

Something is missing!

I’m not saying therapy, medication, or professional help don’t matter. They can be necessary and lifesaving. But I think there’s another question we don’t ask enough:

What if we keep trying to fix the person without asking whether they’re living a life that feels true to them?

We are born into boxes.

Before we even understand ourselves, the world tells us who we should become like what to believe, what success looks like, what to want, who to love, and how to live.

And when we step outside that script, we’re often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe sometimes the better question is:

“What happened to you that made you forget yourself?”

Not every sadness is a spiritual message. Not every depression means your soul is speaking. But we also shouldn’t assume every form of suffering is simply something to suppress, medicate, optimize, or escape.

Sometimes the deeper question is much simpler:

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

This is one of the reasons I find the wisdom of IFA so powerful.

IFA doesn’t reduce human existence to one universal formula. It speaks deeply about Orí which is our inner head, consciousness, destiny, discernment, and personal path.

Our relationship with our own Orí and destiny matters cos your life cannot be fully understood through somebody else’s blueprint. Your journey is yours. Your questions are yours. Your relationship with the Divine is yours.

There is destiny, circumstance, and then there is what we choose to do with the life we have been given.

And this is where I think the idea of a Personal Legend becomes powerful.

Call it destiny. Purpose. Calling. Orí. Whatever name speaks to you, the question remains:

What is mine?

Not your parents’ dream.

Not society’s definition of success.

Not religion’s expectations.

Not the identity the internet handed you.

Yours!

So, if you’ve been lost for years, I’m not telling you to abandon therapy, medication, or anything that genuinely helps you. I’m asking you to look deeper.

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

What have I abandoned in myself?

What keeps calling me?

What makes me feel alive?

Sometimes healing isn’t only learning how to tolerate a life that doesn’t fit. Sometimes it is having the courage to build one that does.

Find your roots. Find your people. Find your creativity. Find your history. Find your spirituality. Find whatever brings you closer to yourself.

And listen to your Orí.

Because maybe you were never meant to spend your entire life decorating a box that was built for you by somebody else.

Maybe it’s time to step outside.

Take your power back.

Find yourself. Find your Orí. Find your way home.

I’ve been thinking about the people who have been struggling for years.

People who have tried everything they were told would make them whole like therapy, medication, religion, self help, meditation, relationships, careers, distractions, and endless attempts to reinvent themselves.

And somehow, underneath it all, that quiet feeling remains:

Something is missing!

I’m not saying therapy, medication, or professional help don’t matter. They can be necessary and lifesaving. But I think there’s another question we don’t ask enough:

What if we keep trying to fix the person without asking whether they’re living a life that feels true to them?

We are born into boxes.

Before we even understand ourselves, the world tells us who we should become like what to believe, what success looks like, what to want, who to love, and how to live.

And when we step outside that script, we’re often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe sometimes the better question is:

“What happened to you that made you forget yourself?”

Not every sadness is a spiritual message. Not every depression means your soul is speaking. But we also shouldn’t assume every form of suffering is simply something to suppress, medicate, optimize, or escape.

Sometimes the deeper question is much simpler:

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

This is one of the reasons I find the wisdom of IFA so powerful.

IFA doesn’t reduce human existence to one universal formula. It speaks deeply about Orí which is our inner head, consciousness, destiny, discernment, and personal path.

Our relationship with our own Orí and destiny matters cos your life cannot be fully understood through somebody else’s blueprint. Your journey is yours. Your questions are yours. Your relationship with the Divine is yours.

There is destiny, circumstance, and then there is what we choose to do with the life we have been given.

And this is where I think the idea of a Personal Legend becomes powerful.

Call it destiny. Purpose. Calling. Orí. Whatever name speaks to you, the question remains:

What is mine?

Not your parents’ dream.

Not society’s definition of success.

Not religion’s expectations.

Not the identity the internet handed you.

Yours!

So, if you’ve been lost for years, I’m not telling you to abandon therapy, medication, or anything that genuinely helps you. I’m asking you to look deeper.

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

What have I abandoned in myself?

What keeps calling me?

What makes me feel alive?

Sometimes healing isn’t only learning how to tolerate a life that doesn’t fit. Sometimes it is having the courage to build one that does.

Find your roots. Find your people. Find your creativity. Find your history. Find your spirituality. Find whatever brings you closer to yourself.

And listen to your Orí.

Because maybe you were never meant to spend your entire life decorating a box that was built for you by somebody else.

Maybe it’s time to step outside.

