The Discipline of a Jedi

I just watched the Star Wars movies with my son, all six of them, in about a week. I remember watching the first one thirty-two years ago. We stood in line for hours outside the UA cinemas in downtown Seattle, the only local theater playing it. The line was so long we had to wait through two showings before it was our turn. It was an event. It was a revelation. Special effects and spiritual message and exciting action all in one package, designed specifically for us, the new generation of Jedi.
Well, that’s what it felt like, anyway. That movie changed what we spoke about. It heralded the New Age, both in movies and in the world at large.
So this week I watched all six movies with my 10 year old son. We watched one a night, with one night off, on DVD’s on a big screen TV hanging on the wall of my bedroom. Times have changed.
I know they’re movies. And yet the second trilogy, two of which I hadn’t seen before, hit me as intensely as the first trilogy hit me 30 years ago. I found myself talking back to it a lot, if for no other reason than to tell my son there was more to the concepts than was on the screen. It’s so on the edge of brilliant, demonstrating the limitations of traditional ways of looking at right and wrong, light and dark.
I kept thinking “Won’t somebody help this boy feel his emotions so he doesn’t judge himself so deeply?” What the movie presented was true, yet missing the vital key that would, indeed, bring the Force back into balance. Rather the whole set-up was perfect for sending Anakin deeper into self-hatred and self-doubt. I really wanted someone to show him the way out, but no one knew what it was.
I’ve also been training since I was a little kid. I’ve had various teachers and travelled various paths, but they have all led, in one way or another, towards Self-Realization. This isn’t training to be a Jedi, though it feels like it sometimes. My studies have taken me across the universe of my Self. I have faced the dark side. When I talk to my teacher I feel like I’m conversing with Yoda.
Only my teacher’s wiser. She might not know how to use a light saber, or throw people across the room with her immense power. But she does know what to do with emotions, both dark and light. And, really, which is scarier? Facing Darth Moor or feeling your fear that you will never be enough? I’ll give you a hint – once you’ve faced, and felt your way through, your fear that you will never be enough, Darth Moor becomes pretty irrelevant.
They work so hard, those Jedi. They are so disciplined. They train themselves to keep their thoughts on others, on good, away from fear and anger.
What if their discipline was rather to feel their way into their fear, anger, doubt, hatred, hope, lack of worth, love, anxiety … in short every emotion that came up? What if every time Anakin Skywalker’s grief came up about losing his mother, someone could guide him into it, rather than away from it? What if Yoda, or Obi Wan, could sit with him while he cried, and hold the space for him while he felt his way to the depth of that loss? Then he would have a chance of finding out that his mother was still with him. And, more importantly, he would be able to claim that part of himself that he had lost, which had been deemed unworthy, or bad and wrong. That’s the part that was waiting for him on “the dark side.” That’s what made him so powerful, and yet so cut off from the part of him that knew Love, and loved Life.
Again, I know it’s just a movie, and they had to set the story up that way to create drama and conflict. But isn’t that the way emotions have been held for most of modern humanity? There are good, or desirable emotions, and bad, or undesirable emotions. There is the good God and there is the bad God (the Devil). There are successful ways to go through life and unsuccessful ways to go through life.
We separate ourselves from that which we do not want to be by judging it and making it not about ourselves. “I feel this, but it isn’t mine. See? I hate it! And I wouldn’t feel it anyway if that thing hadn’t happened or that other person hadn’t done that thing. As soon as I fix whatever is wrong this feeling will go away and I’ll never have to be bothered with it again.”
Sound familiar?
Here’s the discipline of a modern Jedi, working to bring balance to the Force: “Everything I feel is mine. I am Responsible for my Life, which means that everything that comes to me is something I asked for in order to know myself more. I will allow myself to feel all of my emotions, without getting sidetracked into the drama or the story. I am on a grand treasure hunt for my Self and my connection to the greater Universe. Every emotion that I feel is a clue through which I can know more of who I am.”
It’s not an easy discipline. But it’s totally worth it.