A philosophical Jedi *feeling* the Force

I consider and even practice my Jediism ideals as a philosophical path much more so than a spiritual/religious one. Growing up as a traditional christian, and subsequently losing my belief in the given deities I have lived for sometime as an agnostic/atheist. While I easily identify with and apply the Jediism ideals to my life, in my opinion the Force still resembles a metaphorical understanding of the unified living consciousness that we all exist within. Not an existing supernatural force separate from our plane of existence.

I guess my question, is am I way off base? How do you personally "feel" the Force on a spiritual level outside of philosophical and metaphorical meaning?

This is a great question and I can't wait to see others' responses to it.

I can identify with your background, Nicholasos, as it sounds rather like my background. I, personally, have some trouble with the Force in a metaphysical sense. The best way I've been able to rationalize it for myself is through complex systems theories and properties of emergence, which was made a little easier when I began studying cosmology as an amateur.

Despite a significant lack of scientific evidence for the metaphysical, including the Force, I'd come to the conclusion that, despite the lack of evidence for the metaphysical, I could not ignore some personal experiences that I'd had, nor was I willing to write them off as psychological or hallucinatory in origin. I believe that we are mostly unaware of being part of the "life" or "body" of the universe but, just as tissue is unaware of the body that it's a part of, so too are we unaware. We can affect or be affected by the Force, just as tissue can affect or be affected by the body. The body is only grossly aware of the tissue, and the tissue is certainly not really aware of the body. Both tissue and body would not be part of a "whole" without the other, and are interdependent (would not function well or at all without the other).

My hedge: Everyone's experience with the Force will be different and, thus, so will their interpretations be of such. Yet, here we all are...




"Data" explains emergent properties in its very most basic concept:
https://youtu.be/LSXffX8weME

It's really important not to conflate 'metaphysics' with 'mystical'. I'm not saying that either Jedi Druid or Nicholasos have done that here but their comments could easily be misinterpreted. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time and space. It doesn't make much sense to talk of "lack of evidence" in metaphysics! Philosophy isn't a 'hard' science (like physics) despite metaphysical philosophy being applicable to science. Metaphysics isn't woo-woo science - it's a lens of philosophy.

Mysticism is a belief that union with, or absorption into the Divine (we may call it 'The Force'), or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation (or meditation) and self-surrender. Again - one can use the tools of science (replicable 'objective' evidence etc) to assess the merits of mysticism but this is a little like choosing a sledgehammer to sew a button on your coat: no matter how good you are at sewing, the result is going to be disappointing!

Our experiences, and the recorded experiences of others utilising certain techniques, are all we have to go on when dealing with religious or mystical experience. I don't think anyone is here is too bothered by how Jediism is pigeon-holed or classified. It is a religion to some, a way of life, or a philosophy to others. What is key, however, is that the mystics of every religion, culture and time have come to similar conclusions regarding the methods and effects of contemplation and self-surrender: our meagre human will / energy / power is limited, frail and fallible; a drop in the ocean of energy / will / power that can be channeled through us, rather than originated inside any particular individual.

This is not a supernatural phenomenon - but one that anyone can experience perfectly naturally. In this sense one can try to live to Jedi ideals but such a project will inevitably fail at some point (probably daily!). Rather, the natural, unforced living of Jedi ideals is the evidence of communion with The Force. To use Judeo-Christian terminology: one doesn't get to heaven by obeying the Ten Commandments, one is able to live a life in accordance with the 10 Commandments when one is awake in heaven (known elsewhere as Nirvana, Moksha, bliss, paradise).

For the avoidance of doubt - Belinda Carlisle was right: Heaven is a place on Earth. For those with a preference for writers of a more obvious philosophical pedigree: “There is something that can be found in only one place. It is a great treasure which may be called the fulfilment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found, is the place where one stands” – Martin Buber

I wouldn't say you are "off base", be it only because there doesn't appear to be much of a base to be off of. In my experience it seems that few know what they mean when they speak of the Force or of them believing anything about it. Fewer still are able or willing to explain what it was that convinced them of the views they came to hold as opposed to any contrary ones held by their peers.
Personally, I only ever pretended to myself to "feel" the Force and in retrospect I can't say that I did it quite enough to convince myself that I did. Needless to say, once was made to recognize that I was trying only to deceive myself at best, it became a rather futile exercise I eventually disengaged from for that reason.
Nowadays, while I do understand that there is at times a very delicate - though at others equally crude - balance of life on earth, referring to it as the capital F Force is in my opinion both lazy and reductive in that it shrugs it off as a monolithic power when in fact it is a convergence of a confusingly great multitude of mostly peripherally interdependent variables, but also misleading in that the Force label often carries with itself baggage that is in its own right beyond the "mere" complexities of nature. If you are a pantheist in a crowd of Mormons and refer to the universe as God, you are fishing for misunderstandings where none need be.
Aside from that, It would seem that almost no teaching actually hinges upon there being a Force, or it having specific properties, or us believing in any such thing. I could take the Force out of Jediism and end up with almost the exact same thing I started out with, and of course tradition is no good reason to keep anything one would otherwise discard.

