Meditating on Doctrine: One Pieace at a Time

Day 7: Jedi believe in the importance of freedom of conscience and self-determination within religious, political and other structures.

I never thought too hard about the last two parts of 'Jedi Believe.' Today's section is actually written into the founding document of the country I live in and was raised in. I've taken these freedoms for granted, but that isn't the truth the world over. The first two places that come to mind are Saudi Arabia and North Korea, but ultimately denying humans these rights is oppressive. I think I'm going to examine religious and political structures individually.

Denying the freedom of conscience and self-determination within religious structures to me sounds like Saudi Arabia. I've worked in pharmacies for the past several years, and at one point worked with a pharmacist whose father was part of the Jordanian military who once went to Saudi Arabia for a while. He said that at the designated prayer times, if his father was not at the embassy the mosque guards would herd people into the mosques with sticks, and they were not allowed to leave until the prayer time was over. No one was exempt. Then there's the non-existence of women's rights as well. This is just an example, but what does that mean for the people? It's almost incomprehensible to me. This carries over into the political arena though. Sharia, as laid down by Mohammed, is the law of the land. Even if you don't follow, or don't believe as they do, you still are forced through the motions and the state enforces it.

Regarding these freedoms in religious structures, I'm reminded of the video that has circulated the internet of the young girl who fled North Korea with her family, escaped repatriation in China, and eventually crossed the border into Mongolia. Saying things like she believed for a many years that the dictator could read her mind. That sedition is punished across generations to ensure silence. These ultimately come down to the very concept of self-determination. The individual is not who it chooses to be, but who it is informed to be. I'm still working through the Alan Watts text, but it evokes the double-bind he speaks of, where society compels you to act a certain way, but only considers it valid if it believes you chose to act that way yourself.

Day 8: Jedi believe in the separation of religion and government and the freedoms of speech, association, and expression.

This is another one I always took for granted, and to me it does more to reinforce the previous statement than anything else. The two are deeply interconnected. If religion and government are not separate, you get a fundamentalist state where from birth you are informed who to be, not by the natural progression of society, but by a religious doctrine. The same with inherent freedoms, it boils down to suppression of the individual, rather than celebration.

Day 9: Wisdom is the sound application of accrued knowledge and experience through patient, good judgement.

I see this as what is to be striven for at all times. Patient, good judgement should be applied to every action taken. This is a call to not be reactionary, but to exercise restraint in the face of emotional stress. Reserve judgement until you can make a decision with a clear mind, or in situations of dire straights to do what is needed without delay.

Day 10: Knowledge can be acquired by focusing on the task at hand.

The three tenets are interconnected to each other. I'm going to try not to elaborate too much on the focus element here and instead focus on knowledge, and how that can relate to skill.

I have a personal story regarding knowledge and skill and its acquisition. I have every intention of entering the field of particle physics. This is going to involve some complex math that I don't yet have the knowledge base for, but I've been studying with this goal in mind for a few years now. When I set on this path I was working as a pharmacy technician, and had been for a couple years, supporting my family. I figured I would have to go back to school at some point, so I took a practice math SAT. What I found was that I had lost the knowledge to do any problem that I couldn't turn into a proportion, which I did regularly at work. So I started relearning a lot of algebra, started learning trig and statistics, and I'm still studying calculus. I don't know everything I need to yet, but my mathematical knowledge, and thus my math skills, have improved to the point that I'm really good at it now.

My work hasn't been consistent, but my growth has, and I continue to learn and study more. It's difficult to elaborate on knowledge without acknowledging focus, but I'll have more to sat on that tomorrow.

Unrelated: I didn't realize there was a forum for meditation journals, which is kind of what this has ended up becoming. If any admins happen across this and could move it there I would be grateful.

Day 11: Focus is the art of pruning the irrelevant from your mind and pouring the best of your mind into what you are doing.

Focus is the key that opens the door to knowledge. It's useful in meditation, it's important in learning and accomplishing tasks. Given that focus is required for knowledge, and that application of knowledge is wisdom, it all stems from the ability to focus. Focus is a skill like any other, practicing that skill is vital to improving it, but it can be difficult to sustain. It is also the 13th maxim. I tend to feel that things that pop up repeatedly in the doctrine do so because they are important.

When I started this exercise I said that throughout the day I would try and stay mindful of that morning's meditation. So today is the day of the week that I clean my apartment and take care of general life business during the day. So for me that means I need to stay focused on being focused on these things, not let myself get distracted and idle.

Day 12: There is no emotion, there is peace.

