1.       Where have your spiritual beliefs originated? For instance, were you raised with a religion, or were religious and spiritual topics never addressed in your house?

I was raised as a Christian.  I was born and baptized Catholic, and learned a little Catholicism during my youth.  My mother was a non-practicing Catholic, and my stepfather an atheist, so my religious training when I was young was limited to “There is a God, maybe you should pray to him sometime a little bit maybe.”

Around the age of ten, my mother converted to Penecostal, and I was brought to church to be brainwashed taught about the Lord, and his message of oppressive, regimented fundamentalist Christianity.  I attended church twice a week, and went to a Brainwashing Church Camp during the summers.  I learned all about the Penecostal interpretation of the Bible, how to be a good little boy and put on an appearance of being nice at Church, then go home and be a despicable human being.  While I’m sure I was brought there and taught with good intentions, it was obvious that behind the nice, Christian façade most of the laypeople of that church were merely putting on a show for social purposes.  Upon reaching adulthood, I left the church and declared myself an atheist.  At the time, I’d already long-stopped believing the empty religion I was given, but part of me still wanted to believe in a higher power and pursue spiritual truths.  I had a distaste for religion, though, so I ended up becoming an atheist (even an antitheist) as a reaction to that.

About three years later, a gentleman who was a regular customer at the gas station I worked at began discussing spiritual topics with me.  He’d heard about my abandonment of religion from my mother, and wanted to try to convert me to Christianity.  This man, however, was the real deal.  He was a serious, practicing Christian, not a socialite like the others I’d met.  He had a doctorate in divinity, along with a degree in genetics and a strong interest in philosophy.  At first, I argued with him, using your basic atheist arguments, but eventually I realized he wasn’t like others who’d tried in the past.  He encouraged me to look into other types of spiritual philosophy, to think for myself and reason.  He also encouraged me to go back to school, and this jumpstart helped me restart my life.  A year later, I discovered Jedi Realism, and here I am.

 

2.       How do you know when you are doing the right thing vs. the wrong thing? Do you base this on external laws (like the 10 commandments, or the laws of your country)? Do you listen to your conscience, even though it may go against the standard ‘rules’ of society?

My perceptions of right and wrong are guided primarily by my conscience, rather than by external rules.  I believe we all know what is innately right and wrong, which is why in every society you see laws against murder, theft, rape, etc., no matter what religious or philosophical systems they may use.  As for the “rules” of society, I generally ignore them, except in cases where what I do might brush the law, in which case I’ll take into account the possible consequences of my actions before moving ahead.  I don’t consider that a moral decision, however, but merely a calculation of opportunity cost.

In trickier moral situations, where there may be no clear answer, I simply go by the rule “The many before the few.”  What will benefit the most people, while harming the fewest?  That is the choice I will take.

 

3.       What are your beliefs about death? Do you believe we have one lifetime or more in physical form? What do you believe happens when you die? Where did these beliefs come from?

I believe that when we die, we die.  We certainly continue to exist, but we no longer occupy the physical body we once had, nor are we alive in any biological sense.  I also do not believe that we go to any “heaven” or “hell”, nor do we become spirits and retain our memories and personalities.  We simply cease to be as individuals, and the essence of what we were, call it a soul if you will, goes back to being merely a part of the whole.  We become one with the Force, if you will.  Or achieve Moksha.  Or Bodhi.  Really, whatever you like to call it.

I got these ideas when I began studying elemental magick, and its approach of all things being one.  I eventually studied some Hinduism and Buddhism, which fleshed out these ideas a little more for me, although I was never too hot on the whole reincarnation thing.

 

4.       Do you believe in God of some kind? If so, what are the primary characteristics of this God? If not, why do you believe this?

Tricky question.  This mostly depends on whether or not we define “God” as a thing with a will and personality.  If so, then no, I am an atheist.  Otherwise, yes.  I believe in a force that guides and shapes the entirety of the universe.  This force is not necessarily intelligent, nor need it have a will.  Much like gravity forms planets and solar systems without needing to think, and evolution creates complex lifeforms without any will, so the Force need not be intelligent.  Whether it is or not is debatable, but I tend to think not, or at least not by our definition of “intelligence.”

