Random Questions

OB1Shinobi wrote: At what point is revenge justifiable?

Revenge is not the way of the Jedi. Or a Knight.

We should seek justice and balance. If your emotions will not allow you to do that then it might be best to let someone else handle the matter.

That said... for all my efforts I am only human. Fallible and flawed. I can not guaranty that if someone hurt my daughter I would or could let others deal with the situation. :evil:

You may be right to react that way, just as the police may be right to lock you up for it. This is a major struggle for people, in my mind: We can say "no" to reality all we want, but I'm pretty sure the whole shebang will continue on if one person kills another, or even if a comet smashes us to smithereens. Morals, ethics: these are not intrinsic to all of reality. No amount of justice weighs even an ounce. Humans created these ideas, and like a child playing with a knife and a piece of wood trying to be a master carpenter, we often fall short and end up injuring ourselves.

Of course, if you don't practice...

To be clear, I have my own morals and ethics: I am human after all and it is within us to decided these things. Expecting anyone else to share what I view as right and correct is foolish in my mind, though. I can say, as Jedi, I am on the side of life, but that is connected to the idea that we are All One Creature. I don't smash flies, I put them outside, or ignore them, but I will squish a mosquito who bit me. Wescli would be correct in my mind to defend their children's life by taking one, just as I wouldn't blame the police for locking him up over it. Your dealing with 2 different moral sets at that point: Wescli's and Societies.

To begin with, I am very happy with the responses and it'ts the exact reason I created this topic. Now another question, "Does the direction of your head( North, East, South, or West) while sleeping has its benefits?" I found this article https://parenting.firstcry.com/articles/magazine-ideal-sleeping-direction-as-per-vastu/#:~:text=4.,negative%20energies%20in%20your%20life. and if you are someone like me who have troubles sleeping, staying asleep, or constant nightmares might benefit from this, but I can't force you! Before, I usually had my head pointed south for a long time and I did see results, but then 2020 came and I changed it so I was facing the west. Personally, I do feel that this is real and I hope it does benefit you as well. So, I leave this information to you, and May the force be with you!

I have looked into that some years back. I tried all the head facing directions. I still got the ongoing Night Hag, the nightmares of doomsdays and dreams of being in the middle of battlefields or some other life threatening situation. I still had the dreams of dying in every imaginable way possible (very unpleasant btw). What worked for me in the end was inner-child work. I had those kinds of dreams for 20-30 years, I got to the point I was able to feel when things were about to go really bad and I would force myself awake. Now I have restful sleep.

Jeez, that sounds really horrible. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I thought I had control over my waking day after a nightmare, but 2020 happened and now I'm back to square one.

I learned a lot about dream control from it, and most of my fears are either gone or I am able to deal reasonably rather than emotionally from the experiences.

And 2020 happed to everyone world round. It hasn't been an easy year. But it too shall pass.

Well, head pointing a direction will relate to where the morning light will penetrate into the space each morning, and the magnetic field, and where moonlight might penetrate, in relation to your head. Otherwise things like door locations, breeze directions, house wiring, outside/nearby noise sources might have impact as well.

Fun idea though, here is me;
1974->1978: 360° (-02°) = 358mag
1979->1979: 005° (+12°) = 017mag
1980->1981: 340° (+12°) = 355mag
1982->1985: 345° (+12°) = 357mag
1986->1988: 290° (+11°) = 301mag
1989->1992: 090° (+11°) = 101mag
1993->1996: 360° (+11°) = 011mag
1998->2002: 300° (+13°) = 313mag
2002->2003: 270° (+11°) = 281mag
2003->2005: 175° (+11°) = 186mag
2005->2006: 240° (+11°) = 251mag
2006->2008: 120° (+11°) = 131mag
2008->2009: 240° (+11°) = 251mag
2010->2019: 160° (+11°) = 171mag
2020->: 177° (+11°) = 189mag

Skipped a couple of years where I moved a few too many times.

In regards to justice, a system term to represent appropriate placement (of perp) within that system and in this context security to that system. Victims might want revenge, but things like that are subjective variables, too undefined for the establishment to legislate. The decisions made by bodies within the judiciary have to balance the interests of all involved to asses what will be deemed as 'appropriate', be it reaching that threshold of the burden of proof or an amount of remediation etc. You can't go back and rewrite the past, so associations of blame have to carefully mapped to direct cause and effect on one hand, and proof on the other. I think they are the things balanced out.... not necessarily the arguments or suffering of two parties.