To commend on the emergent properties thing... I'm not sure that they are a product of a system that is greater than the sum of the products of its parts. They are rather more than we would expect given our models for the parts. You drop a marble on the floor and you know it will bounce back up, again, and again, only to come to rest after hundreds of individual hops. You drop a loosely packed net of marbles and they lie dead pretty much immediately. It's not like the net of marbles does something no individual marble within it does, but rather the simple model we had to describe the behaviour of one marble, while fit for that purpose, did not include how it would interact with others and so if we were to use the same simplistic model to describe a far more complex system, of course our predictions would end up grossly false. This is incidentally one of the reasons I am so much opposed to the claim of a simple answer to any complicated question. It's not that the earth curves more along ten miles than the sum of the curvatures of every single inch within that distance. Rather we say that assuming a straight, uncurved inch is a fair simplification for making a square foot's worth of chess board and we accept the insignificant error that causes. All we need is to keep in mind what scale and purpose we designed our model for and that to use it for something so different as a three miles long bridge across the sea would be that bridge's inevitable undoing not because the inch really is straight and the mile really has a property the inches don't, but because in an effort to avoid wasting resources we designed a simpler model that ignored that the inches do in fact have it as much as does the mile.

I can relate as well. Grew up a roman catholic. Then became born again Christian.... in my 20s i fell to the darkside. Did dark things to myself and others. Truly fell from grace. Ive only started coming back to the light because i know if I dodnt change I was going to die. I honestly believe adapting the ideas of Jediism is going to save my life.

But on the subject of God and the Force. I actually wrote an journal entry on it. If you care to read it i will paste it here.



Do I believe in God? ... yes. I just have an alternate interpretation than what most people have on the subject. I look around, and I see everything around us came from something else... was "created." all the way to the smallest mollecules, it came from something. And the accepted scientific explanation for the "creation" of the cosmos is the big bang theory. That just suddenly, an explosion happaned and galaxies have been expanding and stretching since then. The ultimate question is... Where did the big bang come from? Furthermore what was it before the big bang? Or is it anything at all? That confirms to me personally that even though we are made to believe time and space is infinite, logic tells us that is not so.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is I believe some creator, deity... or FORCE created the heavens and the Earth and none of us will ever fathom how BIG it really is. So that is the way going forward on how I will look at and explain the subject of "God, The Creator".... I'm just calling it The Force from now on! 






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Time either began with a first moment or it didn't. Space is currently either finite or infinite. I don't know who is making us believe what on either, but to the extent that logic can tell us anything about it (and I have only ever heard of one argument ever constructed to that end, and a circular one at that), it is useless because logic is a tool to derive truths from the given, not to generate facts. I could go on about how the God of the gaps is not only not "an alternative interpretation" but rather the single most common argument relating to the subject, and how it is not so much a way of moving forward as it is a way of stopping right then and there, instead of pressing the issues and perhaps eventually discovering more useful, more beautiful, more honest, and more profound than by far the laziest answer of them all to those deep questions so many generations of our kin have been plaguing themselves with. But, alas, this is not what the thread was about, so I shall instead save it for another.

Loudzoo, your insight is greatly appreciated on the matter. As I continue my studies in Jediism, I am realizing the importance of experiencing the unforced embracing of Jediism as a method of communion with the Force. While I understand the necessity of contemplation, and am beginning to embrace the positivity of meditation, I am finding myself having difficulty with the concept of self-surrender. My initial response is to refrain from surrendering myself to a mystical force of which our comprehension is impossible, but I struggle with the thought that is the selfless embracement and daily living of Jedi ideals in and of itself the action of surrendering oneself to a mystical force, however unknowingly?

In my IP I learned that nirvana, heaven, eden and such are not things that have been or things that will soon come to pass, they are now. It is our ability to recognize the experience of our own potentialities in the present that result in our own inner transcendence. This still, however, leads me to the conclusion of the Force being a metaphorical representation of the living consciousness that we all exist within, not to an incomprehensible mystic power capable of being channeled through our plane of existence by any natural means.

Nicholasos wrote: in my opinion the Force still resembles a metaphorical understanding of the unified living consciousness that we all exist within. Not an existing supernatural force separate from our plane of existence.

I guess my question, is am I way off base?

Nope.

We all conceive of the Force our own way.

My understanding is essentially identical to yours. It's a word for the "thing" that is, and a set of principles to better live within it.

Nicholasos wrote: How do you personally "feel" the Force on a spiritual level outside of philosophical and metaphorical meaning?

Why should I need to?

I feel as you do: with my skin.

Thank you for your reassurance in my current understanding. While I am aways interested in the presentation of alternative viewpoints, it is nice to identify with another Jedi in our perspective of the Force.

Nicholasos wrote: I am finding myself having difficulty with the concept of self-surrender.

Giving up control to anything is so anathema to what most humans want that it's difficult to do so, even for a moment. UItimate control, however, lies in the release of control.

In my IP I learned that nirvana, heaven, eden and such are not things that have been or things that will soon come to pass, they are now.

In some schools of thought, it is both.