Take your power back.

Find yourself. Find your Orí. Find your way home.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì, yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì, yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì already knows the way.

There is a certain kind of peace that doesn’t come from life becoming easier.

It comes from clarity.

For most of my life, I asked the same questions so many of us ask.

Why is this happening to me?

Why does my life feel so different?

Why do I keep being pulled toward things I never consciously chose?

The human mind is built to search for reasons. It wants certainty. It wants explanations. Even after awakening, those questions don’t disappear entirely. We are, after all, human.

The difference is that now, I have clarity.

Not the kind of clarity that answers every question, but the kind that changes the questions altogether.

My spiritual awakening gave language to a life I had already been living. It did not erase my past or pretend that my pain wasn’t real. It illuminated it. What once looked like random moments slowly revealed themselves as connected threads. What I had called confusion became preparation. What I had called suffering began to carry meaning.

Perhaps the greatest gift wasn’t receiving answers.

It was finding the courage to accept the truth of who I am instead of clinging to the person I believed I was supposed to be.

For years, I held tightly to an identity that had been handed to me. Not because it was false, but because it was incomplete.

Like so many of us, I inherited ideas about who I should become before I ever had the chance to ask who I truly was. Family shaped me. Society shaped me. Fear shaped me. Expectations quietly settled into my bones until I mistook them for my own voice.

I did not realize how much of me belonged to the world.

Until I began the painful work of unlearning it.

Unlearning is not forgetting.

It is remembering.

It is peeling away every belief that says, “This is who you must be,” until all that remains is the quiet truth that has been waiting beneath the noise all along.

As I walked deeper into my spiritual journey, I came to understand something that changed everything.

Before I had a name…

Before I had a body…

Before I ever opened my eyes to this world…

My Ori had already chosen the life I would come here to live.

And like every soul, I arrived here and forgot.

Perhaps that forgetting is part of being human.

Perhaps that is why so many of us spend our lives searching outside ourselves for what has always been within us.

The more I remembered, the more I understood.

Not everything that happened to me made sense in the moment, but it made sense in the story.

The life I had been resisting was the very life leading me back to myself.

There were moments when remembering was painful.

Moments when the truth demanded that I let go of old identities, familiar comforts, relationships, dreams, and even versions of myself that I once fought so hard to protect.

But once I recognized the path my Ori had chosen, I could not unknow it.

So I held on.

Not because the road became easier.

Not because I suddenly understood every step.

But because some truths become impossible to abandon once they have awakened inside you.

Today, I no longer see myself as merely a human trying to survive this world.

I understand myself as a spiritual being living a human experience.

The world constantly invites us to forget that. It teaches us to measure ourselves by achievement, approval, possessions, success, failure, and fear. It asks us to become attached to things that were only ever meant to be temporary.

Yet something deeper within me refuses to forget.

So I choose to walk through this life with the knowledge of who I truly am.

Clarity has not removed the challenges.

It has transformed the way I carry them.

Because once you remember who you are, you stop asking why life keeps happening to you.

You begin asking how each moment is calling you back to yourself.

A reflection on Ogundabede: The heart of this journey is not the courage to fight the world, but the courage to remember.

This is why I think of Ogundabede. My path was never about becoming someone new, but returning to who my Ori chose me to be.

To remember is not always comfortable. Sometimes it means releasing the life you wanted to embrace the life you were called to live.

There is a certain kind of peace that doesn’t come from life becoming easier.

It comes from clarity.

For most of my life, I asked the same questions so many of us ask.

Why is this happening to me?

Why does my life feel so different?

Why do I keep being pulled toward things I never consciously chose?

The human mind is built to search for reasons. It wants certainty. It wants explanations. Even after awakening, those questions don’t disappear entirely. We are, after all, human.

The difference is that now, I have clarity.

Not the kind of clarity that answers every question, but the kind that changes the questions altogether.

My spiritual awakening gave language to a life I had already been living. It did not erase my past or pretend that my pain wasn’t real. It illuminated it. What once looked like random moments slowly revealed themselves as connected threads. What I had called confusion became preparation. What I had called suffering began to carry meaning.

Perhaps the greatest gift wasn’t receiving answers.

It was finding the courage to accept the truth of who I am instead of clinging to the person I believed I was supposed to be.

For years, I held tightly to an identity that had been handed to me. Not because it was false, but because it was incomplete.

Like so many of us, I inherited ideas about who I should become before I ever had the chance to ask who I truly was. Family shaped me. Society shaped me. Fear shaped me. Expectations quietly settled into my bones until I mistook them for my own voice.

