BBC News - "Have Jedis created a new religion?"

Kitsu Tails wrote: I discovered Star Wars when I was......12? ish...I don't remember exactly when. My mother was staying up really late because my father had to work out of state. I saw her watching this new (To me) Movie and asked if I could stay up late and watch it with her. I got hooked and we watched all three, original, vhs movies. From there I hungered for more and started reading the books, listening to the audio cassette tapes and started developing my own faith out of it. At the time...I thought I was the only one clever and creative enough to make a personal religion out of fiction :blush: :silly: :blush: My mother would take me with her to new age group meetings where they practiced yoga, aura sensing, taffy energy, sweat lodges....ect ect... which only helped to solidify my personal faith as a Jedi.

One day, my father told me that he had found a article on the internet that said the government had figured out how to make a real lightsaber. I, of course, did not believe him. So i got on the internet (For the first time) and started looking for this proof. In the search...I found - jediism.org. a site that is now very very dead and gone. The rest is just history and here I am My foundation was star wars, and I still learn and take a great deal out of the fiction. I also take from other fictions such as Everquest, Kushiel and TA Barron Merlin series. (Among Others) But I also take from real texts. I take what I approve of and feel close to my heart...and I dump out the rest. But Star Wars will always be my foundation. I just evolve as I grow

i want to say thank you for posting this because it helps.me to understand something about the jedi community which is obvious now that i kind of get it but which was a mystery to me until i read this post.

my experience was that i have always been fascinated my the esoteric and warrior systems of different cultures and so when i saw the star warz films my perceptiowas that they offered a modern interpretation of what humans have been doing probably since the proverbial "dawn of civilization"

but that obviously is not the only context which jas brought people to the jedi path

i understand now that for many it was the same path but a reverse order; that for quite a many people it was star wars which first introduced the ideas of esoteric mystic and warrior philosophy

im sure that seems very short sighted of me to some, but in the process of becoming familiar with the online community i often have wondered "why so absorbed in and attached to the fiction?"

now i have a better perspective of how meaningful the fiction has been for many people and so i can relate better (i hope!) to those whos historical experience is different from mine

thank you

BVLSingler wrote:
1. Do changes in the Star Wars Universe affect your conception of
Jediism?

e.g.: the introduction of the midi-chlorians in the prequels.

2. Do you have a response to the corporate buyout of the Star Wars
Universe by Disney?

3. And the subsequent shrinking of the canon universe by Disney in
preparation for the new films?

4. What relationship is there going to be between Jediism going forward
and the newer corporate entity of the Star Wars Universe?

5. Has the release of the Star Wars MMO, or the future release of the
new films, had any effect on your conception of Jediism?

6. Do you have a different response to these changes as a fan, and as a
Jedi?

7. What do you see as the future of Jediism?

8. Is there any one within Jediism you think I should speak to about
these topics?

Thank you!

Beth

1) no
i see the fiction as being a form of entertainment based on the interpretation of real life - real people, commitments, personal development and lifestyle paths, rather than as an entertaining depiction of what humans could or should aspire to become if they choose

the reality of the jedi existed before the films
the films were based on the reality
so if the films or the books dont get it right it is because the writers didnt understand the source material.

imo the midichlorian idea got the reality backwards if anything

imo we are naturally attuned to the force and to our own inherent dignity and power but for some reason the vast majority of our species is living in a spiritual disconnect which is not our natural state

if anything the "midichlorians" are a parasite which seperates us from the force

which could be developed into clever and modern way of speaking about whatever it is that keeps us locked into fear and selfishness

2) please do not sue me when i open my jedi training academy

infact, invest in me - then we can both win because what i intend to do is going to help and benefit people in a tremendous way and we all benefit from this

and the product placement value of that i believe is pretty obvious

3) huh?
lol
i didnt know

4) thats up to disney
what i hope they appreciate is that they have "bought" something which is much more than just intellectual property

in fact, to treat it simmply as if it were their financial property will likely alienate a whole subculture which is economically active, supportive of their investment, and growing.
i sincerely hope they have the sensitivity and maturity to appreciate this

5) no

6) no

7) great question; in a thousand years real world jedi will be as established and respected an institution as is seen in the films and will play essentially the same roles as mediators and representatives-by-example of peace, dignity, cooperation, reverence for life, and personal excellence

i think others are much better qualified to answer that than myself, excelt its appropriate for me to say that there is more than one online mini-community and that the overall communityis made up of each of them, so you ought to get in touch with them all


youre welcome!
thank you for your work!