I also believe that this force is interactive.  It affects us, and we can, in turn, affect it.  I picked this up back when I was training in psi:  there had to be something there that I was manipulating in order to do what I did, and it affected me as well, whether I wanted it or not.  At first I followed the energy model, and thought I was moving psi, chi, whatever around, but I eventually came to consider the energy model to be an inexact description of what we were doing.  I came to subscribe to the idea of the manipulation of a force or principle of the universe after reading up on dynamic psi, a system of psionics free of the energy model being developed by the Veritas Society.

 

5.       What do you consider spiritual practices? Which do you practice (if any)?

Any practice that helps one’s spiritual development, or improves one’s character.  This does not necessarily mean religious or spiritual works or ceremonies seen in modern religion, as they do not necessarily confer any spiritual benefit on the user:  one can spend months praying and receive no benefit if he does not learn and improve himself through doing so, and if one does not understand the philosophical underpinnings of a religious ceremony and participate in it with all his heart and effort to become better through it, than it is merely spiritual roleplaying.

For myself, I practice martial arts, exercise, meditate (not as often as I should, though), act charitably and compassionately toward others, study Jedi Realist and martial philosophy, spend a lot of time thinking about said philosophy, and try to apply what I learn in every situation I’m in throughout the day.



The first of the three beliefs I have selected is belief in the oneness of the Universe.  I have chosen this because it is the cornerstone upon which my entire philosophical foundation is build, and as such must be discussed.  I first came across this belief when I was studying the esoteric arts, specifically elemental magick.  There I first heard the phrase “All is one, and one is all.”  It’s a basic magick teaching, but a critical one.  I wasn’t too sure about the truth of it at the time.  All of existence is just one thing and what we see as individual things are really just interconnected parts?  It seemed a little much to swallow at the time.

Later on, when I began studying Jedi Realism, I began to see this idea in a new light.  At the time, I’d believed in the Force as being a spiritual force, no more, but what if everything was connected?  What if everything WAS the Force?  It blew my mind when I realized this.  It still does today.

The second of these beliefs is a belief in balance in the world.  All things are in balance, light is balanced by darkness, motion by stillness, emptiness by fullness… all things have an opposite, and these are present in equal amounts in the world.  Even things like order and chaos are needed in equal amounts to make the world “tick”, so to speak.

This idea was one that I was first introduced to when I learned of Taoism, so long ago that I actually don’t really remember it.  It struck me as a profound insight into the nature of things, and I really liked the idea.  It was something that could be seen in everyday interactions between people and things in the world.  These are seen particularly in cycles:  winter balances summer, day balances night.

My third belief, and one which I have had the most trouble with, was the belief in an unseen order to the universe.  Not just an order, but an organizing force driving it.  In my youth, this was God, although as I became older, this force became less personified and more of a primal, elemental force, particularly during my studies of magick.  I discarded this and became an atheist for a while, but eventually found myself drawn back to the principle, which has evolved more for me over time, eventually becoming the Force.  Indeed, one of the reasons I was drawn to the Jedi path was because my conception of the force governing the universe eventually became very much like the Force of Star Wars.

I see this one in action every day.  It is a governing principle of the universe that order comes from chaos:  clouds of dust in space form into suns and planets, and jumbles of elements in a solution form organic chemicals and eventually life.  It’s an automatic process that is an inherent part of the universe, and this is the Force.

So, for the short time I’ve been back in the Jedi realm, I’ve been doing some introspection.  Coming back and looking at beginner-level material again has prompted me to rethink why I became a Jedi.  It seems in the rush to gain more skill and knowledge, I’ve lost sight of the primary reasons I chose this path:  at some point I stopped doing it for all the reasons I’ve outlined here before in my “Why Jedi?” assignment, and started doing it more to feel like a Jedi and stroke my ego than to cultivate spiritual attributes.  I think this, more than anything, was what killed my progress.

I’ve also given my path a lot of thought.  I spread myself too thin before, between martial arts, physical training, personal training and meditation, and formal training in two different Jedi organizations.  Not only did this result in a lack of overall structure and focus in my training, I was tackling too many things at once to make progress in any one thing at anything but a glacial pace, which hurt my motivation to continue.  As a result, I’ve not only “condensed” my training since last time, but also taken more time to build an overall plan for it, so that I have concrete goals I am working towards, and am not trying to tackle too much at once.

