Lukumi: A Timeless Tradition
Often, I'm asked about Lukumi. It's an ancient spiritual tradition that honors ancestors, nature, and balance. At its core, Lukumi recognizes the One Creator, a universal force that we all worship in diverse ways. The goal of a Lukumi practitioner is to strive for personal growth and spiritual enlightenment.
As a Spiritualist Minister within the interfaith Spiritual Science Fellowship of Canada, I find Lukumi's principles align seamlessly with many world religions. Both traditions emphasize the importance of individual spiritual development and respect for all beings. While Lukumi is a lifelong journey of learning, my late start in my thirties, coupled with language barriers and cultural differences, has presented unique challenges.
To provide a deeper understanding of Lukumi, I'd like to share the words of a respected Elder who has given me permission to do so.
Seven Lukumí Rules For Happy Lliving
• Get the habit of happiness.
Smile, intimately and make this feeling part of yourself. Create a happy world for yourself. Wait every day, even when some clouds obscure the sun, you always find something good.
• Declare war on negative feelings.
Do not allow unreal hardships to devour you. If some negative thought invades the spirit, fight it. Ask yourself, because you, who have every natural right to happiness, must you spend hours of the day struggling with fear, boredom, and hatred. Win the battle against these insidious scourges of the twentieth century.
• Reinforce the image of self.
See how it was in your best moments and give yourself some attention. Imagine the happy times and the pride you felt in yourself. Create pleasant future experiences. Give yourself credit for what or who you are. Stop hitting your own head.
• Learn to smile.
Sometimes adults smile or giggle between their teeth, but not everyone laughs, that is true laughter that gives the impression of relief and freedom. Laughter, when genuine, purifies, and is part of the mechanism of success, casting it to the victories of life. If you’ve stopped laughing since the age of 10 or 40, go back to the spirit school and learn again what you should never have forgotten.
• Discover the hidden treasures.
Do not let your abilities and your resources die within you; give them an opportunity to submit to the trials of life.
• Help the next of kin, your neighbors, and others.
Giving to your peers may be the most rewarding experience of your life. Do not be cynical; understand that many people who appear unpleasant or hostile are wearing a facade that they think is able to protect them against others. If you give to your neighbor, you will be amazed at the grateful response, for the recognition they will have. People who look tough are actually gentle and vulnerable. You will feel satisfied when you give without thinking to yourself.
• Look for activities that make you happy.
Swimming, tennis, volleyball? Paint, sing, sew? I cannot tell you. You have to choose yourself. But life is happy if you do what pleases you.
There is a tendency in man to reduce the new phenomena with which he confronts preexisting ideas and definitions in his mind from previously known facts. This reduction hinders a correct view and interpretation of what is analyzed. Thus, the cultural facts of the blacks of the Yoruba–Benin in their ceremonies and rites become, in this distorting view, a primitive religion.
Lukumí is not primitive, let alone a religion. First of all, this set of precepts, rules, rites, and practices forms a weltanschauung (world view, global conception of apprehension of reality) and a technique that allows the confrontation with nature and with their fellows, using the energy of their own mind (the Orí).
The above Seven Lukumi Rules For Happy Living I feel is a wonderful guide for anyone who wishes to live a happy life of high vibration. I am happy to have permission to share this with you today.
