Talk:Amon/@comment-4963341-20120610215915

One idea I have considered is that, in the wake of the whole Yakone scandal, Aang decided that it could be prudent to start training promising people in energy bending so as to create a force that could act to nullify evil benders like Yakone or Tarrlok. It has never been stated that only the Avatar can energybend, in fact the Lion Turtle pretty conclusive said so itself by stating that energy bending predates the avatar completely. It could also be possible for anyone who is spiritual enough to learn energy bending, even if they are not normally able to bend one of the classic elements.

Given that possibility, Amon could have been one of those who had the potential to energy bend, and learned directly from Aang how to do it. This would explain not only his ability to remove bending, which given what we saw in episode 9 and how Aang energy bending did not produce the psychadelic lightshow, seems likely; but it would also explain how Amon could potentially resist Tarrlok's bloodbending despite him supposedly not being a bender (particularly a waterbender which has pretty much been stated to be the only bender capable of resisting a bloodbender).

Amon could have had noble intentions to start when he began learning, but these could have become extreme when he saw just how corrupt and how numerous evil benders were. Mix in some mixed truth and lies in Amon's given backstory and there you go, the source of Amon's skills.

Just a speculation at this point though.