Road To Enlightenment
Eshu is the orisha that is honored and revered in Yoruba, Santeria, and Candomblé religions. He is the protector of travelers. He is the deity that presides over crossroads. He has power over fortune and misfortune and is the personification of death. He is also known as the deity of chaos and trickery. He is the orisha of tough love, and teaches hard lessons that people can learn from. Lastly, he is the messenger.
However, Eshu is much more than that. His holy number is three, which can represent the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit in the Christian fate. The number three also represents the law of creation. There is the positive polarity of energy, the negative polarity, and the combination of the two creates the universal force known as ashé in Yoruba.
The crossroads has four elements, which can represent the different aspects of the human mind. It is divided into four parts, the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, the super conscious mind, and divine intelligence. The conscious mind contains all of your waking thoughts, ideas, and cognitive abilities and is best known as your reality. The subconscious mind consists of buried thoughts, beliefs, and concepts. Your worse fears are hidden here. Many people are unaware of all the pain, anger, and fear that are tucked away in the dark recesses of the subconscious mind. The super consciousness is a part of your mind that is connected to divine intelligence or in modern terms, the Universe.
If you have ever heard of the term collective consciousness, you will understand how the super consciousness aspect of the mind works. It is a plane of existence that allows you to connect with a congenial force that binds and creates virtually all aspects of the physical world. In other words, it is the world of the invisible. The last aspect of the human mind is divine intelligence. From this stage, a person is able to tap into a vast pool of knowledge. Many spiritual healers tap into divine intelligence realm for guidance.
A popular story of Eshu is of him walking down the street. The people on the left side think that his hat is red. The people on the right think that his hat is black. A battle ensues. Eshu takes off his hat and shows them that it is black on one side, and red on another. In this lesson, Eshu talks about the constant conflict that exists between the subconscious and conscious mind. In this case, one side is completely oblivious of the other. In life, people are unaware that many of their desires and much of their decisions are made based on thoughts and emotions that come from the subconscious part of the mind.
Negative thoughts, both in the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind can affect decision making. When this happens,hand dryer, conflict arises, bringing misfortune and in some extreme cases, death. People need to resolve the conflict between these two spheres, before they can effectively explore the other aspects of the human mind. Eshu is the messenger who guides us to enlightenment. He works as a mediator between the lower and higher worlds, teaching us lessons, so we can evolve to be whole spiritual beings.