05 January, 2023

The winter months are truly dark times. Cold and unforgiving, the weather turns malicious as the sun retreats from the sky, leaving us with wind that chills our bones and darkness which penetrates our souls. Food is scarce to non-existent, leading many of our animal friends to retreat to the safety of their burrows where they hibernate in order to preserve their energy. Plants go dormant, moving all of their energy to their roots to preserve themselves for the coming spring. And we humans, pampered as we may be by our ubiquitous technology, battle seasonal depression and other illnesses as we attempt to maintain the same level of productivity year-round.

Nevertheless, winter serves an important role for our planet and for all who inhabit it. Not only do the changing seasons help to regulate global temperatures, the colder weather provides a vital rest and recovery period for many animals and plants. While bears are the animals perhaps most associated with hibernation, many other animals vital to our ecosystems, such as bumblebees, bats, snakes, and squirrels, also prefer to take a long winter’s nap. Additionally, many fruit bearing trees and shrubs require a period of cold dormancy in order to save up enough energy to produce fruit in the spring and summer months. Even we humans benefit from colder temperatures, which have been shown to improve cognitive abilities and help us to sleep more soundly.

As we begin a new year and navigate these colder months, try to reflect on the importance of slowing down and taking time to rest. Though our modern lives often demand that we maintain a consistent pace throughout the year, taking time to rest, reflect, and recover are vital components of a healthy existence. Not only does taking time for yourself help you physically, but it also helps you mentally and spiritually. We are not robots, and just as the natural world around us takes time to relax, so too should we.

May the Force be with you.

Sasha, the Onion Knight

From the Channel description:

"The emotion hunter"

Hello pack, today we are wolves! Wolves are not known for their explosive energy while hunting, but instead by their resilience, they can track a prey for miles and miles and only attack when the time is right to do so. So today we are wolves, and we will track a specific emotion, in ourselves for 24 hours. Your job is just to scout, you should not attack the emotion, just track the movements throughout the day. Use the eyes of the wolf to register, and then together as a pack we will share the intel we gathered, to find a plan of action."

The Wolf Den started as a Shadow project to develop a tool to better understand emotions and how they act in our bodies, and the sensations that they provide.

So, as wolves, we hunt them down, stalking them, either as a pack, or solo, and share with the group the results. This creates a richer understanding of the emotion being hunted down. To share your experience in the hunt, you may choose whatever way it feels comfortable to you, some examples are story telling, drawings, music, poetry. Or you may choose to simple say the feelings they are bringing up in a direct manner. Personally I like to use the Wolf form, to do the hunting. I find it to be a fun way of exploring.

One important thing is you are not required to share any of your personal history, in fact, the goal is to remove yourself from it, and tackling the emotion as it really is, leaving out all the history attached to it, so if anything, you are advised to detach from personal history entirely. As I said before, although this is a Shadow tool, it doesn't require any shadow training to engage, so everyone is welcome to participate, no matter what your aspect, if any. I hope you are able to enjoy this space as much as I have, and most of all, that these hunts can bring you some insight on the nature of emotions.

Natural order accounts for the progressive development through time. In nature, one season follows another in the proper sequence, without haste. A tree grows from a seedling as an adult grows from an infant. A Jedi’s training is similar, it does not work backwards nor can it be rushed.

Only humans tend to hurry and rush things. Our minds race through things faster than life. We tend to ignore the mindfulness activities and resort to rushing through things with such haste. We set goals, which tend to be so arbitrary. Goals are good and can be productive, but I would suggest dropping the notion of rigid time schedules. Time goals tend to be unrealistic, even while utilizing the Force; we can not see the future. Life holds too many twists and turns, too many changes to second-guess the natural order of things.

When training we understand that progress is a function of both time and intensity. One can spend more time at less intensity and vice versa, we just need to maintain a balance.

If you begin to over train or be too intense, you’ll lose motivation and eventual cease your activity. Yet if you train reluctantly, lacking modest goals, the same fate will befall you.

Humor is a good sign that you have a balanced perspective, reflecting your alignment with the natural order of life’s flow. After all, no matter how Jedi-like our aspirations are, we remain eternally small in the great universe. Our achievements will be the action that brings harmony to this beautiful world!

Be well!

Mark Faulkner, Jedi Master

“As a would-be Jedi Student you will need a teacher or a Master. You may not realize this but you have one! Look around you will see them the best one you could ever find—just take a good look in a mirror.” —Jason - Christopher Garrett, Jedi Knight

“When you feel the dark side energies turned against you, you just use your Jedi abilities to take power away from your opponent, rather than to inflict harm.  This technique blinds your enemy to the Force with a wall of light, a permanent blockage if you so choose, rendering him unable to use Jedi powers.  It is difficult.  And it is the most devastating attack possible using the powers of the light side.  To block a Jedi from the Force - even a Dark Jedi - is a terrible thing.” - Udan-Urr

During the conversation on Curse Work, the topic of “Binding” came up several times.  Although I could have waited until next year to address the topic as another “Halloween Special”, I know myself well enough to know I’ll completely forget about it.  So, I thought I’d go ahead and speak on it while I still have the thoughts fresh in my head.

