Antares' Jedi Meditation Journal 101

What can be gleaned about Jedi training or meditation from "A Weapon of a Jedi", by Jason Fry?

Reading Star Wars novels sure brings back my childhood. While drifting asleep reading I almost thought I was back in my parent's house. Amazing how easily the mind can transport you to another time and place from a familiar object. This book opens up immediately with discussing about sensing the force. This is an innate ability that everyone has, one chooses whether to ignore it or build on it. As a child I always knew what was true even if everyone around me thought it was my imagination at the time. I knew that it was real when I knew about catastrophic or deeply emotional events before they happened. It was like that emotional intensity left a permanent imprint on the collective consciousness of man. Around nine years old I started getting my friends to exercise this by having them think of a color and then I would tell them. We would then switch roles. Their minds were open when they were young before the world told them to only trust in the five senses and only the material world. I sincerely wished I had friends close enough to me geographically to do this fun practice. As I became an adult and started moving in ceremonial magic circles I found out that this was a common practice. We used to go off in groups of two and take turns imagining something in our mind while the other person saw it. While doing this with more skilled people you can send pretty intricate pictures and ideas to each other. It’s wonderful when you get close enough to someone that you can sleep next to each other while sharing each other's lucid dreams. This helped me learn linear algebra when I was struggling with it from a physics postdoc. He did so much math that he constantly dreamed about it. As I became a mother I wanted empirical evidence so I would do this same practice with my daughter. We would go through shapes, colors, shapes and colors, and finally pictures. I made it into a game and we would play this for hours while I gathered data. After several thousand data points later I did a statistical analysis and found the mean to be 86% correct answers which cemented this in my mind. My daughter is extremely logical and analytical in her current teenage years but can still get caught up in a game of guessing the object. Now, she thinks that I am doing some kind of magic trick or there are only so many combinations. I have shown her what the probability is of selecting each color and shape. She understands probability at this age so she keeps trying to figure it out. This practice has kept her mind open to possibilities outside of her understanding. If this isn’t done at a young age I don’t know if it will ever develop. In the Star Wars prequels I laughed when the council was testing Anakin with the same practice. We all have this innate ability as children, not only Anakin or Luke. The only way we don’t have it is if we don’t practice it or deeply believe that it is not possible, setting ourselves up for failure. One of my teachers has five children at this point and trains them all in this practice. Some of his neophytes have successfully done this as adults and it is one of the things he requires for people in order to move on to harder practices.

I brought this up because it was a way that I could understand the force as a child. Sensing the force is so much more than syncing up with one human being. As I grew in age and practiced meditation I started to sense that we were all one. We are like a giant ball of humanity linked together by light sharing a collective consciousness. That experience is easier for me to tap into than the never ending light that I consider to be the force itself. Honestly, I have always wondered if deja vu is just our mind seeing through the eyes of others. Sometimes places feel like home even though I have never been there before. What is even stranger is that I am able to find my way around without a map. This happens when I am just flowing along letting myself explore a new area. It’s like tapping into that collective consciousness of humanity and seeing that wherever I am it is familiar to someone. Speaking of the collective, a group of ceremonial practitioners that I share knowledge with is independently exploring ideas that I have learned here in the temple. Synchronicity is another important aspect of the force for me and I always listen to it. When you are actually in alignment with the force everything and everyone in your life starts to sync up. That is my idea of being guided by the force and knowing that you are in the right place at the right time. That’s exactly what Luke is trying to do in the beginning of this book, finding his way. And I definitely experienced that deja vu feeling while reading this book. It was so profound that I kept trying to remember if I already did read it, but I am absolutely sure that I did not. I haven’t read anything from Star Wars since about 1986.

Ah yes, Obi-Wan being struck down was so heart wrenching for me as a child. Luke needed a teacher just like I needed a teacher and I wanted to learn alongside him from Obi-Wan. It took me so many journeys and an endless pursuit to find different teachers. Sometimes the teacher was the journey itself and not one particular person. An Obi-Wan would have been so easy but at least this movie lit up my imagination to keep me looking for that teacher in everyone and in everything.
One thing to note about the fighter scene is that acquiring a skill from practice is something different from the use of the force. Your mind learns to recognize the object as an extension of your body by using your five senses. Basically, like getting really good at driving, shooting or swordplay giving you the ability to treat the object like it is a part of your person. Although, you can get into a state where you are flowing with the force while doing these things. In my perception using the force is tapping into the oneness or divine emanation and knowing how to ask with emotional force, sincerity, and intent. So, I guess there are three different things here that I am trying to describe. First, your body learning to maneuver an object as an extension of yourself is done by the mind. Second, a flow state can be achieved and this is naturally moving in alignment with the force. And finally, commanding the force in some capacity is reaching out through the subconscious mind to act on the world. This requires command of the subconscious mind and knowing its language. Once tapped into the subconscious you can become a part of the whole and at that point you can make your requests. It’s extremely difficult to put these concepts into words, that’s why we communicate them in symbols, colors, smells, movements and experiences. The final point can never be conveyed in spoken words or writing. Trust me, I have endlessly tried with those closest to me.