Quotations from Inner Peace Chapter1

Quotations from Chapter 1 of Inner Peace

There was a lot in this chapter so I have three quotes and that less than what I wanted, but I didn’t want to torture myself or others with writing too much. This chapter is one that evoked conversation with both my daughter and husband. The focus for me was ibi, ire, s’otito.

“The smooth assimilation of the lesson from divination is called ire. The resistance to the lesson is called ibi. In Yoruba the word ibi means afterbirth. Holding on the placenta after delivery is fatal.” Pg31 Ch1 Inner Peace

When I gave birth to my children I had pain as all mothers do, but it was erased when I was holding those beautiful babies. What I didn’t realize the first time around was that the nurse would return to inflict further pain by pressing on my stomach. I was asking her why she was doing that. What was wrong with this woman? Didn’t she see what I’d just been through? Yes, she’d seen it, but she knew something that I didn’t. It was her job to make sure that the placenta was totally out of my womb. If she hadn’t done her job I may have gotten sick and/or died. You see, the placenta is the connection between mother and child and is literally life sustaining as long as the child is in the womb, but as soon as the child is birthed and the cord is cut, it no longer serves a purpose. It immediately goes from life sustaining to life threatening in the blink of an eye. What I got from this quote is that no matter how vital something is at a point in your life, once its purpose has been fulfilled it immediately turns life threatening.

One of the tools used to break the bonds of ibi is humility. From an Ifa perspective humility is the ability to consider another point of view and to make no assumptions about that point of view until it can be tested through experience.” pg37 Ch1 Inner Peace

Humility is most times a difficult lesson in most cultures and on most paths. You will see lessons on humility in every religion around the world because in many ways it seems to repeatedly oppose our nature to, in our weakness, lean to dogma when deeper or more difficult paths/messages/lessons escape us. I appreciate the psychology in this quote because it makes it much easier to understand. If I could take a judgment that I have about someone or something and place it in the middle of the floor, I could walk around it and see all the different sides of it. This method is the ideal. Most times, however, we choose to see things only through our one sided reality and our previous experiences not realizing how limited our scope of reality truly is. There so many experiences that makes up a person that it is impossible, not to mention damaging, to the person being judged and the person doing the judging to see things from only one view point. There is not enough room for dogma and humility to travel the same road together.

“Ifa culture trains the younger generation in s’otito (state only the facts) through the use of a strict taboo against gossip.” pg 39 Ch1 Inner Peace

The other day my egun reminded me that the book of James in the Bible basically states that if you can tame your tongue you will have control of your whole body. This is so very true. The above quote speaks of just stating the facts and if most are honest this can be very hard to do. From childhood we learn to “embellish” (lie) whether it be for entertainment or to save ourselves from punishment. When we stick to just the facts there can be an element of fear involved because it will adversely affect both us and the people around us in the beginning. You will quickly find out who loves you and who doesn’t when you start to state only the facts. It may be hard but it is good medicine.

As far as the gossip in and of itself, don’t say anything that you can’t say twice or that you wouldn’t say if the person were standing right in front of you. Also, don’t do like some church folk do and talk about somebody and claim that you are only bringing it up so that y’all can “pray about the situation”.