Force Powers

Maybe it's just me but I find it really odd that once can believe in a force that creates everything and we are part of it even in the afterlife but for some reason doubts any sort of manipulation of said force, be it through telekinesis, magic, rituals, ect.

I think it's very possible. Certain spiritual texts mention said powers, although I think some may have happened while others may have been exaggerated, it's hard to tell. I am sure there are people that know this power. It's hard to tell as some are faking it while the real ones hide much like how there are fake psychics, but there are also real psychics too and when one sees a fake, they assume that everyone who claims such powers are frauds.

At the moment my opposable thumbs give me an advantage over my dog - not a huge one, I'll grant, as he is quite clever and can do with his face many things I need hands to do.

My dog, I suspect, has a far better understanding of the Force, as it is sold, than I do - he is gentle and caring whenever myself, or other dogs are injured and need attention, he is patient and still when there is no necessary actions to take, he is efficient and ruthless when there is action to take (you might not see the collection of unguarded eggs as necessary action, but that's a philosophical discussion you can have with him if you like) with a couple exceptions of things that cause him a bit of anxiety, I would say he lets the force act through him nearly the entirety of the time.

The idea that that there is a way to manipulate the fabric of reality if you simply have the right mindset is somewhat terrifying if you consider that my dog is probably a lot closer to achieving that mindset than any human I know....

Yabuturtle wrote: Maybe it's just me but I find it really odd that once can believe in a force that creates everything and we are part of it even in the afterlife but for some reason doubts any sort of manipulation of said force, be it through telekinesis, magic, rituals, ect.

That's fair. So who would you say, after reading through recent threads on the matter, is in that sort of odd position? Also, don't you think that there is a multitude of ways to interpret phrases like "We are part of the Force", "The Force creates everything", and "We are part of the Force even upon/after death", and far from all are literal enough to entail any kind of statement about how much access we have to magical powers? I can appreciate that the position sounds like an odd one to hold, but I neither see it much advocated, nor defended, nor do I for one find it technically contradictory, even if it were.

Certain spiritual texts mention said powers, although I think some may have happened while others may have been exaggerated, it's hard to tell.

At best that's what it is, yeah. And it is very hard to tell indeed. Heck, it's even hard to tell what is and what is not a spiritual text as opposed to just regular contemporary poetry, let alone how accurate any of them are. So what we can do is arbitrarily pick and choose which ones we think are real based on what ever sounds vaguely good or intuitive to us, or we can call them all "true from a certain point of view", or reject them all for presenting an undesirable world... Or we can abstain from judging them one way or another until such time as evidence is presented to guide our preliminary verdict. So far, evidence in favour of any of them with regards to claims of this sort is sorely lacking, despite defendable expectations that it shouldn't be in a world where the claims correspond to a real state of affairs (see my Absence of Evidence thread). This of course doesn't mean that the claims are false, but I maintain that the situation does not justify even being on the fence on this issue, above and beyond a strict technicality that renders the fence wider than the fields either side.

I am sure there are people that know this power. It's hard to tell as some are faking it while the real ones hide much like how there are fake psychics, but there are also real psychics too and when one sees a fake, they assume that everyone who claims such powers are frauds.

An assumption, perhaps, but based on past experience - the only actual basis we have to assess nature by at all. If out of a million claimants something like a few thousands submit to testing and if out of those tests about three or so yield inconclusive data whilst the rest unambiguously falsify the respective claim, you start to suspect that the million-and-first claimant might possibly not be the one true psychic in the end. It's not air-tight by any means, but it's not unreasonable or unfair either. Regardless, the million-and-first is definitely not entiteld to any softer treatment than his million predecessors and it is on them to demonstrate their claims hold up at all, not on the sceptic to try and imagine a world where they just might not be as bogus as the rest, and then proceed not to question that that imagined world is in fact the actual one.

Take a view of yourself.. If you find your actions lacking in compassion. How much moreso would they if you had the kind of power you seek?.. if the Jedi were to teach astral powers, their first responsibility would be to make sure you had the character development in order to use them responsibly. For your sake and others..

There are ways to gain some knowledge in this subject from outside the Temple. My question is WHY do you seek to increase this power in yourself?

OB1Shinobi wrote: Christians today dont usually realize the politics behind the development and spread of Christianity and I agree with most of the specific points you raise. I think it would be inaccurate to lump everyone in the early Church as being driven by thirst for power, however. I dont know if thats what you intend to say but it appears that way from the wording. But yeah, the whole Constantine just suddenly converting and then having to "save" the rest of the world was....something to look closely at, lol

I'm not saying "Everyone". When I talk about the institution its kind of like the Executive branch of the US government. We're seeing right now in real time, career officials suddenly realizing that they were a hindrance to the actual foreign policy for Ukraine. At first they were upset and thought others were acting outside the "regular channel" only to realize later that the officially assigned people were the actual, in effect, irregular channel to what the president wanted to accomplish. But his will drives the institution. So even senators like Lindsey Graham who wanted to impeach Clinton on the mere fact that his actions had brought some degree of shame to the seat of American power, now... he's announcing an investigation into Biden, all of a sudden, heading into an election year, because what's it about? Power. And so even one person can have a corrupting affect on others while bringing others, who are innocent, along for the ride.

