"Is there a defense -"

"It is essentially an external imposition on your consciousness. You must practice a constant self-awareness. Know what you are thinking and why. If you cannot trace the origin of a thought, reject it."

"Boots' be really good at that, even if she didn't have subtle arts shielding - hmm - 'I swear that for the next ten minutes I will only act on the goals and ideas and desires I have right now, and not any ones I acquire in the meantime.'

Try it again?"

Wave. "Raise both your hands."

He wants to, he can't, he puzzles out that the wanting-to is externally imposed and then he doesn't even want to, hah, she can't make him - 

Wave. "You feel an overwhelming sadness."

That works - he can tell after a bit that she's doing it, but he still feels it -

Wave. "When your oath expires, raise your arms."

Ten minutes - that's plenty of time to think - she said 'when the oath expires' because he can't do it until then, because the oath is shielding him from mind-control, though it wasn't phrased carefully enough to catch all of it - that means he wants to raise his arms because she said so, that means she's making him and she can't make him what if it was someone else making him make a black hole -

- his arms quiver. He scowls at her.

Wave. "You don't want to think of a way out of it."

But ten minutes ago he did and he can't form new wants - which is incidentally really dangerous, if something bad were happening he couldn't form a want to teleport away -

Occlus seems content to wait out the rest of his oath period.

He knows he doesn't actually want to raise his hands and that's just mind control and he still raises his hands - partially, slowly, but -

Occlus raises a brow.

No it's mind control he doesn't have to -

- hands down. Shakily.

"Your oath was not totally effective," she notes. "What would you have done if I attacked you with lifebinding while it was in effect?"

"I don't know, oaths freezing your wants like that are dangerous and hard to predict - might count as 'before I swore it I didn't want to be lifebinded', might not count -  there's probably a safer phrasing."

"It would be a neat shortcut, but you would be better served by practicing good mental discipline. That has been demonstrated to work, and lacks the potential for disastrous side effects."

"Okay. I'll practice. How do I practice, just - doing that a lot?"

"If you were able to use the Force I would recommend several meditative exercises. I do not know that they would be effective for you."

"Okay. Well. I need to figure it out somehow. Cipher recommended some books, I might read those -"

"She would be a better resource than I for this."

He makes the books and starts reading.

The books are very informative, though the prose is a touch dry.

He is really determined to learn how to not get mindcontrolled.