Emotion is the product of our endocrine system. Many cartoons and video games have explored the joyless rationality that our brains would supposedly exhibit without the burden of the glands to instill emotion that can frequently override our logic, but we can hardly shut off our endocrine system and enter a real-life version of this. I doubt any Jedi has ever taken this to mean that that is what we should emulate. The greater emphasis is on peace. Our emotions can batter us like a storm, or if we allow them lead us far and away from where, and who, we want to be. The real issue is when our emotions come, take the time to find peace in a situation before we either say something we regret, or do something foolish.

This can be especially difficult when we are close to a situation, or when we have something invested. Some outcome we would like to see. There's no trick to situations like this. I'm actually going through this right now. There is no answer I can find. Without going into detail it isn't a situation I can readily distance myself from. If I try and get far enough away to be objective I tend to agree with my own stance, but I'm not even sure how genuine that is because it's my own situation.

This is taking a very different turn than expected. I feel angry at my current situation, but I'm realizing that I can't go on and on about it without giving any details. So in this situation, I just need to accept what's been chosen, and allow the Force to work as it will. I hope the worst does not come to pass. That's as close as I'll get to peace.

Day 13: There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

I see this line comparing knowledge to heat, or light in physics. Hot and cold, light and dark, these are qualitative, and dependent on biology to create context for. Really both just represent the absence or presence of energy. The hotter the ambient temperature, the more energetically the air molecules are colliding with our skin. The brighter something is, the higher the saturation of photons coming from it. Darkness and cold are simply the absence of energy, or the absence of photons. Knowledge is the same way. Ignorance is like the cold, or the darkness. It isn't a force or an energy of its own, it is simply the absence of knowledge.

Day 14: There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is a reason that two versions of the code are given side by side, passion, yet serenity. I see this as a simultaneous call to serenity during those moments in our lives when we're feeling reactionary, and a call to balance. When something stirs our passions the impulse is to pursue it. In many cases this would be good, but it's important to do it while balancing the other parts of your life, not to the exclusion of all else. In terms of events that could lead to crimes of passion it is better to forgive, no matter how difficult, and go about your way. Like in the over-recited Christian prayer, "give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change."

Day 15 (sort of, it's been more than that but this is the 15th meditation): There is no Chaos, there is harmony.

I immediately think of the quote attributed to Morticia Addams that is floating around the internet, "Chaos is a matter of perspective, what is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly." What seems like chaos is really just the natural ebb and flow of the Force. The Force is never static. It's constantly moving, changing forms in the way creatures live, thrive, and die. The deer who is one day vibrant, with his powerful crown of antlers declaring his status and power is laid low by the hunter. Thus the Force, in the form of the deer's vitality is passed on to the predator, who dies and passes it to the scavengers and decomposers. All this could be perceived as chaos, but there is a balance to it all. And more things are interconnected than humans typically realize. A great example of this is the wolves that were reintroduced into Yellowstone. I think I may have gone on about this in my initiate journal one time. As the wolf population thrived, the rivers stablized. This carnivore, this predator altered the very landscape, something park authorities had been struggling to contain, because of the unchecked deer and other grazers, the wolves solved by their mere presence. At first glance they might have sown chaos among the prey animals, but they ultimately helped harmonize the landscape. So many things are interconnected in ways that we cannot see. Looking at bits and pieces it looks like a great swallowing chaos. Terrible and tremendous, and to contemplate it and experience it, is to feel insignificant in its presence. But we are part of this great interconnected web. We are each of us a single note in a symphony, and playing our part looks chaotic. But when we look at our lives against the cosmic tapestry, our one strange, chaotic melody fits seamlessly into the harmony of it all. I think when we can manage to glimpse that, we are moving in tune with the Force in the most powerful fashion.

Day 16: There is no death, there is the Force.

This line serves two purposes. First it brings to mind for me the law of conservation. The physical law stating that energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed, they can only change forms. This is true of the electrons flowing through our bodies, keeping our heart pumping, our diaphragm pumping, moving my fingers around these keys to type this. When my body dies, that vitality, that energy that makes this form move will not simply vanish. It will only change form. Second it teaches us not to fear death. The person who cloisters themselves behind stone walls, never venturing out, never having an adventure for fear of death, never truly lives. The stories about the Knights Templar during the crusades say that they fought like they didn't fear death. That this is part of what made them so fearsome. Living the life of a Jedi is not done on the temple website. It's out there in the world. And as we carry our message of love and peace to the people out there, we will be much less effective as instruments of peace, if we never take chances for fear of death.