“It’s still not natural. Can I just say, here, how much you two creep me out?”

“When I was Mace’s student,” Depa mused, “he would often remind me that nothing about being a Jedi is natural.”

“I thought you guys were all about going with the flow and using your instincts and stuff …”

“The difference,” I said, “lies in the instincts themselves. It is possible for an untrained Force-user to wield as much power as the greatest of Jedi—look at Kar. But untrained, the instincts he falls back on are those granted him by nature. It is another of the central paradoxes of the Jedi: the ‘instincts’ we use are not instinctive at all. They are the product of training so intense that they replace our natural ones. That’s why Jedi must begin at such an early age. To replace our natural instincts—territoriality, selfishness, anger, fear, and the like—with the Jedi ‘instincts’ of service, serenity, selflessness, and compassion. The oldest child ever accepted for training was nine—and there was much debate over that. A debate that has continued, I might add, for more than ten years.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 12