Sometime last year, Jedi Conclave’s founder Dan Hatter put forward a challenge to create an Jedi’s Escalation of Force Model.  I took up this challenge and even wrote up a model for a Metaphysical Escalation of Force Jedi could apply.  In a Physical Self-Defense model, the last resort is “Lethal Force”, and should only be applied in the case of imminent loss of life, limb or eyesight.  But where you would see “Lethal Force” on the Metaphysical model, I put in “Binding”

Bindings are explicitly outlined for those instances where the target believes (or had actually) murdered someone using the Force.  Murder being defined as “premeditated killing”, not accidental, but rather the intended outcome of a metaphysical attack against someone else.  But it’s something you really need to give weight thought to.

Our Star Wars counterparts rarely ever used a Binding, which they called “Force Severe”.  From the above quote, one might come to the conclusion that one of the reasons it is rarely used is because it is difficult to pull off.  But honestly, I believe the emphasis is more on the last part of that quote.  And I kind of wonder if the real life author of this quote was/is or at least heavily researched paganry to determine the devastating blow that a binding would have on a person.

So let’s dive into a couple relevant community citations:

Relevant Community Citations

• Defense- A Jedi understands that defense is not purely physical, but that there are many ways to defend a person or property. As such, it is important to understand that Jedi are not vigilantes. If, however, they are in a position where they are called to defend themselves or someone else against loss of life, limb or senses, they are allowed to apply the appropriate amount of force necessary for defense. (Jedi Compass)
• Recklessness- A Jedi does not take unnecessary risks, knowing that their life is important to the Jedi Mission of bettering the world around them. In overcoming recklessness, a Jedi acknowledges and is mindful of how small the impact is perceived to have on themselves or others. (Jedi Compass)
• Responsibility- Responsibility is at the heart of learning to overcome our problems. A Jedi should be held responsible for all of their actions. Without it, we cannot grow, we cannot help others and we cannot justify why we are to be taken seriously.
• Jedi respect all life, in any form (Skywalker Jedi Code)
• Justice: To always seek the path of ‘right’. A Jedi is unencumbered by bias or personal interest. Justice is a double-edged sword, one that protects the weak, yet also passes judgements according to a set of values. A Jedi tolerates that which is not Jedi and does not pass judgement on that which causes no harm for it is just.  (Temple of the Jedi Order’s 21 Maxims [modified from Chanada’s Work])
• Courage: To have the will. To be a Jedi sometimes means choosing the more difficult path, the personally expensive one. A Jedi knows they must make the right choice, take the right side and that the weak they have sworn to defend often stand alone.  A Jedi puts aside fear, regret, and uncertainty yet knows the difference between courage and sheer stupidity. (Temple of the Jedi Order’s 21 Maxims [modified from Chanada’s Work])

Some of this may be difficult to see how it comes together, but when you read them all as part of the same guidance it will hopefully begin to make more sense.  So let’s talk about the ramifications of a Binding.

As my friend Juli pointed out at Jedi Church, “Binding is simply removing the tools someone is using to harm”.  At the same time, it removes their ability to protect themselves from metaphysical attack.  To be fair, I don’t believe Juli intended for the term “binding” to mean a complete disconnect from using the Force metaphysically, because she goes on to say “If you are going further-- severing someone's connection to the Force (impossible btw), making defense impossible, and so on, then you are once again, not binding.”  But I want you to picture in your head the following:

Say you’ve learned how to only fight with one singular weapon your whole life (it can be a knife, a spear, a sword, a firearm, etc), then suddenly it’s taken from you and you can no longer use it.  You’ve become very reliant on that weapon to protect you, and then you come into a situation where you need a defend yourself or someone else against an attacker.  You may have the physical capability to overcome your assailant, but because you never trained your body to utilize that muscle, your actual ability puts you at a major disadvantage.

That’s the risk you are taking when you bind someone (which relates to “overcoming recklessness, and the line regarding respecting life).  You are cutting them off from being able to defend themselves.  And let’s be honest, if they are so entrenched in metaphysical workings that they have gone to the lengths of using it to murder- it’s quite possible they have or will made some enemies amongst other magic practitioners.

Which brings us to our responsibility as Jedi once we’ve done this.  We have to be accountable for our actions.  In the real world, when a police officer binds someone (which is more legally referred to as Detaining or Arresting), they have to assume responsibility for their care until they are released. Realistically, that should be how we Jedi look at such an action as well- because we are rendering them “weak”.  This ties into verbiage of Temple of the Jedi Order’s rewrite of the 21 Maxims tenet on “Defense”.  Although one could say that the next portion of that sentence allows us to cut them loose and leave them to contend with the consequences, such thought processes completely ignores the intent of mercy reflected in the Jedi Code regarding “respecting all life, in any form” and the Maxim on “Courage” that speaks to making the righteous choice.  It also happens to make a point of reiterating that Jedi defend the weak.

Binding a person metaphysically is a serious matter.  If you want to fully live up to the Jedi Path, it means that you have two choices in order to ensure that you have integrated the whole of what it means to be a Jedi when you make this choice, given everything listed in our philosophy-

1. You can make it a non-permanent binding and become the person’s metaphysical guardian until you feel the binding can be released.
   
   OR
   
   
2. You can make it a permanent binding and become the person’s metaphysical guardian until you have sufficiently ensured that they can protect themselves using other tools that they have access too.

Binding isn’t the only way to deal with this kind of problem though.  If someone believes they have or actually did use Metaphysical attacks to murder someone, then this speaks to a much deeper problem within the individual.  In truth, perhaps the most responsible answer to the problem, is to insist they reach out to someone for counseling.  Because the root of the problem will echo in different ways around their life if it’s not attended to in the here and now, regardless of whether or not they can use the Force for attack.