Currently, my training consists of three activities:

Firstly, kenpo karate.  Different people use different tools to explore spirituality.  Some like to meditate a lot, others make rock gardens, and still others like to magick it up.  I explore spirituality primarily through the martial arts now.  In this way, I can see things from a warrior perspective, which is beneficial to someone who is training to eventually become a knight.  This also knocks out my need for martial training and fitness training, since I more or less lump running and weight lifting together with my karate now; the gym I work out at even happens to be where my karate instructor teaches.

Secondly, through reading and deep thought.  I’ve spent a lot of time reading over the past several months, on a number of different spiritual, philosophical, and human topics.  I’ve even chosen electives at college for the past two semesters that fit into my Jedi training (World Religions, Humanities, World Civilizations) and give me a more holistic view of the world, and a better understanding of other peoples, cultures, and spiritual paths.  I carefully consider everything I learn, and often take time out of my day to just sit and think.

Thirdly, lessons in Jediism from online communities.  While the latter two have been components of my training for a good while now, this I’m only now getting back into properly.  This will consist of interacting in communities on IJRS and TOTJO, as well as doing training exercises from them.  In formal training, I’ll be focusing almost entirely on the IJRS curriculum, simply because they have a more robust curriculum, and because right now the last thing I need is a teacher pushing me… I really need to learn to set myself a reasonable pace.

This will constitute the whole of my training, and I’ll spend maybe 1-2 hours a day total at most on training.  This will slow my progress from what I could be doing, but once again, I need to focus on pacing myself properly.

I’m going to try to get the IJRS introductory coursework done by the end of January; and I’m not going to make any concrete goals for my training outside of that; simply to train and see where things end up.

For a while now, I’ve stayed off of the online Jedi community, for a number of reasons.  While I have continued to train, I felt that I was not able to complete the types of training required by groups like TOTJO and IJRS, due to impatience and lack of commitment.  I found it difficult to complete (or even start) many exercises, and had trouble keeping in touch with teachers.  In addition, I felt disconnected from the Jedi community, due to feeling little compulsion to interact on forums.  These are things I had to fix before I could even contemplate trying to complete my formal training again.  A quick look through the logs of this blog shows many times when I ambitiously restarted my training, only to quit weeks (sometimes days!) later.

Since then, I have purposely avoided the Internet’s Jedi community, focusing on solo training.  I’ve concentrated on learning and understanding the Jedi Code, developing my physical fitness and martial arts skills, cultivating knowledge and learning via reading and college classes, and developing stronger willpower and a better work ethic.  I’ve made great strides in that, and feel that I may finally be ready to continue my Jedi training proper.

I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and delayed my return several times, simply because I wanted to be sure I was properly prepared to continue my training.

My goals are to participate more actively on forums, and to try to complete at least one exercise from TOTJO or IJRS each week.  I tried to rush in the past, to push myself to complete a lot in a small time, but I have come to understand that taking my time and training at a slower pace leads to greater gains in the long run, and helps me avoid overstimulation and burnout.

I’ll start posting more work here in the near future.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, although that’s not due to a lack of training or of will.  I made the terrible mistake of getting back into World of Warcraft, which for the first week or so ate up all my time, until I got it under control.  You’d think a guy who has had to break WoW addiction not once but twice would have figured this out by now.  The fact that I got my play under control in just a week, though, is a testament to how far I’ve come in terms of self-discipline, as well as a signpost telling me how much farther  I have to go.

I’ve been doing regular workouts and meditation, lots of thinking, and am in the process of getting a new teacher over at TOTJO.  My potential teacher and I are being very careful, though, since my rushed selection last time didn’t exactly end well.  Hopefully this will end up better; I feel I do a lot better in training when I have an actual teacher as opposed to just written lessons.

As for the IJRS stuff, I’m working on that at the moment; I’ve kind of stalled on the creed exercise.  I honestly don’t know what my three biggest beliefs are.  I guess maybe the underlying assumptions I make about the universe?  Things like “I exist” or “there is a structure to the universe”.  These are things pretty much everyone believes, however, so I’m not sure how that would work out.  This’ll take some more thought.

In other, better news, my workouts are doing well; I’m losing weight and getting stronger and faster.  Hopefully soon I’ll be within the weight requirements of the National Guard; I’m looking forward to doing some military service.

Until next time.

