One of the things I value most about my belief system is that it does not require me to close my mind to the rest of humanity.
There is no locked philosophy that forces every person, every experience, and every question into one predetermined explanation. There is respect for all religions, an appreciation for the complexity of human life, and an understanding that spiritual wisdom can speak to someone who does not share the tradition through which that wisdom was received.
My spiritual foundation does not require another person to abandon theirs before we can understand one another.
A person can be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, agnostic, or uncertain about what they believe. When that person is struggling, their religious identity does not determine whether I can offer compassion. Nor does it determine whether something I have learned through my own spiritual path might help them.
The question I want to ask is simple: What can my spiritual understanding contribute to this person’s life?
That approach grows from something fundamental to my relationship with the Diloggún: spirituality, humanity, and the life path are deeply connected. The teachings engage with life—our relationships, character, decisions, difficulties, responsibilities, and opportunities to grow.
They give us a way to understand the experiences through which we become who we are.
Religion may provide the language through which we understand spirituality, but humanity provides the experiences through which we come to recognize its wisdom.
The Diloggún and the Knowledge of Life
My spiritual foundation is rooted in the Lukumí tradition, commonly known as Santería, which has Yoruba roots in West Africa and developed through the lives and religious practices of communities in Cuba. The Diloggún holds a central place within that tradition’s understanding of spiritual guidance. (surface.syr.edu)
The Diloggún is a sacred cowrie-shell oracle through which practitioners seek guidance from the Orisha. Its Odù organize a body of spiritual knowledge associated with meanings, proverbs, obligations, and religious counsel. Within the faith, the shells are understood as a means through which the Orisha communicate. (simonandschuster.com)
For me, that sacred relationship is inseparable from the attention the teachings give to life itself. Spiritual guidance matters because there is a person living through circumstances that need to be understood.
The tradition’s patakís—sacred narratives associated with the Odù—preserve teachings through stories of the Orisha, human lives, and the unfolding of existence. These narratives belong to an oral body of knowledge carried within the religious tradition. Ócha’ni Lele’s Teachings of the Santería Gods presents this relationship between the stories, the Odù, and their spiritual meaning. (simonandschuster.com)
What draws me to this way of teaching is that a story invites us to examine what happened. There are relationships to consider, choices to understand, consequences to recognize, and lessons that may become relevant to our own circumstances.
A statement about humility is one thing. Recognizing the moment when our pride prevents us from accepting useful guidance is another.
We may understand generosity as an admirable quality. But life asks more difficult questions: Are we giving with sincerity? Are we giving to control someone? Are we neglecting our responsibilities while trying to appear generous? Are we willing to receive help as well as offer it?
Those are questions about being human. They cannot be answered adequately by checking whether someone belongs to the correct religious group.
The sacred narratives also extend beyond human relationships into the natural world. In Diloggún Tales of the Natural World, Ócha’ni Lele gathers stories connecting spiritual meaning with the moon, the sky, animals, and other features of existence. Nature is part of the tradition’s account of how life is understood. (simonandschuster.com)
I value that breadth. Spirituality does not have to be confined to the moments when we enter a religious setting. It can inform how we understand the world we inhabit and our responsibility within it.
Understanding Life Rather Than Forcing It to Conform
When I say that this wisdom is derived from life, I am speaking about its engagement with existence as we actually experience it.
We form relationships. We make promises. We become afraid. We pursue opportunities. We misunderstand people. We experience loss. We discover that a decision we once defended has consequences we can no longer ignore.
Spiritual understanding should help us examine those experiences honestly.
Consider a person who repeatedly damages relationships because they cannot acknowledge when they are wrong. Simply telling that person to be humble may accomplish very little. The more useful conversation concerns what happens when they feel challenged, why admitting an error feels threatening, and what their refusal to listen is costing them.
The lesson becomes meaningful when they can recognize it in their own conduct.
Or consider someone who is generous to everyone except themselves. Their next step may not be to give more. It may be to understand why they believe their own needs deserve less consideration.
The language of the advice must fit the life of the person receiving it.
This is what I value in a spiritual philosophy that remains attentive to circumstances. It asks us to look closely before we conclude. It leaves room for the possibility that the familiar answer is not the appropriate answer for this individual.
My objection is to a way of thinking that begins with a fixed conclusion and then requires the person’s life to support it.
When someone is suffering, I do not want to make their experience into evidence that my religion is superior. I want to understand what they are facing and what might help them move forward.
A belief should deepen our ability to understand a person, not become a reason to stop listening to them.
The Life Path Is Personal
The attention given to the individual is also present in scholarship on Diloggún consultation. In his participant-observer research, Alexander Valentin Gonzalez describes a structured practice that considers the practitioner’s particular spiritual circumstances and offers guidance concerning their individual requirements for well-being. His account includes spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial dimensions of life. (surface.syr.edu)
For me, this reinforces an essential principle: a person’s life deserves to be understood on its own terms.
Two people may describe what sounds like the same problem while needing very different guidance. One person may need the courage to act. Another may need the patience to stop acting impulsively. One may need to speak honestly. Another may need to listen before speaking again.
Advice becomes careless when we ignore those circumstances.
I understand the life path as something we must participate in. Belief in destiny does not remove the importance of judgment, character, effort, or responsibility. It makes the question of how we live more significant.
Where are we directing our attention? What are we learning? Which choices remain within our control? What do we need to understand before deciding what comes next?
