Is the Force Really With You? (Star Wars)

So, we can indeed say "May the Force be with you!" as we go about living our lives. Yet to some degree it is a matter of grace as to how this plays out.

Star Wars is generally considered science fantasy (as opposed to science fiction) as it incorporates elements of both mysticism and mythology. Many hard-core science buffs assume that its primary themes have no real-life equivalent in the extant universe. After all, ideas like the Force and the Dark Side (good versus evil) are mere human projections. Human values are arbitrary impositions painted onto an impersonal and mechanistic cosmos devoid of purpose or meaning.

Conscious Cosmos or Machine Universe?
Yet I believe that this latter take on a mechanical cosmos is in itself a kind of pathetic fallacy; a case of human beings projecting their own worldview out onto the cosmos and depicting it in the contours of their own psyches. My understanding emerges from several decades of having explored human consciousness at a first-person level, spending many thousands of hours in meditation, mindful presence and non-ordinary states of consciousness. I have also worked with some very powerful and gifted seers, and my understandings have been mediated by their wisdom.

Good versus evil
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Good versus evil, light versus darkness are assumed by many to be human archetypes, primal motifs which exist within the mind, but which do not reflect actual properties of life and cosmos. Yet I have come to conclude that this assumption is false. The images of light and darkness are metaphors through which the human psyche represents the play of energetic consciousness structures which are central to the experience of life and probably to the existence of the universe itself.

Ironically, the idea of a mechanical universe grinding out a purposeless existence according to preset cosmological laws is neither “rational” nor “scientific.” It is pathetic fallacy. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution the machine has become an archetypal image within the human psyche. The machine is probably now the most common single phenomenon that we encounter in our daily lives. As I write this in the Black and White coffee shop in Shenzhen, not far from Hong Kong, I am writing on my iPad. Outside the big window to my right shiny metallic machines glide past (cars). Above me and in my foreground is a large television set, and music plays softly through the sound system.

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Machines are everywhere. Today, in the twenty-first century, most people spend a large proportion of their free time with their eyes glued to the screens of the little machines they hold in their hands (and then put in their pockets when they are finished gazing at them). In days of yore human beings used to attribute acts of nature to human qualities. The volcano was angry; the thunder God cantankerous; that bit of bad luck arrived because the cosmos was in a bad mood. Yet in the modern era human beings are just as likely to attribute mechanical functions to natural events, projecting the idea of the machine onto the fabric of the universe. Could both the pre-modern and modern takes on cosmic operations be equally fallible?

The answer is that there is now an abundance of scientific evidence which suggests that consciousness (mind) plays an important role in life and perhaps in the nature of the universe itself. The evidence for ESP (clairvoyance, remote viewing, telepathy and so on) is strong, and supported by well-documented reports from both history and the modern world. There are certain (though not clear) parallels with quantum physics, and these suggest that non-locality may be an important aspect of both cosmos and psyche. The universe may possess an innate intelligence. The question then becomes, what is our relationship with that cosmic “mind”?

Is the Force Really With Us?
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This brings us to the idea of “the Force?” Can human beings tap into some kind of cosmic intelligence (with good or evil expressions) and employ it in their lives in ways that are either creative or destructive? The idea, of course, is not new, and it certainly isn’t exclusive to the Star Wars franchise. The idea that human beings can align their minds with the currents of universal intelligence is found in many religious and spiritual traditions. Sometimes this is given personified form, as with the ideas of God, Jesus, Allah and so on. In other traditions the universal mind appears to be similar to that represented in Star Wars, more a kind of impersonal intelligence that one can tap into.

Perhaps the closest classical equivalent in that of The Way (Tao) in Taoism, the ancient Chinese teachings which emerged from the spiritual master Lao Zi, half a millennium before the birth of Christ. Taoism drew strongly form Budddhist thought. Lao Zi spoke of a kind of feminine or receptive power that could be aligned with, but not grasped in the sense of more patriarchal expressions of power. Without leaving the room, one could know the world. One could be a master of men, but not by rising above them, but by lying below them. Softness could be strength. In silence all could be revealed.

My own experience as a mindful individual is that this intelligence is indeed an extant quality of life and can be activated and subtly employed. I call it Integrated Intelligence, and it has both an impersonal nature (reading the tones of fields) and a personal aspect (personal spiritual guidance from conscious spiritual entities). I have experienced a great deal of both, as I outline in my book Discover Your Soul Template.