In terms of early Christianity, I think the same thing happened. Not long before Constantine, Christians were being fed to lions. But they were also making them martyrs and Christianity was actually feeding on that. Christians hate being persecuted but they love persecution because its one of the best recruitment tools. And it is exactly why Islamic extremists continue to recruit because they can keep pointing to how the west is blowing up building from afar, killing children.

Each side demonizes the other until they're both justified in completely destroying the other. But the power to use that justification is not a religious power. It's a political power. The religion can recruit, but its normally the state that supplies the soldiers and resources. So when you combine the religion with the state then you're basically equipping all these religious ideologies to have very real world consequences and its usually a disaster. And whenever they get that power they use it because they believe God wants them to. But who is it that ends up using it? It's always someone who people think has a close relationship with God. Which then makes religious leaders into targets. But then because they're religious targets, now you're "oppressing" their religion and defying God at the same time.

I think Constantine was feeling the consequences of being on the wrong side, stuck his finger to the wind, and changed before the idea completely took control and overthrew him. And then he simply used that control to help dictate its direction and usage. Although he saw it as an enemy he simply negated the flow by joining it; being part of the wave, rather than having it crash down on his head.

So again I think Jesus's "force powers" were kind of like an allegory, unintended, of his ability to shape and influence people. He was very powerful in that way. So a writer may see that he had hundreds following him and turned it into thousands. (Reminds me of Trump bragging about his crowd sizes, in effect, mythologizing HIMSELF! LOL what a narcissist.) and then, he was able to feed them with 5 loaves and 2 fish, which to me, almost parallels the temptation in the wilderness when Jesus says "man shall not live by bread alone but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God" and writers made him into the "Living word".

I say writers because I don't believe he wrote his own story but rather writers, inspired by God to a certain degree but ALSO inspired by the needs and desires of the people who were under Roman captivity lets not forget... and the writers created figure that would inspire them and give them hope even though the central character was executed for being a pretender to the throne. But for the people who followed him... he became king (which is what the Messiah was). The NT was about his power vs the Mosaic powers which were preventing them from fighting against Rome. And once that failed then you had the zealots and what they tried to do which also failed and pretty much led to the ruin of Israel. But since the "Gospels" are removed from this political/historical context, its not seen as a failure but a success but the enemy isn't Rome, its now sin and Rome is just an allegory for the forces of darkness that want to keep you away from God's heavenly kingdom rather than Jesus's earthly kingdom that he was promising his disciples they would build together.

Yabuturtle wrote: Maybe it's just me but I find it really odd that once can believe in a force that creates everything and we are part of it even in the afterlife but for some reason doubts any sort of manipulation of said force, be it through telekinesis, magic, rituals, ect.

I think it's very possible. Certain spiritual texts mention said powers, although I think some may have happened while others may have been exaggerated, it's hard to tell. I am sure there are people that know this power. It's hard to tell as some are faking it while the real ones hide much like how there are fake psychics, but there are also real psychics too and when one sees a fake, they assume that everyone who claims such powers are frauds.

Why assume the Force is magic???

I think we are conditioned.

One of my biggest issues with the bible is that it invents magic and NEVER tells you where it comes from or why it exists.

Why? Because they didn't care. They weren't concerned because it wasn't a thing for them to use but rather they were using the IDEA of its existence in order to manipulate people who believed in magic, to also believe in them.

In other words, you're working in a field and here comes Moses and he does a magic trick. You've never seen it before so when you describe it to someone else it sounds crazy and exaggerated. That person tells someone else and they didn't see it, they only heard about it, and they might keep the original exaggerated story or exaggerate it even further. Meanwhile, the benefit to Moses is that people believe that God is the one telling him what they should do so when he tells them to "borrow" gold from the Egyptians they do it. When tells them to fight they do it. When tells them to commit genocide on themselves they do it. The magic wasn't the magic tricks he did. The magic was getting people to believe his magic was real.

Point is, a lot of people want to believe in magic. However, science helps us to explain the things we don't understand. Things people thought were magical are now explained by science. There was no "pillar of fire by night and cloud by day". It was a volcano. So some people see magic where other people see science. The star wars movies use the same ideas popularized by human history and this narrative of religion and magic is part of that history. However, that doesn't mean it was/is true and correct.

