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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.

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