Charged Emotions and the Seduction of the Dark Side

It’s subtle, but in this episode, Ahsoka trains Sabine with some of the wisest advice yet – “Anger and frustration are quick to give power, but they also unbalance you.”

With this brief sentence, Ahsoka reveals to us a major tenet of the Sith, namely the seductiveness of the power gained from highly charged emotion. We see in all over Star Wars – Sith masters instructing their apprentices to feel their hatred, use and channel their anger.

All of that rings true for us here on Earth too. We can deprive a lot of power from our anger and frustration, our hatred. These negative emotions can energize us, mobilize us. They can fuel our actions. But it comes at a cost.

As Ahsoka said, it is unbalanced.

Give a listen to this episode of Path of the Jedi. In the context of all that’s happening in the world, it’s an incredibly important conversation.

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Transcript: Path of the Jedi
Ahsoka Part Three – Time to Fly

[Preview clip: “Anger and frustration are quick to give power, but they also unbalance you.”]

[Show intro: “You’re listening to Path of the Jedi with your host, Ronnie Cruz.”]

All right, welcome to Path of the Jedi, the podcast where Star Wars meets Personal Development. My name is Ronnie Cruz, your host for this impassioned adventure.

That’s right, impassioned.

Why impassioned, you might ask? Well, let me read you the definition.

According to Oxford Language Dictionaries anyway… Impassioned – filled with or showing great emotion.

Filled with or showing great emotion. This will definitely tie into today’s conversation, in our discussion of Ahsoka Part Three.

But also, I think, in the bigger context of the stuff that we’re all going through, the world feels pretty crazy, at least for me.. you know, looking at things that are happening internationally, of course, things that are happening domestically here in the US., even locally, and you know, even in my own personal life, stuff that has happened in the last handful of years.

It’s been quite the ride.

And so, you know, I feel like, with all these things, all this information, all these news cycles, and then the stuff that’s happening circumstantially in my life, I feel like I’ve been… I’m constantly thrown into a heightened emotional state.

And what that does is it taps us into that fight or flight, that ancient part of our brains, it taps us into old patterns and old programming.

And I think – and of course, I’m speaking personally – but I think in my observation of the rest of the world, I think this constant heightened emotional state has made us much more reactive than we have been in the past.

Again, I know I can speak personally that I feel like I am more reactive lately than I have been in past years. And what that does is it just makes things really difficult to manage, right?

Even in recording today’s episode, I didn’t want to do it. All I wanted to do today was sit and watch Star Wars veg out and kind of numb myself because I have been in such a heightened emotional state. And a lot of it negative too at that.

So, our discussion today, hopefully, by the end of it, you will have some perspective that will help you manage these heightened emotional states more productively. And I’m not talking about output and getting shit done, but I’m talking about being able to kind of self-regulate.

I think today’s lesson, especially seeing this episode and the stuff that happens, I think what it can teach us is that ability to kind of self-regulate and be more like Jedi.

I mean, the show is called Path of the Jedi, right?

So, yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re gonna hone in on today.
But first, I wanna gush.

[Lando audio clip: “Hello, what have we here?”]

I wanna take just a few minutes to talk about the show itself, Ahsoka, because I realize I haven’t done much of that at all, especially in last week’s episode. And this is a show that I really feel like deserves all the attention and praise.

It’s such an incredible show. I absolutely have loved rewatching it as many times as I’ve rewatched it already. Each rewatch has given me even deeper appreciation of the things I already love and more appreciation for the things that I didn’t catch before, right? I’m always seeing new things, new details, new layers to this rich, rich, well, series that Disney has given us.

And so, yeah, I just wanted to talk about it a little bit.

The first thing that I will always be incredibly excited about with this show is being reintroduced to a live action version of a character that we all know and love from Rebels, right, from the animated series Rebels.

In part two, we were introduced to Chopper, live action Chopper, and it is so glorious. Everybody’s favorite, Murderbot. He’s the same old Chopper that we saw in Rebels. He’s just as spunky. He has just as much attitude.

And so, it’s so nice. It’s so nice to see familiarity in this new storyline and in this new world, in this new version of these characters.

We’re also introduced to new characters.

In part three, we’re introduced to a character called Jason. And we learn that Jason is actually the son of Hera and Kanan.

Now, I might be wrong. I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I think this is the first time that we’re seeing an interspecies coupling result in Offspring. So we now know – and science is whatever. There doesn’t have to be any science behind it – but now we know in Star Wars that a Twi’lek and a human can have children together.

I love this particular storyline or this particular detail. sBecause it continues the story of Kanan and Hera, right? Their love and their relationship. It continues that story through this new character of Jason.

