Controlled and just aggression as a weapon of a Jedi

I don't think aggression is inherently wrong, but I think it's important to know where it is coming from. I think this is more important than what you use your aggression on because if you know where you're aggression is coming from, why you are feeling aggressive, then you have control over it and it cannot control you. Aggression is most dangerous when it comes out of nowhere.

Jamie Stick wrote: Aggression is most dangerous when it comes out of nowhere.

Good insight.

Nowhere, I suspect, being the vast undercurrent of ourselves we don't see.

I have used every emotion possible for good it seems. My self only i can say that there is a strength in pure emotions. How we choose to use them is up to us. Free will. I often use that burn in side ...fear to instigate something new. in other words when i feel it i have a check list in my head of what i need to do. It would probably benefit most if this was a normal practice. Have things set up so the first thing you dont do is react but recognize then ...deal with, hope that helps any. just my own exp. Recognition usually takes practice.

den385 wrote: Have you ever used aggression against your weaknesses/doubts/fears?

I have. I was the victim off bullying at school. This made me a frightened child. The way I reacted was to become an aggressive adolescent. Far from solving my problems and banishing my fears this way of living made things much worse. No one came near me because I frightened everyone away with my anger. The result was that I spent 15 years or so as a total loner and developed a social anxiety, which I'm still struggling with today, in my forties.

So, for me, aggression helped to drown out my fear temporarily, but made it worse in the long run.

LTK, my fear in this case is a quite metaphysical, indeed. I won't keep it secret, for it would mean for me distrust towards our community.

As I wrote in my other post, I had a long and tough endogenous depression - for 10 years + 1 year of regaining strength after turmoil. And now I face life, which I haven't lived for 11 years. I was 15 when depression started, and now I'm 26. I won over it, I've rebuilded myself from the innermost core to become someone much more wise and integral. But the interruption in Life was huge. I don't regret anything. It's just hard to start living again - life is too big, too complexed, when you are not merely surviving through depression, but when you're set to success.

The fear is - to get started in life again, to move. It is the fear of momentum. I fear that I can't make my inner fire burn my path through the obstacles and doubts of real life.

After I discovered that stupid "be angry at yourself and punch yourself in the ass" approach doesn't work, I activated brain. "Ignorance, yet knowledge" thing.

I started following my own technique to conquer that fear - I called it featmap. It has just 3 things:
1) map: partition your goal into manageable pieces - better with some visualization of it, e.g. I'm going to use whiteboard
2) feat: plan some humble "feats" on each day - the todo list with checkboxes, according to map
3) feat->map: after a week of battles, it feels right to record your "feats" to map - so that you can see the progress and renew your believe, maybe even get inspired

It works, but it's cumbersome. I have 7 categories (it's just convenient): regime, sports, work, own project, finances, socializing, interests. And every one of them presents it's own challenges. And this challenges are interdependent, intertwined. And this work is incremental.

My main problem is that I often demand more of myself then what my current willpower muscles are capable to stretch to. E.g., it's tough for me to wake up early: the challenge of adaptation to life is pressing me, I'm still taking a little meds just out of physiological habit - all this makes me need 9h of sleep per day for now. So when I start ignoring the need of my body to sleep and demand that it wakes up aftet 7h of sleep and does excercises and than goes for a run - I'm being truly ignorant of my willpower level and my physiological situation.

I hope, this post will meet understanding - this is psychology, but the Jedi and psychology are inseparable. I didn't come to TotJO to use it as a free psychotherapy, but when I question myself "What is the Jedi Way in my situation" - all my personal adaptation problems come to be a necessary context. After all, I hope that uncomfortable truth is better than vague abstractions.

All my experience in battling fear comes to - "Ignorance, yet knowledge". Ignorance of your capability (which grows incrementally). ignorance of physiological limits, ignorance of the source of fear. These ignorances make life shady, complicated - without serenity and sound sense it can't be managed towards harmony. Ignorance only leads to the fear-anger recurrent cycle. And that sucks.

Thank you.