Personal Training – Why Jedi
Part I: Discovering the Path
I think I answered this question before in a couple of previous posts, but where my first footprints lie upon my Jedi path is from the world when I was about two years old. From the day my grandmother sat me in front of the television to watch the original trilogy, the ‘way of the Jedi’ is a major part of the way I have lived my life. I have always wanted to be as the Jedi were in the movies – calm, cool-headed, in control – and the idea of being the mediator in a situation or the mentor to someone who needed a guide and a helping hand always seemed like a great place to be.
When I got older, I realized that the Jedi ideal – or the ideal as I figured it – was very much paralleled in the police force. I would see cops speeding by, lights flashing, sirens wailing, as they went on to wherever to stop those who were doing wrong, and I would think about the missions they had been sent on. Were they stopping a robbery? Were they rushing to help someone who had been attacked? It was always an intriguing part of my day in my childhood, now somewhere around eight or nine years old.
When the prequels came out, and the structure of the Order became more concrete, I realized that the police force was in no way the only ‘Jedi’ group in the real world. I started reading my way through the expanded universe, and it hit me. Paramedics were the healers. Firefighters were like front-line defenders against a powerful foe. Teachers, tutors, and other educational professionals were the guides for the younglings. The Order was living and breathing around me all throughout my life, and bit by bit, the idea of the Jedi wholly became my world, and I realized that, as a mediator, I wanted to do something for the world. I never wanted to be renowned for my work, but I wanted my work to make a difference in the world. Initially, this meant that I was going to apply myself to a career in law enforcement as a police officer.
My mother had different plans, however, and tried to put me into a tech field, something that I felt I was not going to be happy with. When that fell through, due to some financial issues, I spent a while wondering how I was supposed to get back on track. I felt very much like a fallen Jedi, but rather than having forsaken the light side, I had been pushed off track and felt that I did not deserve to walk back on. After all, I had let someone else decide my path. She may be my mother, but she is not my Obi-Wan. She was more like Uncle Owen, wanting me to stay and help her, and to some degree, to live vicariously through me. She wanted me to do something mundane. Yoda may have told Luke that a Jedi does not desire excitement and adventure, but I wanted something more than the life she tried to plan for me.
My world changed so much on May 31, 2007. That day, despite the fact that I was heavily medicated, and the method involved scalpels rather than just pushing, I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl, Dyana Karen, and that was the day I will always believe to be my ‘message from Princess Leia’. Seeing that small baby sleeping in the bassinet in the NICU (she and I were both running bad fevers), I discovered the path again and proudly returned to the Order that existed in my own little world. That September, after a long bout of searching and wondering how I was going to manage being a mother and a student, I enrolled at the University of Phoenix’s Axia undergraduate online college. My original intention was to get my Associates and try out for the police force, but about seven or eight months into the program, I finally started watching episodes of the anime, Fullmetal Alchemist, and there is one episode where a member of the military, Maes Hughes, is gunned down during an investigation, and when his daughter and wife are at the funeral, the girl starts asking why the soldiers are burying her daddy, and that he needs to wake up because he still has work to do. That scene just killed me in so many metaphorical and emotional ways, and the very idea of ever risking that happening to Dyana turned my blood to ice. I completely faltered in my classes the following week. Though all my assignments were turned in, they were all at least a day late and nowhere near the quality of the rest of my work. Here I was, about a third of the way though my program, and I had suddenly been scared away from the Jedi path I had been following for so many years.
It was another couple of weeks before I had my great epiphany – I did not have to be a warrior. Sometimes, Jedi served as counselors or guides on the journey for others, and I felt that I could still serve the law enforcement field, but in a suit rather than in uniform, behind a desk working with juveniles that had been tempted by the many so-called ‘easy outs’ of the dark side. Crime affects people of all genders, ethnicities, social backgrounds, financial standings, and ages, so where else would I fit into the scheme of making the world better than trying to help the kids that needed guidance? Maybe, just by showing that I care, and that I want to help, I could show them the same hope and light that I found in my life.
May of 2009 brought another change – and no, I am not just talking about the dawn of the ‘terrible twos’ – when my roommate and friend DeAngelo discovered a local order of Jedi Realists here in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Suddenly, I was no longer feeling outcast for the weird way I had chosen to live my life. All of a sudden, here are other individuals that find more than entertainment value in the works of George Lucas, people who try to find the balance between the real world and the Jedi Order, living the Code as best we can in our world.
