Sermon - Get a “Feeling” from Your Studies

Basic Teaching of the Jedi # 5 –

 "As Jedi, we trust and use our feelings. We are intuitive, more so than others and with this heightened intuition we become more spiritually evolved as our minds become more harmonious with the Force and it's influences."

I recently had a conversation with a friend about Jediism. I usually end up having to use all my skill to keep from getting annoyed when they start making jokes about lightsabers and force choking each other. On this particular occasion, the conversation was what I considered enlightened and thoughtful on his part. The conversation stemmed from my comment that we as Jedi try to use our feelings, when dealing with people and situations, to better understand the true nature of what is happening or about to happen.

I created my own Jedi manual a while back, so I pulled it out and read to him the number five basic teaching of Jediism as shown above.  The conversation became a little more intense (no heated, but the depth of thought increased) as we talked about how one goes about “feeling” a situation and/or people. How is one intuitive if you have never met someone? How do you know how they will react to a given situation, is this not the basis for intuition, knowing the person and how they think and not some random stranger who is a wild card? Won’t your feelings interfere with your ability to “feel” the others involved in the situation?

Then it hit me, his interpretation of feelings where based on emotional understanding and not intellectual understanding. Our definitions of “feeling” were different. As a person involved with communicating instructions and orders on the fire and training ground, I stopped the conversation briefly to communicate the definition of “Feeling” I was using. Any debate must have a common definition or subject matter to base the rest of the conversation on.

 For me, “Feeling” is an intellectual response to a person, place, or situation, which requires me to understand what is happening, or has happened, on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level.  When I am going into a situation, I am watching the situation unfold and looking at the reaction of the people involved. I get a “feeling” for the “mood of the room” and if I have the resources to deal with the context of the situation. Emotion is only a part of the intellectual understanding of a story that unfolds. I want to know where people are in relation to each other, their body language, the level of vocal volume, and their intensity. So much information must be assertained intellectually, emotionally and spritually in such a short period of time in order to know, or have an "feeling" on what will come next, what must be influenced to balance of the Force.

I believe that as a Jedi, we become more adapt at “Feeling”, because we practice meditation, we learn the diversity of cultures, the differences in religions, and the application of ethical and moral values within these cultures. In our meditation, we reflect inwardly so that we may know ourselves and our capabilities and deficiencies. By continuously learning about others, we cultivate an understanding of how others react to day-to-day living.  This is what should give us the ability to become more intuitive to the spiritual, physicl, and emotional state of any situation that we may enter. Without practice in meditation, spirituallity, and ever increasing our understanding of our world, we cannot hope to cultivate the spiritual evolution of minds or the trust within ourselves necessary to gain the intuitiveness required of a Jedi