Turning on the Light (spoiler?)

I'd like to discuss something I heard in the Obi-wan Kenobi show. It's sort of a spoiler but not too revealing...

When Ben and Leia are hiding, Leia asked Ben, "The Force. What does it feel like?" He responds, "Have you ever been afraid of the dark?" Leia answers, "Yes." Ben then asks, "How does it feel when you turn on the light?" She answers, "I feel safe." To which Ben responds, "Yes it feels like that."

Whoever wrote that dialogue... well, it's just fascinating to me. I had never really thought of it that way. I've felt the Force before, but not described that way, in an almost literal manner. I honestly didn't understand it fully until this morning. After I woke up, but before the sun was out fully, the house was dark. After the sun came up, I opened curtains, blinds, etc. Then I understood, because I felt more alive. The light coming in the windows made me feel, well, "safe" as Leia said.

I wondered what your thoughts were on this. Did you see the episode? How did that conversations strike you?

I think I need to rewatch the episode ....

When I think about "turning on the Light" its like this...

When the light is turned on, everywhere that darkness was, when light enters, darkness is gone

Feeling safe, for me is about being able to see more clearly. Most people are afraid of the unknown. We cannot see in the dark, that is why we are afraid.

When we are disconnected from the Force (in some sort of darkness) we are afraid. Here then should go Yoda's famous "fear leads to anger..." Connection gives us a sort of vision, maybe not of the whole world, but a better picture of ourselves, our motivations, our actions, and our connections.
That is why it makes us feel safe

That's kind of what I was thinking. We fear the dark because we don't know what lurks in the darkness, or at least that's the fear that is instinctual, for the sake of our own survival were we to be living in the wild.

I've gone through some dark times, but despite the darkness I've experienced, that dialogue in Obi-wan made me realize just how much I prefer the light, how much I appreciate it.

I ve a problem with "the fear of the darkness" personally only. I love the night, yes some time it feels scary but it s only a feeling. Rey in the end looked down in the darkness and that freaked Sky walker. I like to say that In darkness we may not see well but in full light one can be blinded. Same as darkness bring the cold and sun light the heat, but we need both.

Well yes, there is so much that speaks to your point Vincent

Yin and Yang

Aristotle's Allegory of the Cave

The Moons of Ashla and Bogen

What you've brought forward, Vincent, is a principle failing of the Jedi...an over reliance on the Light...the pushing away of the Darkness...the hiding away of the Darkness. Palpatine was this well placed to be able to manipulate the Force using the dark side. The Jedi had forgotten what the Dark side looked like.

Even the artificial division of lightside and darkside was/is based on favorite ideas about what encompasses both

This has sparked some good thought, thank you

Streen, one thing your post brought forward for me was how (besides meditation, because that's an easy answer) do we turn on the light?

So i ve a little story to tell, when i was kid i liked to sleep outside of my grand ma s house that was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest. One of my uncle wanted to join me one night but after a little while he asked me what was that noise and that noise, he freaked out and went back into the house. So some how i was a little bit scared but i liked to listen and make sense of the noises. I imagined a deer walking, an old branch falling, basically all sort of not dangerous activities going on in the forest. When you learn, you educate your self the unknow is not so scary anymore, that and not let fear take over, that means to control your emotions and not let them make u rush for a so called safety. We can turn the light on, it s call knowledge and mindfulness

Turning on the light by reframing

Oh I love it

Thank you

I think Vincent’s on to something. As jedi we get hung up on light and dark. You all have heard why I use a purple lightsaber. Purple is a mix of red and blue (sith =red blades and Jedi = blue blades in the movies), good and bad, light and dark. We’re all a mix. None of us are pure good or pure evil. No one here is perfect, and no one here is beyond redemption. Yes we may ban people from time to time, but that’s not because we don’t want to help them. It’s because they have become disruptive to others training or because they require help that is beyond our abilities. But to get back on point, too much dark, and you can’t see, too much light and your blinded. It’s all about finding our personal balance, or to say it in Star Wars terms, our own shade of purple.

I think you might be missing the point. I'm not afraid of the dark either, but we're not talking about literal darkness.

The point of Obi-wan's metaphor was to express what it feels like to be safe in the Force. Sure, we might be a mix of light and dark, as Zero explained, but are you safe in the Force? Do you have faith? The light that is intended to be turned on is the light of understanding, the light of knowing. As Vincent also explained, do not fear, for the Force is with you.

Now in terms of literal light and dark, Yin and Yang teaches us not to go to extremes, so it's true that we can't be fully dark or fully light. To go to either extreme is to tip the balance and cause yourself to go to the other extreme.

Thank you, Streen. The whole interchange is important. Obi-Wan asks if Leia has been afraid of the dark. He knows kids, and many children are afraid of the dark. Since she answered in the affirmative, he can use the analogy.

Thanks for starting this thread Streen. Since the Last Jedi, the recent cannon has been very light on questions of 'what The Force is like' - and I found this scene moving and insightful. The metaphor of' turning on a light' is simple enough for 10 year old child to understand (especially a wonderfully precocious one, like Leia!) and it plays on the lore of light and dark sides of The Force too.

In answer to Roz's question - I'm no expert - but this is a theory:

Turning on the light can happen in meditation - but really it occurs as a result of a change in self identity that extends well beyond meditation. We tend to view ourselves as individuals, or as a part of a tribe. This is helpful in many ways, but ultimately always leads to selfishness, which almost always manifests as self-pity. Until we realise we are also the whole, the universal - whatever we choose to call IT (The Force), the light doesn't stay on for long. This isn't an identity choice we make between 'individual' or 'universal' - it is the recognition of 'individual' AND 'universal'. It is the most accurate and relevant example of nondualistic thinking I have come across. Timothy Freke has coined the term 'unividual' to try and give a name to this seemingly paradoxical identity. A lived identity of unividuality does not rely on faith, or belief, it becomes real - more real than anything else we can experience. It doesn't banish, or ignore, negative emotion (the dark) - we need negative emotion to survive - but it can balance it out with a bigger dose of positive emotion, than evolution alone left most of us with!

Meditation seems to be the most effective way of developing the unividual identity, but contemplation also helps. Practicing 'Flow', what the Taoists call 'wu-wei' (doing without struggle) is the way the identity first uncovered in meditation is actually able to develop agency in the world.

The biggest gap in the literature (and practice) here in the 'West' seems to stem from the fact we have a word missing in the English language. Many find that 'turning on the light' brings with it an almost overwhelming compassion. This exposes the unividual to a huge increase in negative emotion - it can be overwhelming, and lead to some dark places. The Buddhists worked this out thousands of years ago and developed the notion of mudita.If compassion is the sympathetic concern for the suffering and misfortune of others, then mudita is the vicarious joy for the success and fortune of others. True empathy is not merely compassion, it is compassion and mudita.

Incidentally, we do have a word for this concept: compersion - but as you will see, if you look it up, it doesn't quite mean what it used to!

Anyway - loved the Leia / Obiwan interaction - and the exposition it led to in this thread x

Thanks for that, Zoo, that was rather educational

I looked up "compersion" and got no results from Dictionary.com, LOL. I Googled it though and it does some fitting to what we've been talking about. I would encourage others to look it up as well.

I haven't heard anyone talk about "wu-wei" in many years, so thanks for bringing that up. I studied Taoism in my early days as a Jedi, though wu-wei seems more like a Zen concept to me now. But I guess that's all beside the point of this thread