This is a new feature I’m adding to this blog, to get myself into the habit of regularly journaling about my training.  I’ll discuss the previous week’s training, successes and failures, and where I intend to go from here.

A lot happened this past week.  My teacher from the Temple of the Jedi Order and I parted ways due to incompatibility.  I’m currently in line for a new teacher over there, hopefully one who will take a more active hand in my training, and with whom I can work better.

Secondly, I’ve taken my next steps in the IJRS introductory course, completing the force and personal exercises, and next I’ll be going into the creed and communication exercises, which I hope to complete this week.  I’m doing well on that front.

In terms of TOTJO training, I’m catching up on the apprentice exercises I missed while training away from the Internet for a while, but those are posted in my journal on that site.

Meditation is going well, I learned to let go and just go with the flow, and am now able to meditate while actively doing something, although that’s somewhat difficult.  I’m also gaining greater control over my mind and what’s in it, making particularly good steps with my fear of heights, which I’ll need to conquer before joining the guard this fall.

Aside from that, all is going well.

As a part of my continuing studies into spirituality and philosophy, I decided to revisit Christianity.  It’s the religion I was brought up in, but I have hard feelings toward it, mostly due to the mass hypocrisy and spiritually empty Christians I dealt with growing up.  The Bible is still a source of profound wisdom, however, and I’ve decided that studying it will be one of the things I will focus on over the next year or so.

With that being said, I decided to go back to church today.  This was the same spiritually empty church I was raised in, although to be fair, it wasn’t that bad.  Back then (and, I believe, still now) there was a core of Christians who took their spirituality seriously.  So, I decided to go back there and see what I could learn from them.

Firstly, this church has changed.  They were a fairly small church when I was there.  Now, they have a new, massive building, and huge attendance.  I couldn’t believe this was the same church.  Other changes I noticed were that the new building was far more… opulent than the last.  You know those televangelist shows, where the stage is nicely furnished, and everyone is wearing fancy suits?  This whole church is like that, not just the stage.

I decided to reserve judgement however, and attend the service with an open mind.  Firstly, the praise and worship (which is ironic, since it’s just lip service; true worship is obedience) was about what you’d expect from a penecostal church; a choir singing songs about how awesome Jesus is.  Lots of confusing the metaphor of the Bible for literal truth.  You probably know the drill.

The sermon was better.  The Pastor spoke on Luke 15:8, which I quote here for convenience:

⁸Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?

⁹And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

There are a few basic things that are shown in this verse:

Firstly, take personal responsibility for what happens to you, and for the mistakes you make.  The woman did not get angry, she did not blame anyone else or think someone had stolen it.  She simply began a diligent search for her lost coin.

In these verses, the house represents the woman’s self, and the coin represents something dear to her that she has lost.  This could be lost integrity, patience, innocence, etc.  She diligently searches for what she has lost, working to reclaim it without rest, showing us an example of the diligence we should all have in our own spiritual journeys.

…and that was it.  The rest of the sermon was typical Mother’s Day fare, talking about the responsibilities and difficulties of being a mother, and how we should show more appreciation for them.  I agree that this is a very difficult job that is vastly under-appreciated, but there wasn’t great spiritual substance in that bit.

I’ll go to this church again sometime, and see how things go.  It was bad at first glance, but perhaps it isn’t as bad as it seemed at first.  We’ll see.

Why become a Jedi?  This was a question that ran through my mind the first time I’d ever heard of Jediism.  I was a studying psi at the time, and while the areas of energy work and psychic skills were known to me, the idea of trying to become real life Jedi seemed childish to me.  I saw it as no more than fat Star Wars nerds roleplaying, and dismissed it as easily without even bothering to look it up or learn more about it.  To explain my reasons for being a Jedi, I think I should first discuss how and why I went from this to a Jedi.

Years after first hearing of Jediism, after quitting psi training and becoming a staunch atheist and materialist, my life was in shambles.  I had only a part-time job, no car, no high school diploma, lived with my mom, was extremely antisocial, and had no ambitions for the future, was putting forth no effort to improve myself.  My days were filled with playing video games, trolling around on the Internet, and pretending I knew something more about martial arts than how to do a horse stance.  I became an annoyance and an asshole.