I did not realize how much of me belonged to the world.

Until I began the painful work of unlearning it.

Unlearning is not forgetting.

It is remembering.

It is peeling away every belief that says, “This is who you must be,” until all that remains is the quiet truth that has been waiting beneath the noise all along.

As I walked deeper into my spiritual journey, I came to understand something that changed everything.

Before I had a name…

Before I had a body…

Before I ever opened my eyes to this world…

My Ori had already chosen the life I would come here to live.

And like every soul, I arrived here and forgot.

Perhaps that forgetting is part of being human.

Perhaps that is why so many of us spend our lives searching outside ourselves for what has always been within us.

The more I remembered, the more I understood.

Not everything that happened to me made sense in the moment, but it made sense in the story.

The life I had been resisting was the very life leading me back to myself.

There were moments when remembering was painful.

Moments when the truth demanded that I let go of old identities, familiar comforts, relationships, dreams, and even versions of myself that I once fought so hard to protect.

But once I recognized the path my Ori had chosen, I could not unknow it.

So I held on.

Not because the road became easier.

Not because I suddenly understood every step.

But because some truths become impossible to abandon once they have awakened inside you.

Today, I no longer see myself as merely a human trying to survive this world.

I understand myself as a spiritual being living a human experience.

The world constantly invites us to forget that. It teaches us to measure ourselves by achievement, approval, possessions, success, failure, and fear. It asks us to become attached to things that were only ever meant to be temporary.

Yet something deeper within me refuses to forget.

So I choose to walk through this life with the knowledge of who I truly am.

Clarity has not removed the challenges.

It has transformed the way I carry them.

Because once you remember who you are, you stop asking why life keeps happening to you.

You begin asking how each moment is calling you back to yourself.

A reflection on Ogundabede: The heart of this journey is not the courage to fight the world, but the courage to remember.

This is why I think of Ogundabede. My path was never about becoming someone new, but returning to who my Ori chose me to be.

To remember is not always comfortable. Sometimes it means releasing the life you wanted to embrace the life you were called to live.

There is a certain kind of peace that doesn’t come from life becoming easier.

It comes from clarity.

For most of my life, I asked the same questions so many of us ask.

Why is this happening to me?

Why does my life feel so different?

Why do I keep being pulled toward things I never consciously chose?

The human mind is built to search for reasons. It wants certainty. It wants explanations. Even after awakening, those questions don’t disappear entirely. We are, after all, human.

The difference is that now, I have clarity.

Not the kind of clarity that answers every question, but the kind that changes the questions altogether.

My spiritual awakening gave language to a life I had already been living. It did not erase my past or pretend that my pain wasn’t real. It illuminated it. What once looked like random moments slowly revealed themselves as connected threads. What I had called confusion became preparation. What I had called suffering began to carry meaning.

Perhaps the greatest gift wasn’t receiving answers.

It was finding the courage to accept the truth of who I am instead of clinging to the person I believed I was supposed to be.

For years, I held tightly to an identity that had been handed to me. Not because it was false, but because it was incomplete.

Like so many of us, I inherited ideas about who I should become before I ever had the chance to ask who I truly was. Family shaped me. Society shaped me. Fear shaped me. Expectations quietly settled into my bones until I mistook them for my own voice.

I did not realize how much of me belonged to the world.

Until I began the painful work of unlearning it.

Unlearning is not forgetting.

It is remembering.

It is peeling away every belief that says, “This is who you must be,” until all that remains is the quiet truth that has been waiting beneath the noise all along.

As I walked deeper into my spiritual journey, I came to understand something that changed everything.

Before I had a name…

Before I had a body…

Before I ever opened my eyes to this world…

My Ori had already chosen the life I would come here to live.

And like every soul, I arrived here and forgot.

Perhaps that forgetting is part of being human.

Perhaps that is why so many of us spend our lives searching outside ourselves for what has always been within us.

The more I remembered, the more I understood.

Not everything that happened to me made sense in the moment, but it made sense in the story.

The life I had been resisting was the very life leading me back to myself.

There were moments when remembering was painful.

Moments when the truth demanded that I let go of old identities, familiar comforts, relationships, dreams, and even versions of myself that I once fought so hard to protect.

But once I recognized the path my Ori had chosen, I could not unknow it.

So I held on.

Not because the road became easier.

Not because I suddenly understood every step.

But because some truths become impossible to abandon once they have awakened inside you.