It is, however, a skill that may require a lifetime of mastery, as the human mind is prone to impose its own wilful delusions upon the cosmos. We must learn to listen carefully with the heart, follow our deepest intuitions, and acknowledge the many errors we will inevitably make. In the Buddhist traditions they say “Not this way, not that way” as one follows the middle path. This means that we must be constantly mindful in each moment, even as the mind tends stray from the path. Another way of thinking of this is that the mind has a propensity to leave the real world of the present moment and travel to imagined fearful or expectant futures. Or it will return to painful pasts and the self-limiting beliefs embedded within hurtful memories. Once this habit is concretised, we become lost in the mind and its delusional thinking.

To the Dark Side!
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And what of the dark side of the Force? Is there any real-life spiritual equivalent? The bad news is yes, and in many ways it is very similar to that depicted in Star Wars. All life is embedded within fields of intention, within consciousness fields. Each species and life expression has both an individual and collective field. In fact, we are all embedded within multiple fields: such as family, race, religion, the human collective and so on. Each field contains a general “tone”, or energy structure. These tend to have a controlling or normative aspect. If your mind is part of the Chinese collective, for example, that collective will tend to pull your mind along with it. It is our beliefs, judgments and unconscious needs to belong that attach us to such collective fields. It is very, very difficult to pull one’s mind out of a collective field in which it is embedded. The simple recognition of being controlled by the group mind is insufficient to free one. The individual must first look long and hard within himself and identify exactly why it is that he has given his power away to the group. This is much, much more difficult in practice than in theory.

It is very possible for people to become ensnared within dark fields of intention without conscious knowledge. The most common reasons for this are twofold. The first is desire for power and control, and again this is similar to what we see in the Star Wars movies. Darth Vadar is the classic example, driven by anger and lust for power and domination. In this scenario the human ego seeks to set itself above others, to elevate itself in importance, status, hierarchy.

Given that many cultures on this earth explicitly operate according to honour, face and status it is unfortunately quite the norm for human beings to fall into collective dark fields of intention in this way. In fact, virtually all of you reading this article will currently be “possessed” by several fields in such a manner. We human beings like to think of ourselves as “good” (or victims of bad others), and have a strong tendency to deny acknowledgment of our own manipulative and deceitful intentions. But we all have such propensities. In fact, it is not a question of whether you are a “dark” human being. It is a question of how “dark” you have unconsciously allowed yourself to become. I believe that if we were beyond these dynamics of power, control and self-deception we would not be here on this plane of experience. For it is our relationship with this reality that defines much of the human experience here.

If we think of it like this, enlightenment or awakening becomes about fully acknowledging the unconscious parts of our minds that we generally prefer to avoid. This realisation is quite a shock to the human ego at first, because such awareness requires that you acknowledge how far you have turned away from the truth of yourself, of your life. Can you do this without self-judgment, without condemning the others who have unconsciously cooperated with you in your story of deception? Can you forgive humanity, life, and ultimately God for this development? For at the bottom of the human story many of us find an unspeakable rage at “God” for allowing us to fall so far into darkness. This is certainly what I found within myself, and I have witnessed it within many other human psyches as well.

What about the practical employment of such universal intelligence? Can we, for example, employ it in going about setting and pursuing goals, in creating our ideal lives? The answer is yes. But… and there is a caveat… the power that this afford us as individuals is directly proprtional to the degree to which we surrender our personal will to it. This is an irony, no? It means the more you seek power via the universal mind, the less available it is. It becomes increasingly unreliable as we turn away from the light.

Nonetheless, there are forms of human intuition which can be readily employed regardless of intentionality. You can employ these intuitive modes of awareness no matter whether your intention is to serve the light, or to serve the separated consciousness of the darkness. All you have to do is relax and allow your mind to sense the tone of a field in order to make its essential nature known to you. In this sense both Hitler and the Dalai Lama can simply focus upon the same field and get pretty much the same “data”. However, it is far more likely that the minds of the Hitlers of this world will be manipulated by the malevolent intentions of the darker fields of intention that they are connected to.

While dark consciousness fields are impersonal in much the same way that a destructive tornado is impersonal, the truth is that such darkness is channeled via individual minds. This means that certain individuals can become channels for demonic energies. They then become ensnared with a pool of minds with similar intent via the deceitful stories that they have come to invest with their intention. These other “dark” minds can be either other living human beings, or they can be discarnate entities. This is one of the most terrifying realities to personally witness. I wish I could write that it is a fantasy, but this would be a lie.