At this point I hope we embrace science as the thing we "know" and magic, for those who still need the idea of it, as a thing they "believe". And if it's that I'm not really here to disabuse anyone of their beliefs but I don't want to simply confuse what the Force is and treat it like a magical deity. There was no God that told us about magic. Magic was something we invented, based on assumptions of how the universe worked and what we did and didn't know about it. I think we know enough now to put aside those former beliefs and seek a more scientific understanding of all the forces in nature and the Force, as a general unifying construct.

ZealotX wrote: I think Constantine was feeling the consequences of being on the wrong side, stuck his finger to the wind, and changed before the idea completely took control and overthrew him. And then he simply used that control to help dictate its direction and usage. Although he saw it as an enemy he simply negated the flow by joining it; being part of the wave, rather than having it crash down on his head.

Thats my take on it, as well.

I say writers because I don't believe he wrote his own story

The gospels werent even written by Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, lol. Fun fact: The followers and disciples of Jesus during his ministry didnt think they needed to write anything down because Jesus told them he would return for them in their lifetimes. And within every generation of Christians since that time has taken up the mantra of “any minute, now....” leaving us with what is probably the longest cricket chirp in history.

https://www.postost.net/2018/03/did-jesus-promise-return-within-lifetime-his-disciples

OB1Shinobi wrote:

ZealotX wrote: I think Constantine was feeling the consequences of being on the wrong side, stuck his finger to the wind, and changed before the idea completely took control and overthrew him. And then he simply used that control to help dictate its direction and usage. Although he saw it as an enemy he simply negated the flow by joining it; being part of the wave, rather than having it crash down on his head.

Thats my take on it, as well.

I say writers because I don't believe he wrote his own story

The gospels werent even written by Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, lol. Fun fact: The followers and disciples of Jesus during his ministry didnt think they needed to write anything down because Jesus told them he would return for them in their lifetimes, leaving us with what it probably the longest cricket chirp in history.

not to beat on this, but since you brought up a good point, I will anyway.

I almost wanted to disagree with you about the disciples on the basis that they probably weren't all the literary type and I'm not even sure they could all write. We have to remember that its not like every nation had public schools. So rich families, as I think Paul is a good example, could afford to educate their children and so yeah he was a Roman citizen that could speak Greek. And this lack of Roman education I think contributed to the way that they probably looked down on the Israelites as a people. Because, contextually, we're talking about farmers and herdsmen and fishers and carpenters. It's basically a blue-collar society for the most part while the Levitical class got to chill in the cities as the nation's elitists.

So I don't think the disciples were particularly well educated and that extended to being well versed on their scriptures. The law was read to the people in the synagogue and its not like everyone had their own personal copy to study at home. And this MAY be why they followed him in the first place. But if you look at someone like Judas, no HE comes off as someone more educated and so he was using the popularity of Jesus for political purposes because all he cared about was whether he was popular enough to lead the people against Rome. Because a lot of people thought they could win that fight (between sheer ignorance and faith).

So here comes the point. The disciples may not have fully known the prophecies concerning the messiah of which their master was claiming to be and I believe the real reason they didn't really commission scribes to write for them is because they were, for the most part, disappointed. I believe... the whole time Jesus was selling them on basically becoming the next king of Israel and this was "his kingdom" that he was preaching about. And they were down for the cause. That's why they were armed. And so it makes perfect sense why Peter would deny knowing him 3 times. He thought he was supposed to be king.

But the reason I disagree is because the idea of returning soon... where did that account come from? Is it historically accurate? What if its not? What if he never told his disciples he was going to return and all this was for some spiritual purpose that they would never understand? What if he was simply sold out by his own people, captured, and executed, and the rest of the story is "Legends"? Yes, the same way Star Wars as non-canon stories I'm still sad about being excluded. But... if Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, this very public appearance would be harder to rewrite.

And the idea is that Jesus gave some cryptic indication at the last supper that it was about to bad and of course the story is somehow reported that he had a private prayer no one heard about knowing what was about to happen and asking his father to avoid it if possible... but this would require Jesus telling someone almost verbatim his private prayer. How does such a thing that no one witnessed get reported? This is where the idea of "God breathed" is taken to literally mean that God told people what to write because he sees all and can act as the 3rd person narrator.

So I don't think that happened. I think the writers created a way for the disciples to "ride off into the sunset" while Paul took over as the main vehicle of church authority. And keep in mind, that he flipped almost in a similar fashion to Constantine because he was a henchmen of the Christian version of order 66. So the fact that he becomes this huge voice that overpowered James, who was supposed to be the head of the church in Jerusalem, but is drowned out by the guy who basically markets and sells the story to the Greeks... its all very interesting to me.