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Kitsu Tails wrote: I discovered Star Wars when I was......12? ish...I don't remember exactly when. My mother was staying up really late because my father had to work out of state. I saw her watching this new (To me) Movie and asked if I could stay up late and watch it with her. I got hooked and we watched all three, original, vhs movies. From there I hungered for more and started reading the books, listening to the audio cassette tapes and started developing my own faith out of it. At the time...I thought I was the only one clever and creative enough to make a personal religion out of fiction :blush: :silly: :blush: My mother would take me with her to new age group meetings where they practiced yoga, aura sensing, taffy energy, sweat lodges....ect ect... which only helped to solidify my personal faith as a Jedi.

One day, my father told me that he had found a article on the internet that said the government had figured out how to make a real lightsaber. I, of course, did not believe him. So i got on the internet (For the first time) and started looking for this proof. In the search...I found - jediism.org. a site that is now very very dead and gone. The rest is just history and here I am My foundation was star wars, and I still learn and take a great deal out of the fiction. I also take from other fictions such as Everquest, Kushiel and TA Barron Merlin series. (Among Others) But I also take from real texts. I take what I approve of and feel close to my heart...and I dump out the rest. But Star Wars will always be my foundation. I just evolve as I grow

i want to say thank you for posting this because it helps.me to understand something about the jedi community which is obvious now that i kind of get it but which was a mystery to me until i read this post.

my experience was that i have always been fascinated my the esoteric and warrior systems of different cultures and so when i saw the star warz films my perceptiowas that they offered a modern interpretation of what humans have been doing probably since the proverbial "dawn of civilization"

but that obviously is not the only context which jas brought people to the jedi path

Not the only no, but not an uncommon one. The Jedi in that context was always my fascination with the movies when I was younger. And still a large part of my continued development within it.

Brenna wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Kitsu Tails wrote: I discovered Star Wars when I was......12? ish...I don't remember exactly when. My mother was staying up really late because my father had to work out of state. I saw her watching this new (To me) Movie and asked if I could stay up late and watch it with her. I got hooked and we watched all three, original, vhs movies. From there I hungered for more and started reading the books, listening to the audio cassette tapes and started developing my own faith out of it. At the time...I thought I was the only one clever and creative enough to make a personal religion out of fiction :blush: :silly: :blush: My mother would take me with her to new age group meetings where they practiced yoga, aura sensing, taffy energy, sweat lodges....ect ect... which only helped to solidify my personal faith as a Jedi.

One day, my father told me that he had found a article on the internet that said the government had figured out how to make a real lightsaber. I, of course, did not believe him. So i got on the internet (For the first time) and started looking for this proof. In the search...I found - jediism.org. a site that is now very very dead and gone. The rest is just history and here I am My foundation was star wars, and I still learn and take a great deal out of the fiction. I also take from other fictions such as Everquest, Kushiel and TA Barron Merlin series. (Among Others) But I also take from real texts. I take what I approve of and feel close to my heart...and I dump out the rest. But Star Wars will always be my foundation. I just evolve as I grow

i want to say thank you for posting this because it helps.me to understand something about the jedi community which is obvious now that i kind of get it but which was a mystery to me until i read this post.

my experience was that i have always been fascinated my the esoteric and warrior systems of different cultures and so when i saw the star warz films my perceptiowas that they offered a modern interpretation of what humans have been doing probably since the proverbial "dawn of civilization"

but that obviously is not the only context which jas brought people to the jedi path

Not the only no, but not an uncommon one. The Jedi in that context was always my fascination with the movies when I was younger. And still a large part of my continued development within it.

Well, to add a little bit more context to that.

I grew up LDS (Mormon) My home state was Utah, so everyone around me...family...friends....they were all Mormons. I got Mormonism shoved down my throat night and day until about first grade. My parents had a....Awakening? Because of this we had to go into hiding (sort of) due to the judgment of our surrounding community. Not a mormon? Leh Gasp!!! I would get shamed by my uncles and grandmothers because as I grew up, I started to develop a more...new age....kind of thinking. My parents started telling me that what I believe....is for me to discover on my own. Not to be shoved down my throat like it had been. I was supposed to remove the "Middle Man" and find my own faith.

When I joined Highschool.....I had no religion. And let me tell you.....when someone asks you "What is your religion?" and you respond with "Oh...I don't have one."

*Cough* Outcast!! *CoughTabooSigns*

I very quickly became the "Hallway Hermit" and had no socialization with people. I was....THAT girl....And it hurt. Why should my choice of Faith determine if I am friend worthy or not? It really hurt.

