What are you looking for?
Someone asked me whether the goal of our training was change which can be demonstrated. I could not help but go back to that quote from Freedom from the Known in which Jiddu Krishnamurti says “Order imposed from without always breeds disorder.” That is what religions do. Krishanmurti also says:
Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual [or sensual*] indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through discipline and conformity - such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion. (pg 4)
My path has not been about change in this traditional sense, primarily because as we see above, it is well nigh impossible for the outside figures to distinguish between change that they want to see and well practiced performance disguised as change. Eleven years on, Jediism, just like Christianity, doesn’t produce change if it is imposed from the outside. We say that this is a self directed path, not because we don’t have prescribed training and not because we don’t have expectations for our members, but in the grand scheme of things, the only thing that the Temple of the Jedi Order can give you is knowledge. How that is converted into wisdom through focus and self discipline has to be your work.
*added to include all things that we can be addicted to.
Many come to the Temple with expectations that after all the training they will be a Jedi, or a Knight, or a Master as if checking all the boxes makes it so. In the barest sense, the only one that the Temple can truly measure, this is true. I’ll let you in on a little secret though, knowledge without focus and without self discipline is unsettled knowledge. I have been there myself. Read all the books, completed all the “assignments” and found that I lacked the tools needed for the path.
We can often fall into the trap of giving people what they want to see in an effort to appear like a Jedi or a Knight or a Master, and this is especially easy when the primary medium is online. The best piece of advice I can give is to be who you are at this moment, warts and all. It’ll mean that the growth is slower, but it will be more permanent and you’ll be a knight.
This is a life path.The Jedi path is a path of evolution not revolution.Quick change won’t last and lasting change won’t
be quick.
