1. Training - The purpose of training is to accommodate error without consequence. It is the key to learning and the Jedi Teachings are hazardous without guided practice.
2. Teaching - Love what you teach and love who you teach. Teachers affect eternity - who can tell where their influence stops ? The Jedi mentor is there to challenge the learner, but never to pose an obstacle to their progress.
3. Discipline - A disciplined mind will lead to peace, an undisciplined mind will lead to suffering. Indeed, for the mind without discipline, the Jedi Way will be impassable.
4. Dedication - Inspiration lasts a week, motivation will fade after a month, disciplined dedication lasts a lifetime. The way to do great work is to love what you do and who you work with.
5. Meditation - You have a treasure within you. The key to this treasure is meditation. It is not evasion, meditation fosters a serene confluence of the symbolic with the imaginary : reality. To the Jedi with a quiet mind, The Force will be felt and It will inform us.
6. Clear Intention - The Force follows intentionality. With a quiet mind, we direct our clear intention through the ocean of possibilities and allow The Force to work through us.
7. Balance - When we allow peace, harmony, and balance in our minds, The Force manifests in the world. In art and dream, we may proceed with abandon. In waking life shared with others, we must proceed with balance and discretion.
8. Humility - Our perpetual trial is humility. We understand our agency is not solely from us, but through us : it is of The Force. In feeling The Force in ourselves, we see It in everyone and everything.
9. Agency - Jedi are active in the world, acting as people of thought, and thinking like people of action. Be aware that beliefs become thoughts, thoughts become words, words become actions, actions become habits, habits become values, and values determine destiny.
10. Capability - The Force does not ask of our ability, only our availability. In opening to The Force, Its capabilities flow through us. Indeed, clear intention is not enough, Jedi do.
11. Self-Control - To control intention, the Jedi use The Force to tame the passions. In self-control lies the seed of freedom. We work to control our passions, lest someone exploit us through them.
12. Discretion - For the Jedi, discretion is the better part of valour. Indeed, agency without discretion comes invariably to a tragic end. True wisdom is found in knowing when to raise the eyebrow, rather than the voice or the sword.
13. Integrity - Taking the right action even when nobody's watching, integrity is easier kept than recovered. There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.
14. Fairness - The ability to rise above prejudice, all virtue is summed up in fairness. Indeed, lack of fairness is essentially a mark of weakness.
15. Charity - In brightening everything on which it shines, Charity is love in action. We live on what we are given but build our lives on what we give.
16. Compassion - Via compassion, The Force exhibits its true power. In seeking peace for others we practice compassion, in seeking peace for ourselves we practice compassion.
17. Empathetic Joy - The necessary counterbalance to compassion, empathetic joy prevents the waters of compassion from draining away. We aim to feel the joy of others just as keenly as their pain.
18. De-escalation - Between uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there is a demanding path of responsibility that we follow. Whenever we perceive monsters we should see to it we do not become monsters ourselves.
19. Valour - True valour lies between cowardice and rashness. It is a delicate skill, those having it never knowing for sure until the trial comes. In any case, valour that struggles is better than recklessness that thrives.
20. Honour - Acting with honour through The Force preserves peace. Always remember : if peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace.
21. Decency - Through decency, we render happenings tolerable. Decency is not derived through faith but precedes it. If decency could be easily found in reality, would we have need of myth?
Notes:
1. From Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
2. From Alexandre Orion and Scott Hayden.
3. From words attributed to Gautama Buddha. Adapted from Katherine Hepburn.
4. From John Bingham. From Steve Jobs.
5. From Eckhart Tolle. From Thich Naht Hahn. From Rumi.
6. From Maia Toll. From Deepak Chopra.
7. From Louise Hay. From Patti Smith.
8. From C.S. Lewis. From John Ruskin. See definition of ‘Hierophany’.
9. From Henri Bergson. From Mahatma Gandhi.
10. From Neal A. Maxwell. From George Bernhard Shaw.
11. From Parahansa Yogananda. From Anon.
12. From Shakespeare. From Leon Gambetta. From Boonha Mohammed.
13. From C.S. Lewis and Thomas Paine. From Tom Peters.
14. From Wes Fursler and Aristotle. From Emma Goldman.
15. From Confucius and Dinah Craik. From Winston Churchill.
16. From Gautama Buddha. From the Dalai Lama.
17. Inspired by Tim Ferris.
18. From Dominique de Villepin. From Nietzsche.
19. From Miguel de Cervantes. From Tacitus. From Hegel.
20. From Brandon Sanderson. From John Russell.
21. From Joseph Marie. From Christopher Hitchens. From Thomas Hardy.
Copied from the Temple of the Jedi Order
Self-Healed Madman
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