The Other Side of the Dark Side
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The best way to avoid dark energies is to ground yourself in presence, in your body and to witness your own mind’s lust for power and control over others. But take note. And here we come to the second way that “the Dark Side” can ensnare us. Much of the power and control of dark energy structures is not a classic lust for wealth, status and political power. It’s not simply a Hitleresque lust for world conquest. Much of the darkness emerges from a desire to control others such that we do not have experience our terror of abandonment and death. In other words we unconsciously seek power and control over others so that we do not have to experience the painful state of separation. We then seek to gain power over others for this purpose.

Now here is a very important point. Such power and control over others is primarily achieved through the projection of two contrasting human manipulative tactics: shame and flattery. Shame is an attempt to make the other feel worthless and “dirty.” The projection of sexual and toilet shaming is central to this. This represents body shaming. The light cannot shine through us while we are embodied in a physical system that we feel is dirty and disgusting.

Flattery is also unconsciously employed as a means to ensnare minds, as the human ego is particularly susceptible to the perceived elevation of status.

So the idea of going to the Dark Side as depicted in Star Wars, is accurate. It is just that the dynamics that underpin the process are more complex than than Star Wars suggests.

Success and Failure
Ultimately, what we humans consider success and failure may not comply with a greater cosmic appreciation of success. For Hitler, the invasion of Poland was a success. On a less demonic scale, your becoming CEO may be your definition of success. But from a deeper and more expansive perspective, there may be other factors at play in such scenarios which do not mirror your (nor Hitler’s) personal value hierarchies. When you become CEO your mind might become ensnared in your company’s story of power and control of a certain financial market. You might get rich. But from a universal perspective you may be playing a part of your soul group’s learning about the abuse of power and control. And there may be suffering in that, both for others and yourself.

So, we can indeed say “May the Force be with you!” as we go about living our lives. Yet to some degree it is a matter of grace as to how this plays out. We can invite such “awareness” through prayer and meditation, and by grounding ourselves in the truth of the present moment. But the rest is up to the cosmos. And if you fight that reality, well, you are resisting “what is” and this rejection and anger may open pathways to the “darkness.” It’s all a little unfair from the mind’s point of view. But that is the way it is. The best thing you can do is relax, surrender, be as transparently honest as you possibly can be, and enjoy the journey.

Marcus

2 thoughts on “Is the Force Really With You? (Star Wars)”

  1. Marcus,

    I will have to read this a couple more times to absorb it. It is complex in its simplicity, and my brain is cotton from a cold. I’ve flown very high in the light side, love. You refer to Lao Zi, and the divine feminine, which is love. When in that place, not of romantic love, but impersonal love, there is a connection to a force (The Force) that defies the belief system of most people. I’m sure that people who have been there understand what I say. Those who are hopeful to experience have a idea of it that is far different than the actual experience. And those who don’t believe think I’m either out of my mind or a dreamer. The power of love, when it is accessed on the transcendent level is far stronger than anything. It has physical power, mental power, and emotional power.

    As for darkness, I’ve read that there’s only one force and it is love. From that perspective, perhaps distance from the force of love creates the dark side, separation you call it. The lust for power and control of others and the environment.

    You write about it so well, and I have preferred to believe there’s not a dark side of the force, except for things that have happened in the last few years that I cannot ignore, non-ordinary experiences that I have written about here before. One experience that was so remarkable that both my husband and I experienced it, each dreaming a set of dreams in trilogy format, dreams that were not our own. We were frightened awake, and after we shared our dream experiences, and were about to settle back into bed, the tree outside of the room glow, and the light rose up through the tree, and it centered itself in the window, then moved back, and moved back again, until it vanished into the horizon. My husband resumed sleeping, only to have a dream whose message was to go to the light. I’d been having very dark confusing experiences after being both with a guru and with John of God, and I was furious. It’s taken me years to heal the wound the guru created.

    I did go back to John of God this fall, and the experience so far has not been all that remarkable. I suppose if I had not been deep into transcendent love and remarkable vivid dreams for years, and back into this state without both just some interesting dreams and experience, that I would think the John of God experience was again remarkable. I did feel the energy that I was familiar with over the last five years when JOG touched me. I was able to transport my beingness to the place I had experienced that is indescribable when one of the JOG organizers described why JOG needed to return to Brazil, he was in the US for the event.