So when I did discover Star Wars, and found some of it's teachings of Star Wars to be applicable to real life...it gave me something. It Gave me faith. It gave me SOMETHING.....and because that something was so unconventional and different....it got people to listen to me and my own ideals....at first they listened with the intent to mock me more.....but the more I talked about it....the bigger my lunch table grew from just me alone....to people pulling in new chairs and squeezing for space to talk about religion. And since my highschool was a International Boarder School.....We got to talk about a very very Large varity of faiths and religious practices. They learned from me...and I learned from them. Soon Star Wars Jedi Turned into Buddha, Paga, Christian, Tibetan, Dali Lama, Dao of Poo....My Martial Arts added in Art of the warrior and Lao Zhu.....But no matter how much I learned.....I always found myself back to Jedi...Back to Jediism....Back to Star Wars....Back to my hallway reading about Luke Skywalker and his hero adventure, breading new students, new lessons, new heros......



Edit: Phew...I did not mean to get preachy/wordy there 0_0 sorry!

The diversity of religious experiences at the Temple is really interesting.

For interests sake, I was raised catholic and attended a convent for most of my schooling, but neither of my parents is catholic, and I would not say I have ever ascribed to it myself. My father I would say is probably Christian of some variety (I'm unsure)but with an eastern influence. My step father is best described as nihilist and my mother, though raised Methodist has spiritualist, new age, sometimes Buddhist leanings. Add into the mix a very wiccan great grandmother and an allowance by family to pretty much find my own way, I think its easy to see why I don't put a great deal of stock in the specifics of any religion.

One river, many wells.

But I very rarely discuss religion itself with people, only the values and philosophies of it. The particulars of someone's faith I have always felt to be deeply personal, and no one else's business.

It was my father who introduced me to Star Wars and I have vivid memories of sitting on the floor in front of the TV watching the tapes over and over. His posters of Bruce Lee and books on warrior culture within sight. I found from very early on that the expression of myself and my ideals fit rather nicely into the philosophy of the Jedi Knight.

i find this conversation pleasant and fascinating

i was born into a southern family and the earliest church i can remember attending was baptist

my grandmother and great grandmother (G.G.!) gave me a beautifully illustrated king james bible when i was very very young. i remember for a while i didnt do much with it but look at the pictures from time to time which were i think done in watercolor
and which i remember as being very rich and lustrious to look at and the people were usually depicted as strong and dignified, in what i think of as the old greek style

i learned to read pretty early and eventually i came to understant that "thy thou thee" and "thine" were all basically saying "you" and "yours" and that "lt "eth "st" were suffixes (i didnt know the word suffix at the time) which you could pretty much ignore; shalt - shouldst - turneth ect

next i became aware that the red words were jesus and he was kind of thehead honcho of this whole production

well i was off to the races!
i didnt even appreciate this until i came to the jedi community and started doing some of the work but the bible helped me learn to read

also as i got more and more familiar with the red parts i saw more and more that granda wasnt jesus lol

i love my grandmother and i miss her and she was a wonderful woman but she was not jesus

im lauging as i say this because me and my sister were probably the most well behaved of the children in the family so it wasnt as common an experience for me as fod some of my cousins but when grandma said "turn the other cheek" she usually said it with a switch in her hand and forgiveness wasnt really what she had in mind

that part would come later

and as i grew older it was more and more clear that the christianity i was seeing was not in accord with what i understood from reading what jesus said and did

my heroes as a small child were chuck norris and hulk hogan and sherlock holmes - my chosen proffessions were "detective" and "ninja"

at about age 12 i was introduced to the works of carlos castaneda

from the very first book he talks about the path of knowledge and the way of the warrior

well thats exactly what im doing here! what else is a ninja detective but a warrior on the path of knowledge?

the most recent evolution of my understading has happened as a direct result of my interaction with the jedi community

for myself i really dont need much
i never advanced much in society either socially or economically because i always saw the shallow and unfulfilling elements of the pursuit for material possessions and social influence

as a result i frankly nearly got myself killed, but more to the point i wasted a ridiculous amount of life time on a whole different kind of shallow and unfulfilling pursuit, with the results that now im 34 yrs old and i have almost nothing to show for myself but some wounds and scars and a collection of compelling, but ultimately tragic memories

the reason for this (i now understand) is because up to this point i have always looked at my aspirations from within a perspective of nyself as the hero and the star

in my imagination even the service i provided was ultimately about me being awesome rather than about service being provided to those who needed it

simply being awesome in proportion to others more or less awesome than myself was still the heart of my worldview and i had developed enough to understand that this is not a worthy world view for a jedi but i had not developed enough to understand how to break out of it

basically my circumstances led me to making the choice to just walk away from my whole life - i got on a bus in texas and got off another bus in florida with nothing but what i had in a backpack

this experience resulted in a huge spurt of internal growth in relation to where i was internally before

that was when i decided i was ready to become public about being a jedi

so i went online to see what the climate was and i found totj and ijrs and in exploring what the existing community has done i realized that what i was missing - the piece that hadnt fully clicked - was the sense that the whole reason for pursuing excellence and social influence and economic power is to be of service!

