Taking Inventory

Odayá!

I look around and find myself asking what happened to the world around me.

I reevaluate my life — not with regret, nor with the ache of nostalgia, but with the quiet lucidity of reflection.

I think about the choices I made, the warnings I overlooked, the directions I chose. Not to dwell, but to understand.

I am taking inventory.

An exercise of introspection that requires discipline, focus, intention, and care.

Spiritists know this is an essential practice — one that supports inner reform and self-improvement. It requires that we examine ourselves with honesty, acknowledging the missteps that might have been avoided. It is not self-judgment. It is responsibility. It is growth.

Through this, we learn. We evolve. And hopefully, we become better human beings.

Learning to listen to my intuition, to recognize those subtle moments when the Orixas whisper in my ear and urge me to pay attention, is a lifelong process — one that demands presence, humility, and patience.

I believe I am evolving — slowly, imperfectly, but sincerely. Becoming more aware. More attentive. Perhaps more aligned with something greater than myself.

Yet I still look around and feel oddly estranged from the world I inhabit.

I exist within it, yet apart from it. Present, but distanced. As though I am both participant and observer — swimming with the currents while also watching them from afar.

I have always felt deeply — more than I could explain, more than I sometimes wished. And now I sense a shift underway, a transformation in the atmosphere of things, something perceived rather than spoken, felt rather than clearly revealed.

It does not bring sorrow.

It does not bring joy.

It simply heightens awareness.

It is like looking at a high-resolution photograph — gradually perceiving details and nuances that were always there, but once unseen.

And so I return, again and again, to the practice of reflection and introspection.

I return to silence and observation.

I reflect.

I listen.

I take inventory.

Odayá.