Today, I no longer see myself as merely a human trying to survive this world.

I understand myself as a spiritual being living a human experience.

The world constantly invites us to forget that. It teaches us to measure ourselves by achievement, approval, possessions, success, failure, and fear. It asks us to become attached to things that were only ever meant to be temporary.

Yet something deeper within me refuses to forget.

So I choose to walk through this life with the knowledge of who I truly am.

Clarity has not removed the challenges.

It has transformed the way I carry them.

Because once you remember who you are, you stop asking why life keeps happening to you.

You begin asking how each moment is calling you back to yourself.

A reflection on Ogundabede: The heart of this journey is not the courage to fight the world, but the courage to remember.

This is why I think of Ogundabede. My path was never about becoming someone new, but returning to who my Ori chose me to be.

To remember is not always comfortable. Sometimes it means releasing the life you wanted to embrace the life you were called to live.

There is a certain kind of peace that doesn’t come from life becoming easier.

It comes from clarity.

For most of my life, I asked the same questions so many of us ask.

Why is this happening to me?

Why does my life feel so different?

Why do I keep being pulled toward things I never consciously chose?

The human mind is built to search for reasons. It wants certainty. It wants explanations. Even after awakening, those questions don’t disappear entirely. We are, after all, human.

The difference is that now, I have clarity.

Not the kind of clarity that answers every question, but the kind that changes the questions altogether.

My spiritual awakening gave language to a life I had already been living. It did not erase my past or pretend that my pain wasn’t real. It illuminated it. What once looked like random moments slowly revealed themselves as connected threads. What I had called confusion became preparation. What I had called suffering began to carry meaning.

Perhaps the greatest gift wasn’t receiving answers.

It was finding the courage to accept the truth of who I am instead of clinging to the person I believed I was supposed to be.

For years, I held tightly to an identity that had been handed to me. Not because it was false, but because it was incomplete.

Like so many of us, I inherited ideas about who I should become before I ever had the chance to ask who I truly was. Family shaped me. Society shaped me. Fear shaped me. Expectations quietly settled into my bones until I mistook them for my own voice.

I did not realize how much of me belonged to the world.

Until I began the painful work of unlearning it.

Unlearning is not forgetting.

It is remembering.

It is peeling away every belief that says, “This is who you must be,” until all that remains is the quiet truth that has been waiting beneath the noise all along.

As I walked deeper into my spiritual journey, I came to understand something that changed everything.

Before I had a name…

Before I had a body…

Before I ever opened my eyes to this world…

My Ori had already chosen the life I would come here to live.

And like every soul, I arrived here and forgot.

Perhaps that forgetting is part of being human.

Perhaps that is why so many of us spend our lives searching outside ourselves for what has always been within us.

The more I remembered, the more I understood.

Not everything that happened to me made sense in the moment, but it made sense in the story.

The life I had been resisting was the very life leading me back to myself.

There were moments when remembering was painful.

Moments when the truth demanded that I let go of old identities, familiar comforts, relationships, dreams, and even versions of myself that I once fought so hard to protect.

But once I recognized the path my Ori had chosen, I could not unknow it.

So I held on.

Not because the road became easier.

Not because I suddenly understood every step.

But because some truths become impossible to abandon once they have awakened inside you.

Today, I no longer see myself as merely a human trying to survive this world.

I understand myself as a spiritual being living a human experience.

The world constantly invites us to forget that. It teaches us to measure ourselves by achievement, approval, possessions, success, failure, and fear. It asks us to become attached to things that were only ever meant to be temporary.

Yet something deeper within me refuses to forget.

So I choose to walk through this life with the knowledge of who I truly am.

Clarity has not removed the challenges.

It has transformed the way I carry them.

Because once you remember who you are, you stop asking why life keeps happening to you.

You begin asking how each moment is calling you back to yourself.

A reflection on Ogundabede: The heart of this journey is not the courage to fight the world, but the courage to remember.

This is why I think of Ogundabede. My path was never about becoming someone new, but returning to who my Ori chose me to be.

To remember is not always comfortable. Sometimes it means releasing the life you wanted to embrace the life you were called to live.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì(Higher self) is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì(Higher self) because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì(Higher self) has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì(Higher self), yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì(Higher self) already knows the way.

Perhaps the hardest thing we are ever asked to do is not to discover our destiny, but to accept it.

Not because Òrì is unclear.

But because we are human.