And we learn in the subsequent episodes coming up, we learn all the different things about Jason and the qualities that he’s inherited from his parents. More than just his green hair, which on the surface is what he inherited from Hera.

[giggles]

Another thing that we get to see translated from the animated series into live action that I think is incredible are the purrgil.

The purrgil.
The space flying whales.

I loved these beasts when we saw them in Rebels. I love them even more now because the artists and the creators here on Ahsoka have really done an incredible job giving it so much detail.

They’re enormous, first of all, even bigger than I had expected them to be.

And as we see Ahsoka and Sabine fly through them really, really closely, flying through this herd… to get that close to something that large and to pull it off and make it look real… you’ve got to give it an incredible amount of detail.

And the artists and the creators did exactly that.

I mean, it looked photorealistic. They looked like they were flying through a herd of large space-traveling whales, basically. So, I love it. And we see further down through the episodes, as the story goes on, they play a pretty integral part in the story.

But it’s a testament to the attention to detail and the amount of effort they put into making this one of the most visually striking shows in the Star Wars library.

I mean, across the board, you have the landscapes, you have the cityscapes, you have the technology, you have the dogfights.

Everything looks so real. Everything looks so beautiful, full of detail. Everything was meticulous.

I mean, you take this show frame for frame, and any frame in the show can look like a work of art, can look like a painting, can be a poster, basically.

And so, yeah, that’s the last thing that I’m gonna gush over, is the fact that this show is so visually striking. Again, the amount of detail and attention to detail, the amount of work and time and effort that must have gone in to making this show as real as possible.

I mean, it’s like a movie. It’s like a full-blown feature film.

And of course, why wouldn’t they put this much detail into Ahsoka? It is Disney, and it is Lucas Films.

But anyways, okay, so that’s enough for me gushing.

Let’s get into the episode.

[Star Wars audio clip: “I’m going in. Cover me, Porkins”]

Part Three opens up with Jedi training. What better way to start an episode, right, than with Jedi training?

We see that the relationship between Ahsoka and Sabine has…
Well, it’s… The tensions, at least, have eased. Enough, anyways, for them to be able to work together and to live in close quarters together.

And not that they’re stuck with each other or that they’re forced into this situation. Certainly, they need each other to fulfill the mission, right?

And the primary directives – obviously different directives – Ahsoka’s primary directive is to find Thrawn, and Sabine’s primary directive is to find Ezra.

…But they do. They do need each other to fulfill and carry out this mission.

Again, it’s not that they’re stuck with each other, right? I don’t think there is a sentiment where they feel like they’re forced into this situation. I think they both genuinely want to work to improve the relationship because they value the relationship.

I mean, why wouldn’t they?
They have history together.
They’ve done so much and they’ve been through so much together.

And so we see them kind of working through this situation or at least through the awkwardness and the tension so that they can get back to being the same old friends or the same old colleagues and Padawan and Master that they were before.

Now in this training scene, Ahsoka gives Sabine a helmet that obscures her vision. Very similar to when Obi-Wan gives Luke the blast visor, the blast helmet, in Episode IV, A New Hope. It’s so that they can’t see, to obscure their vision.

So they’re going about their training, they’re using these bokken, these wooden sabers, and we see Sabine’s frustration grow as the training session goes on. It’s growing, it’s growing, she’s getting more frustrated.

But we also see her start to kind of channel that frustration a little bit, and she’s able to make some good blocks, she’s able to counterstrike, and we see her kind of getting the hang of it. She’s very proficient, obviously, in weapons as a Mandalorian, but ultimately, by the end of the session, we see Ahsoka easily, easily trip her up.

And this is when we get the quote that we’re going to be talking about today.

Ahsoka says this: “Anger and frustration are quick to give power, but they also unbalance you.”

So what does it mean? Right?
What does it mean?

Like the Rainbow Guy?
I don’t know if you’ve seen that video.
It’s classic YouTube video.
The Rainbow Guy.
“What does it all mean?”

Anyways, for me, for me, it really goes back to the word of the day, the word of the episode, the “impassioned adventure”, the heightened emotional states that I think we all find ourselves in at one point or another, a lot, quite often in the last in the last handful of years.

What I think Sabine… not Sabine… Ahsoka is saying here is that we can generate energy, and therefore motivation and effort, in any emotional state, especially a heightened emotional state.

In this case with Sabine, it’s a negative emotional state, right? The emotional state of frustration and anger.

We can generate good effort, in fact, and we can get a lot of motivation out of those.

But our effort is impacted by that emotional state. Our effort and therefore our results is then impacted by those emotional states.

In Sabine’s case, because her emotional state was negative, it was off balance and she was easily taken down and tripped up by Ahsoka.

I want you to think back at a time in your life when you were maybe motivated by a negative emotional state – whether that’s anger, frustration, spite is a big motivator for a lot of people.

