Eshu the Orisha of Right Thinking

Peace of mind; working less, relaxing more and just revamping your circumstances and relationships to be at peace. Setting peace of mind as your highest goal and organizing your life around it is an Eshu mindset. Peace of mind is not something you should have to chase or arrive at as if it is a destination. Feeling balanced and focused is the mindset that comes after the force of nature called Eshu enters your life.  This orisha is powerful, honorable and extremely just.  He is the embodiment of divine karmic justice. He will reveal for all to see, the thing you are trying to keep hidden. Eshu represents right thinking.  His right hand is pure logic, and the left, pure wisdom.

When I decided to write about the orisha of right thinking, my writing became blocked, and my first draft did not quite resonate or flow like water. My stream of thought was filled with many obstacles, so I waited. I thought back on the first time, I had contact with Eshu. Before my initiation, I dreamed of several of the orishas. My Eshu dream took me back to the farm I was raised on. In the dream, I was looking up into the heavens, and I saw a black and red plus sign that was rotating like a fan. That was the entirety of the dream. At the time, I was keeping a dream journal, so I woke up and wrote it down. Like a dream, this is the way that Eshu manifest himself in my life. I expected to receive Eshu during my initiation, I found that he was a part of my Obatala. So, I was not surprised when I was not allowed to make the deadline.

My affinity is water. The power of water cannot be denied. As a people, I feel that water is our element and originally, I was going to talk about how the caffeine in coffee stimulates neuron activity in the brain. Each time you drink a cup of coffee, neurons send messages to your pituitary gland to alert your adrenal glands to pump out adrenaline and cortisol (putting you into fight or flight mode). If you're consuming several cups a day, it's likely your whole nervous system is on constant red alert without you even knowing it. Then expound on the benefits of an alternative herbal coffee like Teeccino infused with a teaspoon of organic honey, a teaspoon of MCT oil and a teaspoon of grass-fed ghee. If the oily beverages are a turn-off, then just spread the ghee and MCT on a piece of toast. Either way, your brain gets nourished with omega 3 & 6 (grass-fed ghee) and the medium chain triglycerides (MCT).

We know the brain needs nourishment because just like asking permission from Eshu, before communicating with an orisha; he becomes your nourishment (proper mindset). He allows us to understand what we are being told, just like proper brain nourishment. He is the gatekeeper for a few reasons. One of the most important is that one must approach spirituality in the right mindset.  I cannot stress enough the importance of respect for nature and the spirits of nature. Neither are your servants and should not be treated as such. They have no obligation to us. A great example is the exemplified energy of the Ogungun; we must always remember that they did not come from us but that we came from them.  It is their genes, inventions, and cultural legacy that enhance our lives.

Knowing that the brain is 75% water what would happen if we unknowingly poisoned it? Fluoride, a neurotoxin, is being consumed in large quantities. It is in your processed foods, tap water, bottled water, toothpaste, juice, soda, sports drinks, beer, and wine. Levels in processed food are elevated because of the common practice of using the public water supply to make products. Fluoride replaces iodine in the thyroid, decreases cognitive ability and calcifies the pineal gland. Flavored beverages have between 5 to 10 times more fluoride than bottled water meaning we consume more fluoride from liquids than solid foods. 

The pineal gland, like Eshu, is your connection to the spirits of nature. Its role as the gateway to higher consciousness is compatible to Eshu's direction of traffic at the crossroads of fortune.Tamarind, lecithin, and boron are fantastic fluoride detox supplements. They both increase the amount of fluoride excreted through urination. Iodine (seaweed such as Bladderwrack, Irish Moss, and Kelp) is also a good fluoride detox supplement.  My grandmother used to fill a wash tub with hot water and borax (20 mule team) on a Saturday night and soak her weary bones. Is this the wisdom of the ancestors or what? My grandmother had an 8th-grade education, but she knew that the boron in borax was good for her bones.

Eshu is always present, and I feel he is needed in all things. If you don't believe me, think of a person in authority spreading their stupid idea. They are lost souls blinded to any accurate messages; forgetting they are subject to nature, and the creator of nature, Oludamare. But is this person the only one blinded? How about the person professing undying love and friendship (doing lip service)?

 

One of my favorite tales that features Eshu and his teaching methods is the one about the two inseparable friends. They swear undying fidelity to one another but neglect to acknowledge this fidelity in the spirit of right-mindedness. These two friends work on adjacent fields. One day Eshu walks on the dividing line between their fields, wearing a cap that is black on one side and red on the other. He saunters between the fields, exchanging pleasantries with both men. Afterward, the two friends get to talking about the man with the cap and fall into a violent argument about the color of the man's hat, calling each other blind and crazy. The neighbors gather about, and then Eshu arrives and stops the fight. The friends explain their disagreement, and Eshu shows them the two-sided hat--all this to chastise the friends for not proclaiming their friendship in the right frame of mind. He had now exposed them for the world to see the true spirit of their friendship. In placing himself on the dividing line between their fields, he represented moving along the seam between their two differing worldviews, he confused their communication, and they were reduced to name calling, he revealed their superficial knowledge of each other and played with their perspective of the other.