Human nature wants to understand everything. We analyze, question, search for proof, and try to find logic before we surrender. We want the unseen to explain itself in ways our physical minds can grasp.

Yet across spiritual traditions, there is a common understanding “the unseen shapes the seen”.

What exists beyond our physical perception often influences the reality we experience.

That is why we seek spirituality in the first place.

We pray. We meditate. We perform rituals. We seek guidance. We consult divination. We make offerings and do the spiritual work necessary to bring ourselves into alignment with something greater than our own understanding.

For those who walk the path of IFA, we seek Ìtẹ́fà, Idáfá, and the wisdom of Òrì because we recognize that our higher self knows something that our human mind may not yet understand.

But this is where the struggle begins…..

We trust the spiritual enough to seek its guidance, yet sometimes we struggle to trust it when it reveals something that challenges our plans, our desires, or our understanding.

There is an Ẹsẹ IFA that captures this beautifully. It speaks of Arinnoka, a person who was known for knowing everywhere.

Ask Arinnoka if he knew a place, and he would say yes.

Ask him if he had been somewhere else, and he would say yes.

There was nowhere you could mention that Arinnoka did not believe he knew. He had traveled everywhere, seen everything, and believed there was nothing beyond his understanding.

Until one day, Arinnoka was told he was going to a place where the path ends, a place of the unknown.

“Òlọ́gbọ́n ayé kan ò t’ákòkò omi létí,

Àwọn ò mọ iye pé ilé.

Adífá fún Arinnókà,

tí ń lọ síbi tí ọ̀nà ń k’ẹ́hìn”.

(An Ifá consultation was made for Arinnoka, who was going to the place where the road ends.)

Before his journey, IFA instructed him to perform ẹbọ. But Arinnoka refused. How could he need guidance? How could there be anything he did not already know?

But when he reached the place of the unknown, he found himself unable to move forward or return. His knowledge had taken him far, but it could not take him beyond what he did not understand.

The lesson of Arinnoka is not that knowledge is bad.

It is that knowledge without humility can become a limitation.

IFA was teaching the importance of listening. The importance of letting go. The importance of understanding that there are places our human mind cannot enter alone.

Many of us do not need to wait until we reach our own “place where the road ends” before we surrender. We do not need to reach a point where we can neither move forward nor backward before accepting what Òrì has already revealed.

Why seek alignment with Òrì, yet fight the wisdom that comes from that alignment?

Why seek divination, guidance, rituals, and spiritual work, yet allow the need for control to override what we came seeking?

Perhaps acceptance does not mean we stop asking questions.

Perhaps it means we recognize that our questions should not become greater than our trust.

The mind wants to understand before it believes.

The spirit sometimes asks us to trust before understanding arrives.

Because in the end, the journey is not about forcing Òrì to follow our plans.

It is about remembering that Òrì already knows the way.

