Sanitarium

“Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.” Master Yoda is considered by many to be one of the greatest Jedi that ever lived. Though he was not the most powerful, he was wise through his vast knowledge of The Force. For thousands of years, the Jedi were the keepers of peace and order in the galaxy. Their power came from one all powerful Force. They live by 4 simple statements: “There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force.” Seeing that Star Wars was so big, there had to be something that set it apart from every other Science Fiction movie/story; it was The Force, there was something about it…
Growing up in a Muslim household, everything was the work of the All-Powerful God. In Star Wars, I learned that everything was the work of the All-Powerful Force; I was at a cross-road. I was young, so whatever my parents taught me seemed to make sense, but The Force looked so much cooler! I wanted to able to lift the X-Wing from the swamps of Degoba just by lifting my hand. Obviously my parents, as most did, told me it was just made up and that I need to focus on reality. My parents made the common mistake of taking The Force as just what George Lucas decided to show us in the movies, when in fact, there is so much more.
I did not care what my parents thought; I was going to be a Jedi! So I hopped onto the computer and Googled “The Force”. And just as I expected, The Force was not imaginary (only the weak and feeble minded refuse to believe in it). The concept of The Force is that it is an all-powerful ‘thing’ that controls everything in the world. “It’s [The Force] an energy shield created by all living things; it surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” (Obi Wan Kenobi; Espisode IV) The Force has many aspects to look at: there is the light side, the dark side, and The Living Force (described above). The light and dark sides refer to the moral compass and various manifestations of The Force. The light side deals with compassion, healing and benevolence, whereas the dark side is the facet aligned with hatred, fear, aggression, and malevolence. These are all traits that mankind deals with on a regular basis; the light and dark sides are our good side and our evil side. The side that a person chooses is not what decides which powers he gets; The Force exists inside the life forms that use it and draws energy from their emotions. Look mom, The Force is not just made up, it is real!
All this searching and reading led me to look into my own religion. In Islam, it is believed that God is all-powerful and He is the ruler of the Heavens and the Earth. God is inside of us all; the three Abrahamic faiths believe that God created man in His image. But it does not just stop at God; it is believed that God gave us emotion and free will, with which we can do as we wish. The actions that a man does feeds off his emotion, just like The Force; the ability to use The Force for different deeds feeds off the emotion of the user. The Force is God, The Force is you, The Force is me, The Force is all around us whether we choose to believe in it or not.
As a child, as most younglings do, I “believed” what my parents told me to believe. Unfortunately many people grow up in this manner: never bothering to actually seek the truth themselves. After years of being told something, children believe it because that is all they know. Several hundred years ago, the Catholic Church burned the books and destroyed the knowledge of the Greeks (much of modern knowledge stems back to the Greeks), in hopes that only religious texts would remain and the people would have no choice but to believe. Their minds were closed and unwilling to let knowledge in. People need to search within themselves for the answers: “In your head is the answer, let it guide you along. Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your own song.” (Rush-Something for Nothing) I am not saying that it is not okay to believe what we have been taught or that society only preaches lies; my point is that it is only okay if we believe it through our own understanding. All of our beliefs should come from a personal experience or a full understanding of the concept; otherwise it is merely a statement, not a belief.