While I could have continued this downward spiral for years longer, something interesting happened.  At the gas station where I worked part time, one of the regular truckers began talking to me, trying to convert me to Christianity.  At first I tried to rebuff his arguments with basic philosophy and science, but he was too clever for that.  This man turned out to have a D.D., and before that had studied genetic science.  Over the course of many long discussions, he gradually began to open my eyes to the larger world that I had been ignoring, to basic spiritual truths that I had dismissed as nonexistent.

He eventually challenged me to go back to school, which I did, earning a GED, and then enrolling in college.  I began exploring spirituality, and fixing the shambling wreck that was my life.  I still had no clear-cut goals, though, no base spiritual philosophy to study.  I had long since decided that the major religions weren’t for me:  they were more concerned with religion than spirituality, and I was looking for the latter.  I wanted to develop myself as a human being, rather than merely following some ancient dogma that has little to do with spiritual development.

Then, last October, Jediism came my way again.  I really can’t remember where I heard of it again, but I seriously considered it this time.  I had long been a fan of Star Wars, both the films and expanded universe.  I looked up to the Jedi.  They were strong, calm, serene, and had excellent self-control.  Most of all, they had the spiritual connection to the world that I was looking for, the connection to the Force.  For me, being a Jedi wasn’t about trying to learn to use a lightsaber or to gain force powers, nor was it a way to earn recognition from others.  It was a spiritual philosophy, a path I could follow in life.

This is what I wanted out of Jediism.  It helps me become a better human being.  A better follower, a better leader, a better warrior, a better person all around.  It also allowed me to explore the esoteric with a solid base (the code and creed) as a starting point, but not one filled with robotic dogma that would restrict my studies.

I also admire that the Jedi way is focused on self-improvement:  Jedi are expected to train themselves physically, to become better in control of themselves, calmer and wiser, and to become better people.  In most religions I had observed, there was no push to improve oneself.  You were expected to conform to rituals, say your prayers, and that was it.  There was no higher tier of knowledge and skill to work towards, nothing to strive or train for.  Jedi Realism gives me that.

So, now I train in the Jedi way.  Right now, my main goals are to keep the code in mind, and train every day without fail, to live as a Jedi.  Once I get that consistency down, I’ll work on other things.  Maintaining consistency in training is by far my greatest weakness, and once I’ve overcome it, I have no doubt I’ll make excellent progress towards becoming the Jedi I want to be.

When I completed the intuitive types questionnaire, it showed me as being overwhelmingly a mental intuitive.  This was not particularly surprising to me, as I’ve always approached life’s problems with thought and logic.  This goes hand-in-hand with my ADHD, however, in that it keeps me from stilling my mind and clearing it of thought.  I’ve solved this problem to a degree with void meditations, but I thought I’d try the Bubble of Love meditation, to see if it worked any better.  I’ve done it a few times over the past half year or so.

The very first time, I did a number of things wrong.  This was back when I was in my “timed meditation” phase, shooting for endurance rather than quality of meditation.  In addition, I hadn’t read the directions for the meditation properly; rather I only glanced over them.  Still, I felt a calm and peace that was greater than what I had been getting from void meditations.

Subsequent meditations have shown an increase in the depth of the meditation, with more of a relaxing, calming effect, and more clarity of the mind.  Recently, I have also begun to feel as if I am connected… almost like being part of a network, with cables branching out in different directions.  This is probably a terrible analogy, but it’s the best I can do.  I’m assuming this is probably me gaining awareness of my connection to the Force.

One problem I found I had was on the bit where I’m supposed to open myself up to love.  This was a problem because I’m not entirely certain what love is or feels like; I just substituted affection and compassion, the closest things I could think of.

All in all, it’s a useful meditation that I’ve added to my toolkit for regular use.

Since I’m enlisting in military service, my training is going to shift away from the weights I’ve been using for the past few months, and towards bodyweight exercises.  I’m using progression plans from onehundredpushups.com and its brethren to slowly build up my ability over the next twelve weeks.  Training starts Monday, but I needed to test myself today to see where I’m at.  I’m not happy with where I’m at, but I can fix this.

Push-ups – 5 (Correct form!)

Pull-ups – 0

Squats – 51 (Could have done more, but test maxed out)

Crunches – 22

It’s obvious where my strength lies from this test (my legs, definitely), but I really need to build my core and upper body.  I’ll get plenty of practice with this, though.