These questions allow spiritual reflection to become useful in daily life.
They also allow us to help someone without pretending to know everything about them. I do not need to claim certainty about another person’s destiny to encourage them to examine their choices, recognize their value, or seek appropriate support.
Sometimes the most honest guidance begins by helping someone see their present circumstances more clearly.
Respect Does Not Require Conversion
My respect for another person’s religion does not depend on whether I expect them eventually to leave it.
That would make respect conditional. It would turn the conversation into a recruitment process, with compassion offered along the way toward a desired conversion.
I would rather meet the person where they are.
A Christian can remain Christian while considering something I have said about forgiveness. A Buddhist can remain Buddhist while discussing responsibility with me. An agnostic can question the existence of God and still participate in a meaningful conversation about purpose, character, and how to live.
None of those encounters threatens my spiritual foundation.
I do not need someone to believe in the Orisha before I can speak with them about the consequences of resentment, the importance of honesty, or the courage required to change direction.
Likewise, I do not need to share another person’s religion to listen carefully when they speak from their own experience.
Respect allows disagreement without making disagreement a reason to withhold compassion. We can acknowledge that our beliefs differ and still take one another seriously.
The openness I am describing does not require me to step away from my tradition. I can honor its sacred teachings and obligations while recognizing that another person’s path is their own.
In fact, I want my faith to make me more capable of those encounters. I want it to give me the patience to listen, the humility to learn, and the judgment to recognize when something I understand might be useful.
Spiritual wisdom does not lose its value when someone outside the tradition benefits from it.
Its usefulness is not diminished because the person receiving it chooses a different religious language.
Two Questions That Brought This Into Focus
Recently, two questions I encountered brought this philosophy into focus.
One person was struggling with guilt over having participated in the killing of animals years earlier. They regretted what had happened and feared that its spiritual consequences might follow them for the rest of their life.
Another person was searching for belonging. They had explored different religious ideas but remained uncertain about what they believed and where to begin.
Their questions were different, but both deserved to be approached with care.
For the person burdened by guilt, I wanted to offer a way to think about accountability without turning the remainder of their life into punishment. Their regret did not need to be dismissed. The lives they remembered did not need to be treated as insignificant.
But there was a question worth considering: What could their concern for those lives become now?
It could inform how they treated living creatures. It could lead to acts of care. It could become a commitment to live differently.
The perspective I wanted to offer was that honoring the past and building a meaningful future need not be opposing choices.
For the person searching for belonging, the starting point was different. I wanted them to know that uncertainty did not disqualify them from a spiritual life. They could ask questions, learn, reflect, and take their time without treating a religious label as proof of their worth.
They did not need me to choose an identity for them. They needed room to explore without pressure.
Neither conversation required a claim that my religion was the only answer. Neither required me to turn someone’s vulnerability into an opportunity to secure their agreement.
And I would not assume that a few paragraphs resolved either person’s struggle. The purpose was to offer something they might find useful: a perspective, a question, or a more compassionate way to consider their next step.
The spiritual understanding behind the words came from my path. The words themselves needed to meet the person on theirs.
Knowledge Carries a Responsibility
There is a responsibility in offering spiritual guidance.
A person who asks for help may be sharing something they have struggled to say anywhere else. I want to treat that trust carefully.
That means resisting the temptation to sound certain merely because certainty is persuasive. It means recognizing that encouragement is not a promise and that a spiritual interpretation is not permission to disregard the person’s actual circumstances.
I do not want to use fear to make someone dependent on what I have to say. Nor do I want to make their freedom to question me feel like a spiritual failure.
The aim should be to strengthen their ability to understand and navigate their life.
Sometimes that requires reassurance. Sometimes it requires a difficult question. Sometimes it requires acknowledging the limits of what can responsibly be offered in a conversation.
Compassion does not require us to approve every decision a person has made. We can care about someone while asking them to confront the effects of their behavior. We can encourage forgiveness while preserving accountability. We can respect a person’s spiritual search while refusing to pressure them toward our own conclusions.
For me, the value of knowledge is expressed through judgment: understanding what to say, why it matters, and whether it serves the person receiving it.
An impressive explanation that leaves someone more frightened, confused, or dependent is not the outcome I want.
I would rather offer one clear thought that helps them recognize a constructive next step.
A Faith That Opens the Door to Humanity
I do not measure the value of my spiritual life by how many people I persuade to adopt it.
I ask what it contributes to the way I live.
Does it make me more attentive to the person in front of me? More honest about my own conduct? More capable of offering help without demanding agreement? More willing to recognize wisdom when it comes through someone whose background differs from mine?
Those are questions I consider worth returning to.
The Diloggún is part of my sacred foundation. Its teachings help shape how I understand spirituality, humanity, and the life path. I do not have to remove that foundation to communicate with someone outside my tradition.
I have to use what I understand with care.
A person should not have to surrender their beliefs to receive kindness. They should not have to accept my account of the spiritual world before I recognize the importance of their life in this one.
That is the freedom I value in a philosophy that is not locked against the rest of humanity. It gives me a place to stand without requiring me to insist that everyone stand there with me.
Religion provides language, teachings, and ways of approaching what we hold sacred. Life gives us the relationships and experiences through which we must decide what those teachings mean in practice.
And when someone crosses our path carrying a burden, a question, or a need for understanding, we have an opportunity to put that wisdom to use.
Perhaps the greatest expression of spirituality is not how much we know about God, but how we treat the people who cross our paths.
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