Kate Solusar’s Holocron

Lately, I’ve been focusing mostly on off-line training and while I do come on-line to see what’s going on, it’s been just to read and not so much to write, at least for an audience. I had been active at Force Academy for a bit, but haven’t felt compelled to be active there these days. There are a number of people there and in other communities who have shared some very interesting insights, however, and some of those insights have prompted me to share a bit here.

In earlier holocron entries, I have shared about my struggle with people-pleasing, placating, and peacemaking at the expense of my own peace and the often resulting personal emptiness (of the existential kind). Jedi philosophy throughout the fiction in particular, speaks of the so-called “dark side.” Well, for me, that dark side in large part is major depression, which I have lived with for years, since the age of 13. It has reared its ugly head (picture the dementors from the Harry Potter series) in the last month, precipitated by my nephew’s birthday parties, because of the need to interact and be with other members of my family of origin and their spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends and their children. Again, my husband chose to avoid these gatherings because as it is, my family does not like him and he feels uncomfortable around them as a result. The children’s party was held at an arcade, and my eldest son was invited, but his younger brother was not because “he has autism.” Well, he wanted to go and when there my brother and his ex were forced to make space for him to participate like the other kids. My little guy may not have known quite what was up, but I did. It hurt. I found myself focusing solely on my children, the other children, and my nephew, the birthday boy. Then the boys and I went to my nephew’s family party. My little guy sobbed hysterically and had a meltdown because my mom, brother and sisters were there. They are so high energy and he gets overwhelmed in their presence. No one understood, the kids gawked and gawped at my son, and he cried to go to my husband’s parents house instead. Ouch. It hurt. Situations like this hit me in the gut and that critical voice inside my head (the one that sounds like my mother) goes off reminding me yet again that “I’m not good enough.”

So what to do? I’ve striven to recover my calm center and balance through meditation, physical training, and study. It’s not worked all that well, to be honest. But then, the other key ingredient in gaining perspective is time. I’ve gone back to the most basic meditation practice I was first given in my training here, to use the Jedi Code as a mantra and thread it through my days. In the days that my life seems like I’m climbing a sheer cliff, it has offered a handhold, a means to help pull myself up. It helps, but my dream life and the continuing negativity I’ve been sensing and dealing with have made it hard to fully let go and practice that detachment or as I rather call it, unattachment, that is so much a part of the Jedi way.

Detachment to me, implies a closing off, almost a diminishment of feeling. From experience, this has not led to self mastery over my emotions. It closes them off, but that only staves them off from the day where they need to be acknowledged and experienced. Unattachment means that you allow yourself to fully feel whatever you are feeling, to be open to investing yourself in it and then to let it go. I am married and have two children. I love them. I can’t imagine them not being part of my life. However, each of them continues to grow and change and constantly engage me in the process of letting go. Ultimately we all let go in death, the time of our return to the Force.

It is interesting that all of the major world religious traditions, psychology, and yes, Jedi philosophy all deal with the so-called “dark night of the soul.” It is like the dark cycle in photosynthesis, the final step in converting light to energy for the sustenance of the plant. It is a highly individual, transformative, interior process, one that makes it possible to advance in the process of submitting the Self, the Will to that of the Force. Much of the time, adversity, loss and death are catalysts to move our reluctant selves further along in this process. One of the things I really appreciate about our fictional Jedi brethren in the Star Wars universe is that this is something they all struggle with and fail at so often. They aren’t perfect. Neither are we. It is a process, one that I submit requires us to fully embrace our humanity and all that attachment entails. We cannot learn and practice unattachment unless we first experience attachment. Attachment is part of being fully human. The key is gaining a level of mastery where we are able to fully love, fully enter into life, and then let go and let live when we are called to do so. The death of my father and the grief that followed taught me how to love, let go, and move on, not by detaching, but by loving, fully and deeply, and then to let go.