In the success and achievement, you’ll be surprised… the hustle world, there’s the saying, “the best revenge is to succeed.”

It’s to spite people, basically. And for better or for worse, it does motivate a lot of people.

But [anyway], think back to a time when you were maybe motivated by these less than positive, let’s just say that, less than positive emotional states. And then fast forward a little bit from those times and from those emotional states and ask yourself, “OK, what result did that actually produce?”

For me, in my own experience, I know [with] certainty that any time that I’ve been motivated by any of those things, any of those heightened negative emotional states, the outcomes of those efforts that were motivated through those states were often very fleeting if there were any outcomes at all.

Right?

Let’s talk about sales and marketing, you know. I’m in network marketing. And very early in my career, there was a lot of frustration because I wasn’t getting results.

And so it kind of became this feedback loop because I kept getting more and more frustrated, but I was also getting more and more desperate for the results that I knew were possible in the business.

And the more I struggled, the worse my results got basically.
And the worse people responded to me offering them whatever it was that I was offering them.

This was happening because I was in that heightened negative emotional state. And those negative emotional states were creating reactivity. And my actions, therefore, were much less thought out, if they were thought out at all.

And that’s why people responded the way they responded. People responded negatively to my sales pitch or my presentation.

And we know this to be one of the key differences between the Jedi and the Sith.

The Sith want you to embrace your emotion. They want you to feel your anger, use your hatred, and that fuels your power.

And as Ahsoka said, it does. It can give you power. But the thing is, it’s unbalanced power because, again, it is coming from a reactive state.

In contrast, the Jedi teach non-attachment or detachment, right? You can’t have attachments.

And I know there’s all these discussions about attachments meaning not having relationships with people and things like that. And that’s not really the case.

For me, the detachment means being detached from that emotion so that you’re not in that unbalanced reactive state, right? Giving enough space from your emotion, taking enough time and, you know, deep meditative breaths [giggles] so that you can re-center yourself and that you’re not in a reactive state.

Because reactive states are completely unbalanced.

Same thing with us here.

As in my example, any time that I was performing or acting or behaving or motivated by in that reactive state because of a heightened negative emotion… or even positive emotion, but mostly negative emotion… then my results were less than ideal.

However, when I learned to really center myself and detach myself from, the emotional states, from the expectations of, [the] wanting people to buy my products, the expectations that they need to be healthy… all this chatter that was throwing me off kilter and throwing me off balance… when I learned to really detach myself from that, I gained a level of equanimity, and my sales and performance skyrocketed.

It went… it really, it really turned things around for me. It was a complete 180, and I started to do better in my business.

It was really as simple as that.

I mean, yeah, simple, but not an easy lesson to learn, because again, we’re so tied up and caught up in our own emotional states, especially right now.

I mean, I’m talking about my career, you know, 15, 20 years ago, but we’re getting back into a state of the world where we can easily be pulled into and drawn into becoming very, very emotional and, you know, reacting in these emotional, highly reactive emotional states.

And I encourage you, especially in this day [and age], it is so important to be less like the Sith and more like the Jedi.

Please don’t embrace your emotion as much as possible.
Don’t use your emotion to motivate you and guide you.

I’m not telling you to not feel emotion.
That’s impossible.

We definitely have to feel emotions. It’s part of the experience of being a human being.

Emotion is information. Information that we can use to guide us in how to act moving forward.

But if we’re not detached enough from these emotions and from these reactive states, then we’re not going to be able to think clearly and logically and make centered and balanced decisions.

It’s really, like I said, that simple.

Again, incredibly, incredibly important in the times that we live in.

It’s very tempting to embrace our anger, right?
To use our hatred, to use our fear.
But this is the path to the dark side.

And as Yoda said, all of these negative emotions, the anger, the fear, the hatred, it all leads to more suffering.

[segment pause]

Okay, wow.

So that was a much more…
It ended on a much more somber note that I had intended.
But I think it’s where I wanted to land, really.

The gravity of being in these heightened emotional states is… I can’t state enough the importance of it.

And growing your awareness around your own emotional state, right? Your emotional well-being. Because if you don’t, you’ll always find yourself in this reactivity.

And if you’re always in these reactive states, then you’re not going to make the best decision.

That’s really that simple.

And when you’re not making best decisions, you not only… Well, at the very least, you kind of continue to fail in achieving your goals, like I did in my business.

But also at the same time, it perpetuates hurt, right? If you’re in a constantly negative reactive state, you can lash out and hurt the people around you. And that creates a ripple effect of hurt, right?

You’ve heard the saying, hurting people hurt people.

And so it’s really important to catch this within yourself and to really grow that self-awareness, grow your own emotional IQ, your emotional intelligence, and just be observant of how you’re feeling.