Atania Kenobi wrote: "Does the direction of your head( North, East, South, or West) while sleeping has its benefits?"

No. Not unless they are some kind of non-natural benefits that at the same time do depend on your body's position but then also have nothing to do with your body. Otherwise they can't have an impact strong enough that you'd have noticed and also weak enough to entirely evade experimental detection. With or without astrology - Indian or otherwise - what is going on inside your head is, essentially, chemistry. We know this well enough that we can manipulate it in various ways by strictly chemical means. Now, yes, sure enough, things like the coriolis effect and the Earth's magnetic field do in principle have a measurable impact on the motion of particles on large enough scales where short-ranged influences are averaged away, but these are conditions that are very far from met inside our bodies. The forces between two ions inside your brain are many orders of magnitude stronger than almost anything the sun, the moon, the stars, or the Earth can do to either of them. Heck, I reckon even how much sugar you put in your evening tea has more of an impact on how you rest that night than whether you lie down facing east or west. For that matter, so can other things, as Adder points out, like airflow, noise sources, and lighting, have an influence. Not enough to mess with your brain directly, but enough to provide stimuli to your senses, directing your attention, perhaps. If however the direction with respect to Earth's spin or magnetic field was any kind of important, a compass would be in any chemist's tool kit for the same reason, while us regular folk could at least roughly tell which direction a bed faces without consulting one (or the sky, for that matter).

Well it is the standard International Terrestrial Reference System and Frame. Something doesn't have to be physical, nor does it have to be discounted out of hand because no science exists to support physical interaction... like magnetic fields. It's just the most handy way we map our space. I guess people can opt to live in corridors and spaces if they choose something like tree structures but that feels a bit too conceptual and not earthy enough for me.

I mean, if we map out our space cognitively in anyway at all then there is an argument for where we 'face' when we sleep having a potential to play a role in how much awareness we have on things in that direction be it from ones history or current events locally or globally. I'd venture that could play into dream content potentially, last thoughts before going to sleep, or initial thoughts upon waking in some instances depending on the sensitivity of those memories. These things could impact ones experience of sleep.

Might be worth noting the role in ones posture during sleep, does your face pull around to face the door, or the foot of the bed when you lay in a comfortable position, is it a good posture or bad posture, or do you contort, or lay squif to avoid a sharp edge on a nearby bedstand.

Sure. My point was that there is no direct influence the cardinal directions have. The kind of special they are is a kind of special our bodies do in no way respond to. This is not to say that we can't be more or less comfortable (and take similar benefits from) lying down facing towards or away from features that are in other ways significant to us. One may well be better off facing towards or away from one's door, say, but unless the door has a window of sorts for the sun or moon to shine through, it will not be much of a difference whether the door happens to be facing north or east. The article linked was about the recommendations of Vastu, an architectural tradition that has more to do with superstitions about evil spirits and good fortunes than it does with actual architecture, let alone mental or physical health. I'm sure creative and talented building and space designers of the past have crafted very pretty structures and comfortable homes respecting its recommendations, but if the benefit we are talking about here is of a sort beyond mere ooh-this-is-pretty-ness, as many believers would insist it to have, then this is, for better or worse, no longer a strictly subjective question. We don't have to seek out some forced neutrality on things like that. We wouldn't struggle to say that one's diet is no more or less healthy for being in line with some ancient beliefs regarding one's birth sign, and I for one don't see why we'd need to have any more patience with a Chinese constellation map rather than a Greek one. There are both more nuanced and more definitive answers we can give to things like this than none at all.

I might interject that what people believe directly affects their peace of mind and thus their health. So as unsubstantial a claim it may be from a logical point of view, the irrational may very much appreciate the information and sleep better for it. Specifically the religious views you mentioned.


In short, one would be fooling themselves into feeling better, which I see no issue with since that is the way we get through life.

This question aside are there any random questions from you guys? I'm inquired out!

Should knowing about, being in tune with, and seeking to improve our relationship with our body be a Jedi prerogative?

Knowing about and being in tune with, yes. Working to improve flexibility, ability and resistance; sure.

But working to improve looks or how we may believe we are perceived I would consider to be vanity. I do not see vanity as a part of the Jedi discipline.