these things are challenges which help us develop our resilience and resourcefulness as individuals and from there they become opportunities to affect the world in positive ways

service - genuine commited to the betterment of others service, it the fulcrum on which the drive for excellence swings

i didnt understand that until i got here

and with that realization, the game is afoot!
as an old hero of mine used to say

Hi Beth, in reply to your post .

Some of my answers will reiterate this earlier post , so I'll keep my answers short n sweet.

1. Do changes in the Star Wars Universe affect your conception of
Jediism?
e.g.: the introduction of the midi-chlorians in the prequels.
Nope, only elements which match my experiential approach to syncretism have relevance, so any nonsensical elements like midichlorians I just ignore as irrelevant 'fiction' (or really abstract references to something more useful).

2. Do you have a response to the corporate buyout of the Star Wars
Universe by Disney?
Not really, just hope they use it responsibly towards its established 'spirit' as epitomized by the original trilogy.

3. And the subsequent shrinking of the canon universe by Disney in
preparation for the new films?
Nope

4. What relationship is there going to be between Jediism going forward
and the newer corporate entity of the Star Wars Universe?
See answer 1.

5. Has the release of the Star Wars MMO, or the future release of the
new films, had any effect on your conception of Jediism?
See answer 1.

6. Do you have a different response to these changes as a fan, and as a
Jedi?
The two concepts 'are' related but they do not have to be. It would be more interesting if the fiction turned out to support or align my own concepts of Jediism, but I'm unlikely to change aspects of my Jedi path as a result of something simply being in the franchise.

7. What do you see as the future of Jediism?
Seeking out and using breakthroughs in psychology, medicine and philosophy to leverage spirituality into a more effective way of thinking and living as individuals, community, biosphere and universe.

8. Is there any one within Jediism you think I should speak to about
these topics?
As many as possible :ohmy: :lol:

1. Do changes in the Star Wars Universe affect your conception of
Jediism?

-Nope. My personal variety of Jediism leans heavily on the Monomyth describing the Hero's Journey. The Star Wars mythology just happens to be a very good example of the Monomyth. If you follow the Hero's Journey of Anakin Skywalker or Luke Skywalker you will see they are very similar to many other mythologies that have informed religious faiths through history. The only real connection to the fiction I choose to make is that I also use the word "Force".

2. Do you have a response to the corporate buyout of the Star Wars
Universe by Disney?

-I'll probably enjoy the new Star Wars Land inside Disneyland Beyond that, Disney has also employed the Monomyth as a road map for many of it's most famous films (see Little Mermaid, Lion King and Maleficent as good examples), so I imagine they will do the Star Wars mythology the justice it deserves.

3. And the subsequent shrinking of the canon universe by Disney in
preparation for the new films?

-I haven't experienced any of the Star Wars fiction outside of the movies

4. What relationship is there going to be between Jediism going forward
and the newer corporate entity of the Star Wars Universe?

-I imagine the huge attention the new movies will garner will result in a lot of curiosity about Jediism. We'll likely see a lot of new visitors. Whether those people choose to seriously consider Jediism once they learn that we're not about light saber fights is another question.

5. Has the release of the Star Wars MMO, or the future release of the
new films, had any effect on your conception of Jediism?

-No. Jediism is a name I use to describe my spiritual path, and it is a highly personal one. The fiction has little impact on that path except that its writer was influenced by many of the same mythologies that I am.

6. Do you have a different response to these changes as a fan, and as a
Jedi?

-As a fan, I'm excited to see movies from my childhood brought into a new age of film making. As a Jedi, I simply hope that Disney continues the tradition practiced by George Lucas of using storytelling as a way to expose people to new and different ideas and philosophies.

7. What do you see as the future of Jediism?

-Jediism will be a part of my future. I certainly hope it will be for others as well. Whether it continues to grow in followers or fades into obscurity, I will continue to see value in being a member of this community. While I don't evangelize Jediism, I wouldn't mind seeing a few more Jedi around and I think it would be good for this world.

8. Is there any one within Jediism you think I should speak to about
these topics?

-Every Jedi walks their own path. We all have a story. I like to hear as many of them as possible

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about Jediism and allowing us to share our thoughts and opinions with you. It has become a great topic here in our Temple and we're learning some new things about each other in the process.