And as I said, you know, it’s not that I don’t want you to feel, it’s impossible not to feel because we’re humans, but don’t act in that heightened emotion state.

Yes, it can generate power and it can give you power very quickly, like Ahsoka said, and that can be very, very, very tempting. The dark side is very tempting, but as much as possible, detach yourself from that.

That’s the whole thing with detachment.
Detach yourself from the expectations and the emotions that come out of those expectations. And the more you do that, the more you’re able to go into any situation having stepped away from the emotion with then equanimity, right?

And coming from a place of neutrality, so that you can be more balanced, you know, when you interact with the rest of the world.

Important stuff. Important stuff.
Again, especially in the times that we live in right now.

Anyways, let’s just get on with the show and talk about the shoutout.

[Wicket soundbite] “Yub yub”

Okay, this week’s shoutout goes to Emil McGloin.

That’s right, Mr. Emil McGloin.
A lifelong friend. Really more than a friend. He’s family. He’s a brother. I’ve known him for more than 40 years. It’s a lifelong friendship.

I call it an anchor in life, that kind of friendship that will always be there till the end of my days.

But I got a chance to see Emile in New York, which doesn’t often happen because when I go to New York, it’s usually for business and I rarely have extra time.

But this time, I did. I had extra time. I made sure to have extra time, and I got a chance to see Emil, right?

And not only see Emil, I got to see his parents, I got to see his wife. But on top of getting this visit with him, the situation was, the context was, I got to see him perform!

Emile is an incredible guitarist, a virtuoso really.

He and I played music together in our youth and then as young men, but he’s gone on to continue to play music and play guitar, and he’s just honed his craft, continually working on his craft and becoming the best guitarist that he can be.

And so I got a chance to watch him perform, two shows, actually, at the Blue Note.

I saw the back-to-back shows Sunday night.

He was playing guitar for an artist called Aloe Black. And some of you might know him, but I had no idea who this guy is.

I did after the show. I realized, okay, I know one or two of his songs. He’s a big deal. He’s a big-name artist.

And so to see Emile play at this level, play on this level of platform at these high stakes, and really just to continue to see him in his essence, like he is in his essence when he’s got his guitar in his hands, it’s just so inspiring.

It really is so inspiring. It’s motivated me to start playing again.
I picked up my guitar after… you know, it’s been months since I’ve picked up my guitar.

So I’ve picked up my guitar again. I’m starting playing again.
I really want to get into music so some of my other content is going to be based around music.
I want to get back to, you know… well, I had a goal years ago to release a solo album.

So getting back to that. But really just… you know… like again, it’s the inspiration that Emile gives me and being around him because he has continued to just work on being his best self, especially in regards to being his best self as a guitarist.

It just, you can’t help but not be motivated when you’re in that kind of presence, when an individual is in his absolute essence. It just drives you and it motivates you in the best possible way to do the same, to pursue those things and those dreams that you may have had or may have put down and shelved.

You know what I mean?

So what I would encourage you to do as an aside, is to get around people that inspire you at this level. Emil is definitely that for me. He has been that for me throughout my entire life.

And yeah, I really can’t thank him enough for sharing just an incredible night of music with me. That experience has absolutely touched my life.

And I’m still riding off that high.

Yes, it is a heightened emotional state.
It’s a positive heightened emotional state, but it is a heightened emotional state.
But it’s, you know, I’m taking… I’m taking… giving myself time to process that.

But I will always, always use that – the inspiration and this motivation and just this, just this awe of feeling Emil’s light.

And I guess maybe that’s the thing, right?

When you’re around these type of people who are in their essence, you are getting a piece of their light because they’re shining it on you.

And when you’re able to get a piece of it, you can’t help but be moved by it.
And so I’ve been incredibly moved by my visit with Emile and getting to see him play at the Blue Note.

So, yeah, I don’t know. I could go on and on and I can gush about Emile.

But I’m going to go ahead and say, Emil, if you’re listening out there, this week’s shout out goes to you.

[BB8 soundbite]

Okay, so that’s going to do it for today’s episode.

Thank you for tuning in.
Thank you for sticking around.

The last favor I’m going to ask of you is that if you please could think of one person, just one person that you think would enjoy and appreciate this content, appreciate this episode, appreciate the podcast, please share it with them.

It’ll take you three seconds, but it’ll go a long way to helping us here at Path of the Jedi grow this show so that these messages and these principles and these ideas get out to more people.

So that’s going to do it. We’ll catch you next week with a fresh new one, of course.

So until then, take care of yourself.
Take care of each other.
And may the force be with you.

[Disclaimer]

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All original content of this podcast is intellectual property of Path of the Jedi unless otherwise indicated.

[Yoda giggle soundbite]