I also would not condone working out to become "strong." Massive amounts of muscle may look cool and one could argue that it could help in different circumstances. But your heart does not know the difference between 300 lbs. of fat or muscle.

Then we could look at diet, supplements, implants... and how healthy does one need to be and/or when have you gone overboard? And actually hurt your body.

I don't have all the answers. But I will, we could all probably do a better job at taking care of ourselves. Focus a little less on what we look like and focus more on how we feel. And most importantly, be thankful for what we have, where we're at and that we do have the option of working on and improving. And not take that for granted.

Gisteron wrote: Sure. My point was that there is no direct influence the cardinal directions have. The kind of special they are is a kind of special our bodies do in no way respond to.

Hehe, well the beauty of science is finding new things I think. Because science well and truly knows it knows very little about many things… the brain and the mind not withstanding. And I think imagination can serve as a good motivator for curiosity to the depth inherent in science….. so long as the boundaries are kept clear between science and non-science.

So, considering we already know that some animals can detect the magnetic field, and use it for navigation, if I have a look for this in regards to humans, I only find things like;
- animal magnetoreception; perhaps possible in humans via ‘radical pair mechanisms’ in cryptochromes in the eyes? Then theoretically allowing some mechanism to derive magnetic field orientation information.
- neuronal ‘grid cells’ which lay within the entorhinal cortex of our brains, and have been determined to compute the form of our environmental space relative to us, for navigation including location, distance and direction.
So ‘if’ magnetic field information derived from the visual cortex did exist, then given that visual information seemingly ‘is’ fed into the grid cells for navigation, it might stand to reason that we could processes magnetic field data into our mapping of place and perhaps subsequently even purpose!

Adder wrote: So ‘if’ magnetic field information derived from the visual cortex did exist, then given that visual information seemingly ‘is’ fed into the grid cells for navigation, it might stand to reason that we could processes magnetic field data into our mapping of place and perhaps subsequently even purpose!

And yet here we are, seemingly entirely unable to sense magnetic fields, even when facing those super strong neodymium magnets at point blank range (one should at this point bear in mind that most of us sleep with our eyes closed, too, stretching yet another layer of obstruction to any signal our eyes may or may not be able to detect). The best we can do is sense a fairly narrow band of frequencies of oscillating magnetic fields we call visible light, and a somewhat broader band of lower energy radiation we feel as heat. Our eyes are so built as to be able to tell the direction the former is coming from with some accuracy, but that's not even the direction of the magnetic field, but actually an orthogonal direction to it. The direction of the field itself - one can prepare a beam in such a way that it really only has one, mind you - is something we are apparently completely insensitive to even then.
Sure, if this, and maybe that. Unlike some other forces suggested here, at least with magnetism we can say that it is a real thing, and some animals have indeed evolved senses to detect it to various extents. Humans, at the end of the day, have not. Is there some mutant human out there who can? I'd very much doubt it, just for the sheer magnitude of difference there'd have to be between them and the rest of us, all while they'd still mostly carry their parents' genes. I'm hesitant to say that there never was or never will be, too, be it only because unlike souls and auras at least there is a thing there ripe for the detecting. But at the end of the day, if we are anything alike, chances are none of us can tell the cardinal directions without consulting a map with the directions marked, a compass, or the sky (or shadows it casts, as it may be), and even then we'd have to have learned how to read those at some earlier time before they'd be any use to us. And on that note, bear in mind that animals who we know can sense the magnetic field for some reason still don't build their nests with some alignment with the cardinal directions either, almost as if their sleep and general health are also pretty much unaffected by what direction they face for it outside of what features happen to be in those respective directions.

So "Not likely as it stands now." which is as close to an absolute as I get.

In my opinion finding your own individual self is very important no matter where or when you are. Yes as Jedi we are to be aware of self conflicts and distractions, but to also be translucent to the happenings around us. (I'm unsure if I paraphrased that) The point being, is if you need a moment to isolate yourself from a situation and focus on how you feel; you should do so. I like to relate this with the pop/soda bottle effect. Shaking the bottle creates pressure to the point where it might explode, but releasing the pressure little by little the result is kept clean!

Look up biomagnetite and Magnetoreception (also magnetoception).

Check out some of the research into those.

Given the right training and mental state, I bet one could sense magnetic fields.