fandomhigh | Topics in Sith Philosophy, Friday

"Welcome back, everybody." Today the desks had been moved aside to clear a spot on the floor. "Today we're going to start with one of the first things every Sith learns. It's also popular in a number of other philosophies both in my galaxy and here on Earth - meditation."

She gestured to them all to join her. "Traditionally, you kneel." She demonstrated. "But if you find sitting more comfortable, you can do that instead. Comfort is not a consideration when learning to be Sith; if you're too comfortable, you're probably doing something wrong. But I'm not teaching you to be Sith, so it's up to you if you would rather experience it more realistically or simply conceptualize it.

"Some versions of meditation I've looked into, the idea is to be comfortable because you want to forget your body, to look outside of it, to not center yourself. Sith meditation is more about connecting with yourself, knowing everything about yourself, and then connecting specifically to your emotions. Focusing them, enhancing them, so you can use them later. Traditionally, focusing on your discomfort, your anger. Using it to gather up the Force, to make it do what you need it to. It needs to be a state that you can fall into at a moment's notice."

She smiled. "Again, I don't expect you to do that. Even those who are learning to be Sith can take weeks or months to refine their meditation enough for it to be useful. But if you're comfortable with that, try it. Ask me questions if you have them. If not, let's talk about why not. Let's discuss why you feel uncomfortable with the idea, and what an alternative might be."

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Meditating.

Liberty Hazlett

Kurt Wagner

Settle in, take a seat or a kneel.

Meditate and ask questions, or just ask questions and discuss!

Having spent probably just as much time on her knees in an atonement more sins as she had praying about them, Libby didn't have the slightest bit of issue with the kneeling part; it was sort of the meditation part that came as something much more difficult to her. Mostly just because she wasn't sure what the differences between meditating and praying really were, even if there was one, although if the focus was to be more on communicating with yourself than with God, then there was the difference right there...

And she also wanted to try to see it more from the Sith perspective, rather than a Christian one, so she could better understand and learn, and that had her frowning a little as she thought about it.

"What if," she started to venture, quietly, because she didn't want to disturb anyone else having a more successful time of it than she was, "you're not really feeling angry, though?"

As soon as she said it, though, she realized that she actually did have quite a few things she could dig up if she wanted to focus on things that made her angry, actually. A lot of them. But she wasn't sure if that's what she would really want to focus on, doing that would only make her upset, which seemed the opposite of what meditation should be doing.

"Think of a time when you were angry," Lana suggested, equally softly. "Something that makes you mad, even if it's irrational. Just draw up that feeling and focus on it. Notice the adrenaline and focus it gives you. You won't have the Force to wrap around it, so just think of the power hypothetically. What you could do with that sort of drive."

Libby closed her eyes, breathed out, and then bit her lip, a little concerned with just how quickly she came up with something, and just how it wasn't hard at all once she thought of it to feel that kind of anger. All she had to do was take herself back to the hospital, the night that Hope was born, and all that anger that had boiled up out of her being scared and confused with her father's insistence on taking them home, at putting her and the baby at risk with his stubborn blindness and inability to just see reason...

Her fists tightened a little against her thighs, frown deepening, as she tried to do what Lana had said, to focus on that, and how she did feel that drive to do something about it, to defy him and do what she felt was right, and how she could never in a million years feel even the least bit bad about what she did in disobeying him, because if she had obeyed him, then her mother...and Hope...

It wasn't irrational at all, and the fact that it wasn't seemed to just feed into it either more.

She wanted to say that it wasn't working, clearly; wasn't meditation supposed to make you calm? But the more Libby did it, from this perspective, the more she just felt her heart racing and her brow furrowing, and she didn't like it....but...but...

She reminded herself of what Lana had said; she noticed the adrenaline, and the focus it gave her, and she started to feel her heart slow back down a little bit and her hands loosen again and she breathed a little easier. She still didn't like it, she'd rather focus on something far more positive, but she would think about it. She would meditate on it, and hold onto it, even if now all she wanted to do was just forgive her father and pray that God would soon be able to open his eyes more, and his heart...

And now she was just left wondering if her winding up just praying meant that she'd done it wrong, and she supposed she could be a little angry at herself for that, but there wasn't a whole lot of heat in it, and then she wondered if she just had too much stuff going on in her head more times than not to be much of a meditator.

Lana noticed that anger and focus, and then Libby calming herself down, and came over to sit nearby to talk softly. "What do you think?"

Kurt was used to both sitting and kneeling and as he thought about what Ms Beniko was saying he had a thought. Once she was done he raised his hand and then asked the question that had been rumbling around in his head for most of the class as he thought about the concept of focusing on anger or at least negative thoughts while doing the meditation.

"I...." Kurt started, trying to think of how to put the jumble of thoughts into words. "It reminds me, in a way, of the prayers and meditations I do as a Catholic. It's not necessarily always focused on anger but there is a lot of pentice prayers and reflection on action and mistakes and sins. The meditation and prayer is important, we even have special prayers and such to do at certain times. It... the Sith idea of meditation seems a little familiar... though its not about gaining power but rather gaining forgiveness and peace for us."

Kurt looked at Ms Beniko, hoping he hadn't offended her or anything and wondering if he should have just kept it all to himself.

Don't worry, Kurt; Lana was probably the hardest to offend Sith in the galaxy. Unless you called her Blondie.

Lana nodded. "In part it's similar - meditation can be a way to focus on the past and look at it from different angles, figure out where you went wrong. Peace would be more a Jedi focus, though; you'd be better off asking Dean Skywalker about that. And there are no words in meditation, necessarily. You can meditate on, say, the Code, or some specific phrase if you like, but you can also meditate on nothing at all."

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Topics in Sith Philosophy, Friday

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