BUT... if I believe the disciples were actually told that Jesus was going to come back soon and this scene wasn't simply a necessary invention of a "Jesus Force Ghost" to help transition the story from the previous trilogy to the new "Holy Ghost Force Awakens" new saga where Mary (Rey) somehow becomes the new Jesus for Catholics, working in Heaven, and I'm literally thinking this up as I type... lol... WHICH IS WHY I LOVE THESE CONVERSATIONS!! but if I believed they were told then yes, absolutely they would have bought into the idea that "soon" meant maybe months if not weeks. There's specific language in there about people being in the field, not.... "oh and there might be flying cars by the time I return but I'm definitely coming soon like a new Half Life game from Valve" (note: OMG there is a new Half Life game from Valve!) Oh course the prevailing theory is that "what had happened was.... what he had meant to say was... that um... he meant as 'soon' as they finished preaching the gospel to all the world using a series of tubes that will one day be called the internet". Did they accomplish that yet? Nope, because not all places have internet! So see! He wasn't lying! It's coming soon to an internet near you... provided that near you is the Amazonian jungle. (may not even be a jungle by then)

Just my simple observation With my empty cup and without even a penny to give much less $0.02
I have personally Forced telepathy. On police officers military personnel and martial arts masters.
And used astro projection 100% accurately.
Done telekinesis to throw objects hundreds of feet. Close doors start fires .
To heal medical problems. And a few things I cannot say Here.

And I so much agree with what you're trying to do here is bring understanding of others and oneself.
And I would like to say this experience that we are living Is all about belief and most important
LOVE!

Your humble student. Bless G-d

To heal medical problems. And a few things I cannot say Here.

Well now I'm fascinated!

Why can't you say? Was it assassinating putin's enemies?

What did you do?

Some would say I'm feeding a troll, others would say I'm being unkind, but lets say I'm a good little Jedi, and I just want to help you be better at your calling or being a talented liar.

I also like this line "On police officers military personnel and martial arts masters."

I want to know more about your fascinating life that leads to interact (apparently in an adversarial fashion if you're using jedi mind tricks on them) with police, the military, and random martial arts masters.


There's a lot to lying (and jedi mind tricks, I suppose)

I guess two simple rules (that not all agree with) are:
1) Don't be too detailed. If there's no benefit to a piece of information, don't add it, it just causes problems later (like now you have to explain why you were interacting with police, military, and martial arts masters, or why your deeds are so heinous that they can't be mentioned)
2) A good lie has an aspect of truth, something that lends an overall sense of credibility or plausibility to it. It doesn't have to be much, it doesn't even have to be an important part of the story, just a nugget here and there.


Qui Gon Jinn didn't understand this, and thought that if he just waved his hand at a gambler and slave owner that he wouldn't have to pay him.
'I won't pay you' to someone who's entire lifestyle is based around money is far too jarring to work.
Telling patrolmen who don't really care, don't understand why they are on a shitty desert, and just want to report back that they've found nothing and have some bantha milk at the star destroyer canteen are much more likely to accept "these are not the droids you are looking for" as a plausible (and convenient to them) story.

Yabuturtle wrote: Maybe it's just me but I find it really odd that once can believe in a force that creates everything and we are part of it even in the afterlife but for some reason doubts any sort of manipulation of said force, be it through telekinesis, magic, rituals, ect. ...

I agree with the explicit meaning of those words, Yabuturtle. However we may see the Force - whether as something approaching a deity that created the universe, an amorphous and fluid energy that flows through all of existence, or just a symbol for each human being's gift of will, perception, and capacity for action, its potential seems almost certain to exceed what we have experienced to date.

My rub - and it's just based on my limited personal history, and so certainly subject to error - is that what we may conceive as our full potential most of the time seems beyond our ability to call into being in the human experience. In an infinite universe, it almost seems inevitable that we could manifest something like telekinesis. But our experience of life as human beings, we rarely or never can display authentic telekinesis. I've held a lifelong interest in such affairs, but when it comes to telekinesis the only displays I've seen have resorted to deception - whether honest (as in the case of entertainers doing magic tricks) or dishonest (as in people saying "I can levitate" when at best all they can do is hop around on a cushion).

I'm wide open to witnessing someone raising an object into the air without touching it, and providing the time to insure the absence of wires, jets of air, or hidden mechanical supports. But till we see it happen (and preferable in a way that can be repeated), the knowledge that there are frauds among us requires us to be skeptical. I regret that in a way; it'd be really nice to live in a universe where, if someone said they could float things, you'd know it had to be true. However, if we are to believe in something like telekinesis, I just don't see a way out adopting the wisdom of the Missourians - "show me" - while appropriately navigating our way through the world in which we live.