    I even got the courage, or nerve, to go back to the guru in NYC last week who had flattened me a few years ago, and as a result I lost this very high experience and fell into a sort of darkness. The night before the event I had a dream of a woman dressed in a leopard print coat and MJ-style hat, and I adjusted her hat. In real life, my husband and I the next night stood in the coat check line. Somehow, a woman with a leopard print coat placed herself between us. On the way out, I saw that her coat had been hung next to mine. My husband and I retrieved out coats, and turned to leave. The woman with the leopard print coat was leaving ahead of us, along with two friends, one of whom was wearing a leopard print coat also. A constant in these mystical dreams has been three figures who are shapeshifters, and often references to big cats. This time, it was happening in waking awareness.

    I am not a heavy sleeper, and often am aware in my sleep. This morning was no exception. I had a vision of a text message. In the blue window I saw some words and “10:00”, and I heard, “Hi Cookie, is this what you want?” No sooner did I have that experience, and my iPhone toned that I had an email. I could not resist checking to see who had sent it. It was an email from a woman who takes groups to JOG, with a season’s greetings and an ad for her next tour in January to Brazil and JOG. She has taken my requests to JOG for remote healings in the past.

    I’ve never been able to tell if these experiences are coming from the Dark Side or the Light Side. Some of them can be dark. I’m no more certain about who or what is the source of these experiences. It seems there are other dimension, realities, that are piercing my 3-D existence, and it’s mind blowing.

    Still the thing that the guru destroyed was my open heart, that power of love that took my a lifetime to trust. That is the light. I guess it will, whatever it is, will have to resolve itself on its own. After three years, the anger and pain have subsided, but my heart is still closed.

    There’s something that I learned this summer, and so far, I find that there’s little discussion of it, but then I have not really looked for it in media. That is the power of peace. Love is spiritual catnip, and it holds a lot of power. However, I had an experience of profound transcendent peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding. With that I returned to the well being, clarity, and knowing that I only had experienced out of an huge meditation/samadhi/awakening experience 18 years ago. In that peace was what I call NOW, the Power of Now. Attachments fell away, no holding onto desires. There were infinite possibilities when my desires fell away. Alas, the experience didn’t hang on long enough for me to really connect with it.

    Well, those are my thoughts on the light side, and the dark side, this morning, and I hope that they were not coming too much from darkness and ego, and there some light in there.

    FYI, the night I went to Star Wars in 1977 was the night that my life was disrupted to the core from an event that happened that night, and eventually, I ended up on this spiritual path because nothing else healed it. Traditional approaches caused incalculable damage to me. It was the darkest side of the force, but as a result, in a very strange way, I ended up living for the light.

    People don’t realize it’s real. The Force Awakens. This Is It. “Don’t Stop Until You Get Enough: the force has a lot of power.”

    Great article!

    Florie

  2. Hi Florie,

    I’m glad you got something from the article. The dark aspects of mind or consciousness are indeed very difficult to understand and negotiate. And I fully appreciate why many people choose to reject the idea that this exists. I had no perception or understanding of it till I was thirty years old, 19 years ago. If someone had given me this article I wrote above when I was 25 I would have laughed and dismissed them as deluded or insane.

    You are definitely on the right track with the understanding of the importance of peace and presence. You can’t really ever “resolve” the psychic elements. They will play out consistently in life. As I’ve said before, don’t make the psychic your spiritual focus. Make peace, being present the focus. The psychic easily becomes a trap where the mind is constantly dragged out of embodied presence, attempting to figure out what it all means.

    The psychic realms can be helpful and very fascinating, but I am very careful to grant attention only to those dreams, visions and intuitions which I feel are of significance. The rest I discard, just in the same way I discard actual life experience. Once it is in the past, that is where it stays.

    As for distinguishing the source of a vision or dream, whether it emerges from the truth or is distorted by the ego or dark energies, I have come to relax and trust my gut feelings. Practice connecting to the tone of the field which lies behind the dream or vision. Do so from presence, removing both fear and expectation. Then trust your intuitive sense of what lies behind it. Fear and expectation will tend to distort your interpretation of the experience, and you will begin projecting your mind’s interpretations.

    Marcus

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