"Pain can be a drug."
"For myself, I say that pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip and all that lives will move. The most basic instinct of life is to retreat from pain. To hide from it. If going here hurts, even a granite slug will go over there; to live is to be a slave to pain. To be 'beyond pain' is to be dead, yes?"
"No lesson is truly learned until it has been purchased with pain."
--Vergere

"Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
Now he begins to understand: because pain is a god...But it is also a teacher, and a bridge. It can be a slave master, and break you—and it can be the power that makes you unbreakable. It is all these things, and more.
At the same time.
What it is depends on who you are."

Vergere: "What I have done? Oh, no no no, this is about what you have done."
Jacen: "I haven't done anything!"
Vergere: "Exactly. Is that not the infant's tactic? To wail, and wail, and wail, to wriggle its fingers and kick its heals...hoping an adult will notice and care for it?"
Jacen: "Is that why you keep coming here? To gloat? To humiliate a defeated enemy?"
Vergere: "Am I gloating? Are we enemies? Are you defeated?"
Jacen: "I don't understand."
Vergere: "That, at least, is very clear. I give you a gift, Jacen Solo. I free you from hope of rescue. Can you not see how I am trying to help you?"
Jacen: "Help? When we talk about the kind of things you've done to me, help isn't the word we use."
Vergere: No? Then perhaps you are correct: our difficulties may be linguistic. When I was very young, I came upon a shadowmoth at the end of its metamorphosis, still within its cocoon. I had already some touch with the Force; I could feel the shadowmoth's pain, its panic, its claustrophobia, its hopelessly desperate struggle to free itself. It was as though this particular shadowmoth knew I was beside it, and screamed out to me for help. How could I refuse? So I gave it what you mean by help: I used a small utility cutter to slice the cocoon, to help the shadowmoth get out."
Jacen: "You can't help a shadowmoth by cutting its cocoon. It needs the effort; the struggle to break the cocoon forces ichor into its wing veins. If you cut the cocoon—
Vergere: "The shadowmoth will be crippled. I robbed that shadowmoth. I stole its destiny—because I helped it."
Jacen: "That wasn't helping. That's not what help means either."
Vergere: "No? I saw a creature in agony, crying out in terror, and I undertook to ease its pain, and assuage its fear. But tell me this, Jacen Solo: what should I have done that you would call help?"
Jacen: "I suppose the best help you could offer would be to keep the cocoon safe—and leave it alone to fight its own battle."
Vergere: "And, perhaps, also to protect it from other well-intentioned folk—who might wish, in their ignorance, to 'help' it with their own utility cutters. And also perhaps, you might stop by from time to time, to let the struggling, desperate, suffering, creature know that it is not alone. That someone cares. That its pain is in service of it's destiny."
Jacen: "Yes..."

She has freed him from his own trap: the trap of childhood. The trap of waiting for someone else. Waiting for...others whom he could always count on to fly to his rescue.
He is not helpless. He is only alone.
It's not the same thing.

"'Why' is a question that is always deeper than its answer." --Vergere

"Is it what the teacher teaches?" Vergere countered. "Or what the student learns?"
"What's the difference?"
"That is, itself, a question worth considering, yes?"

"What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only—and exactly—this: the choice of the gardener." "To me, a gardener is one who chooses what to cultivate, and what to uproot; who decides which lives must end so that the lives he cherishes may flourish." --Vergere

"Sith? Jedi?" she said. "Are these the only choices? Dark or light, good or evil? Is there no more to the Force than this? What is the screen on which light and dark cast their shapes and shadows? Where is the ground on which stands good and evil?" --Vergere

"All the answers fall short of the truth."
"Very good!" Vergere clapped her hands and bounced upright like a spring-loaded puppet. "Very good, Jacen Solo. Questions are more true than answers: this is the beginning of wisdom."

"Winning is not the same as fighting." --Vergere

"You seem to be telling me that what you do is irrelevant; all that matters is why you do it."
"That's not it at all—"
"No? Then tell me, Jacen Solo, if you had pursued the noble goal of saving those thousands of slaves in the manner of a true Jedi, what would you have done differently? Anything? Or would you only feel differently about what you have done?...Do you think it matters to [the] dead whether you killed them in a frenzy of rage or with calm, cool Jedi detachment?"
"It matters to me," Jacen said solidly.
"Ah, I see. You can do whatever you want, so long as you maintain your Jedi calm? So long as you can tell yourself you're valuing life? You can kill and kill and kill, so long as you don't lose your temper?" She shook her head, blinking astonishment. "Isn't that a little sick?"

"You are free to do, or not do, what you will. Do you understand the difference between training and teaching? Between learning to do, and learning to be? I want nothing from you. I want only for you. 'Expecting' is distraction. Pay attention to now." --Vergere

"You feel empty. You feel alone. Lonely. Almost frightened, but also strong yes? The name for what you are feeling, is freedom. --Vergere

Nothing seemed to matter. On this shattered planet, each direction was as good as any other. There was nothing useful he could do—nothing within his reach that would make a difference to anyone but himself.
On the other hand, who says I have to be useful?
And, sitting on that ledge, he discovered that there was one direction that still meant something to him.

