Amazing Grace
It is true that in Star Wars both ways of using the Force have been emphasized, for it both "controls" and "obeys," representing what is recognized in Japanese spiritual disciplines as the two ways to enlightenment. The first is "jiriki," or "own strength," and the second is "tariki," or "strength from without." Yet perhaps this is saying too much in terms of distinction. After all, the former is really used as a way of allowing the latter to manifest, as Obi-Wan Kenobi instructs Luke to do in one of his initial lessons. His young protege is to "let go [the] conscious self," so that a deeper self can in fact take over. This is what the British philosopher Aldous Huxley meant when he wrote in one of his essays on Eastern wisdom about "getting out of one's own light."
Of course, this is not native to Eastern philosophy alone. Alan Watts once recounted a story about a choirmaster in Canterbury in his native England in which a group of singers were trying to impress a visiting archbishop. They were singing a hymn enthusiastically but badly, for every note sounded forced. The choirmaster made everyone stop and then told them, "Now, I want you to sing this hymn again, but there's one very important thing: don't try to sing it. You mustn't try. You must think of the melody and let it sing itself." As a result, they went at it again, and the song flowed much better. The choirmaster turned to the archbishop and said, "That's good theology, isn't it?" This is what's generally thought of in Christianity as "grace."
After reading such a story, one can hardly help recalling the training sequence in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke is rebuked by Yoda as he strains with his own exertion to lift his X-Wing fighter out of the Dagobah swamps. He pushes and pulls at the Force until he finally exhausts himself, even as his tiny master chides him and tells him that there simply is no try. As he seeks to draw on the mystical energy that no doubt seems alternately so close yet so far, the very thing Luke must "unlearn" is the habit of relying on his own egocentric brand of power.
Therefore when a Jedi speaks of using the Force, it is in the same sense as when St. Paul said, "I live, not I, but Christ in
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