User blog:Aramirtheranger/The Code of Balance

The force shall free me, Though I am passionate, I am serene, Though I am ignorant, I walk with knowledge, Though I am powerful, I'll not want victory, There is no death, only chaos There is no life, only harmony The force is free, my chains are broken. ____________________________________________________________________

"The force shall free me," > Freedom CAN be attained through the Force, as it did for others. By recitation, meditation and discussion under tutelage of a master and your colleagues, you will understand how the Force is free and how you can wield it to become free. By reciting all the sententiae, you are at all times reminded of the paths already walked and the paths that lie before you. Jedi think the Force IS free, Sith think it MAKES you free, but it can be be controlled (therefore in itself wasn't free). If you put an AND here instead of an OR, the reformist idea is that the Force both is free AND can make you free.

"Though I am passionate, I am serene" > The aim here is to learn about your passions, learn to be without agitation and achieve serenity. This is the first step as a true adept of the force, since untamed emotions and passions are dangerous in combination with the power of knowledge that comes after. While Jedi believed they could rid themselves of passion and Sith believed serenity to be a silly weak thing, the reformist JeSi believes that he is inherently passionate, but can achieve serenity to better wield the Force. It took a while but the one thing that convinced both Sith and Jedi of the usefulness of this tenet was: The quieter you become, the more you are able to listen.

"Though I am ignorant, I walk with knowledge," > This is a reiteration of the first lesson, however now, you explore knowledge guided by the code. It is also a reminder that you will never be fully knowledgeable, but remain ignorant. You are not the Force, you partake in it. Just as you are not knowledge, but you partake in it. But hey, this makes knowledge all the more important and the responsibilities that come with it the more clear. You walk with, you do not use or consume. Others have known before you and others will know again. The path will remain. After long disputes concerning these topics, both Jedi and Sith holocrons of ancient times were dusted off to find new things concerning this tenet and, while they didn't find anything new about ignorance and knowledge, they could finally agree that they'd been ignorant of more than a few things for a very long time. That in itself was worth remembering.

"Though I am powerful, I do not want victory," > Honed bodies and tempered minds make excellent strategists. Both Sith and Jedi have been very militaristic in the past, but with the rise of the Jeth reformist order, the overarching sentiment was that of alliance and agreement. The lessons here are diplomacy, advanced levels of forcewielding and using 'the force as a means', there is no actual beginning or end state.

<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">"There is no death, only chaos" <span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">> The devotee, in this stage, familiarizes himself with death. When a devotee has no chance to familiarize himself with death after life, a form of regression is used to learn about death before life. You learn that death is not absolute, but part of the force, and that it looks as something absolute, because the (after-/before-)effect of death is highly chaotic.

<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">"There is no life, only harmony" <span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">> The devotee learns about the generative force of life, its role as harmonizer and root of the manifested. He/she learns that all is harmony, even the interdependence of life and death.

<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">"The force is free, my chains are broken." <span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">> After all knowledge and training, respectively the symbolical and literal wading through the force, the devotee should have a good understanding of what freedom in The Force is and be able to choose to be unbound by the manifested or bound until he/she chooses to be unbound, like Obi Wan and Yoda did.

<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19.5px;">What do you think of the Code of the Jeth Order?