My Time During the July Doctrine Reading Challenge
Original journal entry from August 24, 2025 – Personal reflection on the July Doctrine Reading challenge. This was my summary of what the month-long daily reading brought: carrying doctrine through the day, communal encouragement, creative listening methods, and how specific teachings (especially A Meditation for Jedi and the “yet” phrasing) became part of my identity and daily rhythm.
Going into the challenge I was hoping that through the repetition I would eventually memorize the Doctrine and while did not happen, I feel like I have gained something much better instead: remembering different parts, statements, sentences, or sometimes entire paragraphs that would follow me throughout the day. I was carrying the answers to questions that I came across during the day. I was walking through my day with the awareness that “I am a Jedi, an instrument of peace.”
Reading the Doctrine each day helped me set the tone for the day. At first I struggled a little with reading and getting ready for my day in the morning, so I would read it later in the day. But eventually, I found my rhythm by giving myself the time to read it each morning while I was drinking my coffee. It was nice when Master Rev. Carlos and Novice Terran Onyx Bear were on discord in the mornings when I was reading because it created a sense of communal ritual that I believe brought us closer together.
And then different people started recording themselves reading it and posting the reading on discord. I was able to find a service online that could take the doctrine text and read it in various voices from Star Wars characters so we had a variety of options for listening to the doctrine as well. This made it all the more fun for me and in doing so I had some days when I was listening to the doctrine being read 10-20 times in a day!
It came as a pleasant surprise when I was working through the IP where the lessons and parts were about what different parts of the doctrine meant to me. It added an extra layer of contemplation and reflection for me.
I would say that “A Meditation for Jedi” stood out the most for me. It feels like a daily recalibration of my identity and what my purpose is in the world, especially to the environments I encounter each day and the people I interact with.
As I kept going over “The Code” I found myself more and more comfortable with the “yet” version. It gives me the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. It tells me that I may experience life a certain way but that I can live from the “yet” perspective. I can feel the emotion and yet I can choose to still live and operate from a position of peace, for example. I feel like I don’t have that same freedom with the other version. It feels like it wants me to always have peace without ever feeling emotions and that there’s something wrong with me if I’m struggling.
From “The 21 Maxims” it was #9 and #10 that stayed on my mind a lot, Jedi “acting as people of thought, and thinking like people of action,” and the progression from beliefs that determine a person’s destiny, which flows into actions based on clear intention. Also #13, “taking the right action even when nobody's watching,” and #14, “lack of fairness is essentially a mark of weakness,” influencing the things I do and say throughout my day, and the way I interact with people on my path.
Overall, I had a great experience with this and I look forward to doing it again.
Umalohókan
House of Twin Suns
TM: Carlos Martinez
"You don't have to see the whole staircase just to take the first step."
(Signature links to IP Journal, Apprentice Journal, A.div Journal, and Degree Tracker omitted for brevity — these were forum navigation links at the time.)
The following user(s) said Thank You: Carlos.Martinez3, Serenity Amyntas
Looking back now: This reflection on the July Doctrine Reading challenge shows how repetition turned doctrine into a living companion — carrying identity (“I am a Jedi”), recalibrating daily through the “yet” freedom, and letting specific teachings shape actions, fairness, and destiny. It was a joyful, communal capstone to the early training phase.