Jacen: "That's not the darkside. A predator hunts to feed itself and its family. That's just nature.
Vergere: "And the dark side isn't? I thought the danger of the dark side was that it is natural: that's why it's easier than the light, yes? Is what you have seen not the exemplar of the dark side? Is this not what you fear so much: aggression, violence, passion?"
Jacen: "You want to know what the real dark side would look like? If that predator had slaughtered the entire herd, just for the fun of it. For the joy of killing."
Vergere: "Do you think this predator takes no joy in its successful kill?...Kill one, it's nature, kill them all, it's the darkside? Is the line between nature and dark side only one of degree? Is it the dark side if that predator kills only half the herd? A quarter?"
Jacen: "It's the dark side if it kills more than it needs to feed itself and it's family. That's the line. Killing when you don't need to kill."
Vergere: "And how do you define need? Are we talking about the line of starvation, or simple malnutrition? Is it the dark side if they only eat half the slain animal? Does a predator partake of the dark side if its family is a few kilos overweight?"
Jacen: "It's not about that—"
Vergere: "Then what is it about? Are we back to why? Does intention always trump action? It's not the dark side for that predator, say, to slaughter the entire heard and leave them to rot, so long as it thinks it needs them for food?"

"This is the shameful secret of the Jedi: There is no dark side. The Force is one, Jacen Solo. The Force is everything, and everything is the Force. I've told you already: the Force does not take sides. The Force does not even have sides...Light and dark are no more than nomenclature: words that describe how little we understanding...What you call the dark side is the raw unrestrained Force itself: you call the dark side what you find when you give yourself over wholly to the Force. To be a Jedi is to control your passion...but Jedi control limits you power. Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind...If your surrender leads to slaughter, that is not because the Force has darkness in it. It is because you do...The only dark side you need fear, Jacen Solo, is the one in your own heart." --Vergere

"There is nothing that is not a game. A serious game, to be sure: a permanent game. A lethal game. A game so grave that it can be well played only with joyous abandon...Yes. It has never been a game. And it always has. Either way, or both: you had better play to win...There are no rules...But the game does have a name. We are playing 'Who is Jacen Solo?'" --Vergere

"Everything is easy when you have no doubts." --Anakin Solo

"The Force is one, Jacen. It encompasses all opposites. Truth and lies, life and death, light and dark, good and evil. They're all each other, because each thing and everyting is the same thing. The Force is one." --Anakin Solo

"It is an instinct of all pack animals: the mortally wounded crawl back to their own dens to die...With the greatest wound a Jedi can suffer: freedom...When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertaintly sets you free." --Vergere

Jacen: "Where is the truth supposed to be?"
Vergere: "Ask yourself. Where else can one look?"

"See, the thing is, everything everyone tells you is a lie. The truth is always bigger than the words we use to describe it." --Jacen Solo

"The only power I have—the only power any of us have—is to be who we are...I don't have to know [who I am]. All I have to do is decide. Choose, and act...When you start to become who you are, the first thing you learn is that there is nothing to fear." --Jacen Solo

For all these things are all one thing: pain and joy, less and reunion, life and death. To love any is to love all, for none can exist without every other.
The Universe.
The Force.
All is one.
Call it the Universe, or the Force, or Existence: those are only words.
They are half truths. Less.
They are lies.
The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it.

Playacting the hero's part is not only permissable. It is necessary.

Time vanished along with fear, and doubt, and pain in that eternal second when he surrendered his self-command.

There are only the dancers and the dance.
The dance is all there is: from the whirl of quarks to wheel of galaxies, all is motion.
All is dance.

"A lightsaber is an interesting weapon. A paradox, not unlike the Jedi weild it: those peaceful warriors, who kill in the service of live. Have you ever noticed? The blade is round. It has no edge. But it is a lightsaber—which means it is nothing but edge. There is no part of this blade that does not cut. Curious, yes? Symbolic, one might say." --Vergere

Jacen had learned that one can meet the Universe and all its irrational pain—which means meeting oneself—with fear, or with hatred, or with despair.
Or one can choose to meet it with love.

Vergere: "Now, what are you Jacen Solo?"
Jacen: "I guess I'm a student."
Vergere: "Perhaps you are. Then you are also a teacher, for the two are one. But to be such, you must learn, and you must teach. You must live.

He would never really know—could never really know—much of anything. Truth is elusive, and questions are more useful than answers.

"You need not like someone to love him. Love is nothing more than the recognition that two are one. That all is one." --Vergere

Jacen: "Instead of working with what is, they keep trying to force everything to be what they think it should be."
Vergere: "This is the most valuable lesson one can teach a fanatic: that fanaticism is self-defeating."

"This is the greatest moment of a teachers life: when she is surpassed by her student." --Vergere