This, of course, brings us to the present day – I am a Padawan in the Order, a college graduate who is going back to school for a Bachelors of Science in Criminal Justice in October of ’09, a student also at the Institute as well as in a martial art called Chikara Budokai, training under Sensei Ross Greenberg.
Part II: The View Along the Way
Jedi is something that escapes an easy answer or definition. This really comes from the idea that so many people in so many professions are part of the Order in their own way, from librarians to foreign diplomats, people who, despite their own ideas, are in my eyes working as part of the Order to keep peace within our little section of the Milky Way Galaxy. Like I mentioned in the previous section, I see people who serve in the path of the light side of the Force, who are Jedi in my eyes, and there are so many.
For myself, however, I know of what I want of myself, what I want to be as a Jedi. As a practicing (however irregular) NeoPagan, one of the first things I ever started studying was herbal therapy and the use of various herbs and such in teas, a skill that, while still an amateur at, has proven quite effective in various situations. Additionally, I want to be attuned to the Force. While I can use the psychic powers I have in spell work and other energy work, I lack a deep connection to it. While I can link up with the universal energies randomly and deeply, and can hold the energy during any sort of psychic work, I do not have a regularly fulfilling connection. Not only am I only oftentimes aware of the Force, but I also fear a few of the abilities that the universe has granted me.
Being clairaudient is not the great ride some people in Hollywood would make it seem. After all, hearing the dead is really creepy when you have no idea who is doing the talking, and I became so fearful of that ability that, now, I am struggling to rebuild on it and develop it anew, since I did whatever I could to shut them out. Additionally, for anyone who has ever watched Danny Phantom, you understand what I refer to in saying that I have a ‘ghost sense’ that sends chills across my nerves in the presence of spiritual entities. Finally, there have been a couple of occasions where I, without knowing or understanding how, became a living conduit for the message of certain deities or powerful spirits. Most recently, I channeled Isis and Thoth during a chat with a friend I met online who was going through some tough personal issues. The problem here is that, when I do this, I have no idea how, and in the case I just mentioned, as well as previous ones, it leaves me completely drained.
The final aspect of the Jedi that I aspire to is that of the calm mediator. I have a bad habit of starting up conversations aimed at fixing situations that end up turning into arguments, and somewhere along the line, I go from calm discussion to yelling in very short order, and it gets completely out of control.
As for being a Jedi in my society, it is less about flashy lightsaber battles and wearing the clothing that denoted a Jedi, and more about doing everything within your power to help the people around you. Certain groups of Jedi are tasked with sending emergency supplies and aiding in areas struck by war or disaster, while others serve as mediators between areas with various disputes. I do not have the money to manage helping people in need, especially those far away from me, but when I have the time, I do like to volunteer to help with various stuff, such as my recent bit of work at the Greater Chicago Food Depository. If anyone lets me know of volunteer opportunities, as long as it does not conflict with previous plans or scheduling, I am there.
Part III: Looking Forward
The goals I have for my training for the next three months include starting and keeping up with a personal exercise regimen, aimed mostly at getting rid of the fat that gathered around my stomach area post-pregnancy and also targeting getting my arms into better shape. I have always had the issue of working on my legs, but never on my arms. I also want to work on developing my psychic connection to the universe, as well as attain greater understanding of the powers that I have, as well as the powers that others have. I plan on restarting my studies into the use of the tarot, as well as herbology, both for herbal cures as well as spell charms.
As for the next six months, I want to continue the previous actions, as well as start hiking/biking at least five miles a day, in whatever combination it happens to be in. I also want to have gotten somewhere in developing my sword skills, in all four variations that I want to study – single lightsaber, single shoto, double shoto, and staff (double-bladed). What this likely means is that I need to find a way to get out by Sensei’s more often than once a week, which is my current scheduling.
As for the next year, the two additional things I want by that point are to have developed my own lightsaber demonstration kata for at least two of my four sword forms, and to have attained the next belt rank in my martial arts classes.
In terms of the biggest challenges, I think the real issue is that I have a two-year-old daughter, a fiancée that works full-time, and a roommate that is very irregular in regards to when he is and is not willing to watch Dyana, so getting out of the house on the regular may present an issue. I will figure out a way past it.
I feel somewhere between wondering how I am going to manage all this and assured that when I start doing stuff with the intention of keeping up with it, especially with the support of my fiancée, it will be like there was never an issue at all. One thing that always presented an issue before in my life is that my family never really seemed like they cared about or supported the various things I did in my life, and now, with the family I have started, it has totally changed.
Until next time,
May the Force be with you,
Padawan Tiphereth Amarandir
