Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [47]
The fact was, however, that I couldn’t make a ripple in a cup of water. And while my ability to sense foes and what they were planning to do got better, I still didn’t feel the Force entering me from outside. My progression in defensive areas came from opening up more of the Force within me, but that opening seemed to come as part of my instinctual desire for self-preservation.
And I was blocked by my internal desire for preservation of self.
Something had to give, and I thought I saw a way to make it give. Luke had arranged us in a circle around a huge boulder buried halfway into the ground. He nodded toward it. “You have all been told repeatedly that size does not matter. This is true. However, this does not mean all tasks will be simple. This rock, for all we know, is really just the top of a long plinth. We don’t know how big it is. Moving it may not only take a titanic effort, but a sustained effort. With the Force flowing through you, you will be able to move it. If the Force is not flowing, the task will not be completed.”
He looked at each and everyone of us openly. “Who would be first to try?”
Gantoris took a step forward. “Master, I would.”
“Master, if you please.” I bowed my head toward him. “I would be the first to do.”
Gantoris sneered in my direction. “You? You will do nothing.”
Luke looked at me. “Do you think you are ready?”
I shrugged. “I believe I must do this. Perhaps in focusing on small things I have closed myself down to the Force. To feel it I must open myself to something more grand.” I looked around the circle, making eye contact with everyone. “I must move this rock, therefore I will move it. This I believe.”
I was counting heavily on the internal pressures of not wanting to fail. I accepted that failure was possible, and was willing to live with the consequences of failure, which meant my attempt would not be frenzied or full of the negative emotions that heralded the dark side. I would just put my honest best effort forward. I would do all the things I had been taught to do, and I would succeed.
The Jedi Master nodded. “It is yours to do, then.”
Closing my eyes, I set myself and drew in a deep breath. Exhaling it slowly I let my senses expand and touch Tionne and Streen on either side of me. Then my consciousness leaped, link by link until I knew where everyone was in the circle. From there I began to work inward, and as I did so I began to feel the first faint tingles of energy. It felt almost like an ion bolt hitting close by. It made the hair on my arms stand up.
I didn’t push, I didn’t race after it, but spread myself out to let it come to me. As I made myself receptive, as I caught more of the Force the way a solar sail catches sunlight, my sense of the world became more complete. The blackness before my eyes did not lighten or brighten, but I found structures there and things. Spots that moved were insects. Lines that crawled beneath the dirt were worms. I traced bushes and grasses from leaf-tip to root. If it was alive I could feel it, and what I felt outside I could also feel inside.
The way Luke had molded his thoughts to mine to probe me about Mirax’s absence came back to me in a rush. I looked at the currents of Force inside of me and the currents swirling about outside. Little by little, slowly modifying a thought here, calming a doubt there, setting aside fear and encouraging hope, I changed how the Force flowed within me. I let it erode from the inside out all the walls isolating me from the universal torrent of Force energy.
With the first breach in my defenses the Force slammed into me like high pressure