The way I loved my friends, my brothers, my family, and the people life placed in my path never felt casual. When someone found a place in my heart, they stayed there. My love wasn’t measured by convenience or reciprocity. It simply existed. To me, that felt natural. To everyone else, it didn’t.
My mother called it unnatural. Friends told me I was “too much.” People warned me that I loved too hard, cared too deeply, gave too freely, and that one day the world would keep taking pieces of me until there was nothing left.
For years, I wondered if they were right. I tried to love the way everyone else seemed to. I tried to become more calculated, more guarded, less available. I wanted to believe love was supposed to have limits.
I failed every single time.
Because loving deeply wasn’t something I chose. It was simply who I was.
Eventually, I stopped allowing people close enough to awaken that part of me. Not because I stopped loving, but because I grew tired of being punished for it. Being taken for granted became more painful than loneliness itself.
So my prayer changed. I stopped praying for love and started praying for one person. Just one soul who would never make me feel ashamed for the way I love. Someone for whom loving deeply wouldn’t be a weakness to manage but a language they understood. I wasn’t asking for forever. Even if destiny only allowed us to share a season, I wanted that season to feel honest.
Then…
I met her.
Ironically, I met her on one of the worst days of my life.
I was in a taxi on my way for spiritual treatment after a painful experience that had shaken me deeply. During the ride, I suddenly became nauseous and asked the driver to pull over. As I stepped out to throw up, someone stepped out with me.
It was her.
She didn’t know my name. She didn’t owe me kindness. Yet she stayed beside me and took care of me as if I mattered.
It was such a simple act, yet it changed everything.
When we got back into the taxi, I asked her for her name. The moment she answered, I looked at her and felt something I couldn’t explain.
Not attraction.
Recognition.
It felt as though I had known her before. As though she had belonged somewhere in my story long before that taxi ride. I couldn’t explain it then, and even today I struggle to put words to it.
I collected her number, we said goodbye, and I spent the next few weeks trying to convince myself I wasn’t thinking about a complete stranger.
The irony still makes me laugh 😂.
The very day I met her, I had decided I wanted absolutely nothing to do with women anymore. I was literally on my way to receive spiritual treatment because another woman had caused me so much pain.
So why couldn’t I stop thinking about this one?
I refused to text her.
Three weeks later, I finally did.
She laughed.
She confessed that she had been waiting by her phone the entire time because she couldn’t understand why she, a straight woman in a relationship couldn’t stop thinking about another woman she had only met once.
That conversation became years.
Years of something beautiful.
Years of something impossible.
Being with her felt effortless. Time slowed down. The ordinary became sacred.
Even today, I remember the scent she wore, the warmth of her skin, the feeling of her lips, and how safe the world seemed whenever we shared the same space.
For the first time in my life, someone loved me as though I wasn’t difficult to love. She loved me gently. Calmly. Patiently.
She introduced me to a version of love that never asked me to shrink myself.
I had prayed for someone who wouldn’t fear the depth of my heart.
Then she arrived.
But sometimes the greatest tragedy isn’t meeting the right soul.
It’s meeting them before they’re able to choose you.
When the moment came…
She didn’t.
Eventually she did.
But by then something inside me had already broken.
Love can survive many things.
Sometimes trust cannot.
We spent years orbiting each other and always connected, yet never fully together. Close enough to dream, too far to build a life. I kept believing maybe it just wasn’t our time.
Until my spiritual awakening changed everything.
As I began walking the path my Ori had prepared for me, one revelation became impossible to ignore.
The chapter with my twin flame had ended. Our contract had fulfilled its purpose. I wasn’t being called to walk the next chapter beside her.
No amount of prayer prepared me for that realization.
If she had taught me how to love…
Why wasn’t she the one chosen to walk beside me?
I grieved a future that never existed.
Then destiny did something I never expected.
It introduced me to someone else.
Not someone new.
Someone I had already met years before.
If you had asked me before then who I hoped destiny had in mind, I would’ve guessed almost anyone else. My childhood friend. My first crush. Someone who made logical sense.
Never her.
When I finally realized she was the one my path kept pointing toward, my first reaction wasn’t excitement.
It was confusion.
Why her?
She represented almost everything I naturally wouldn’t move toward, yet every step I took spiritually seemed to bring me closer to her.
The strangest part wasn’t what my heart was doing.
It was what my subconscious already knew before my mind accepted it.
I caught myself caring in ways I hadn’t given myself permission to care. I found myself making choices that weren’t characteristic of me.
I hated it.
I hated feeling vulnerable.
I hated losing the illusion of control.
But eventually I realized something.
My spiritual journey had already taught me this lesson:
Being chosen isn’t enough. At some point, you must consciously choose what has already chosen you.
That is exactly what happened with my calling.
Eventually…
It became what happened with love.
So I stopped fighting.
Not because it became easy.
But because surrender hurt less than resistance.
That doesn’t mean this journey has been beautiful.
Far from it.
There have been words that cut deeper than silence.
“It’s not you I want.”
“I wouldn’t choose you if I had a choice.”
Moments that felt intentionally misaligned.
Being misunderstood.
Being underestimated.
Being blamed for things I never did.
Every one of those moments would’ve been enough for me to walk away.
Yet somehow…
I still love her.
Perhaps what confuses me most is that she hasn’t given me many reasons to.
Nobody talks about this version of destined love.
The lonely version.
The version where faith asks you to remain gentle while your heart remembers what it felt like to break before.
The version where you question everything except your trust in your Ori.
Because despite every disappointment my life has carried, one thing has remained true:
Whenever my destiny looked like it was working against me, time eventually revealed it had been working entirely for me.
So I wait.
Not passively.
Not blindly.
But faithfully.
I don’t know how this story ends.
I don’t know whether love will finally feel as peaceful as I once prayed for.
But I do know this:
I no longer apologize for loving deeply.
The world taught me that my heart was too much.
My destiny keeps teaching me that it was simply waiting for the place where it belonged.
“Maybe the love I prayed for wasn’t meant to feel easy. Maybe it was meant to teach me that the deepest love isn’t finding someone who chooses you first… it’s becoming someone who never abandons what their Ori has already chose”.