“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many people in a quandary of indecision write to Ruburt. Such a correspondent might lament, for example: “I do not know what to do, or what direction to follow. I think that I could make music my career. I am musically gifted. On the other hand (pause), I feel a leaning toward psychology. I have not attended to my music lately, since I am so confused. Sometimes I think I could be a teacher. In the meantime, I am meditating and hoping that the answer will come.” (Pause.) Such a person is afraid to trust any one impulse enough to act upon it. All remain equally probable activities. Meditation must be followed by action — and true meditation is action (underlined). Such people are afraid of making decisions, because they are afraid of their own impulses — and some of them can use meditation to dull their impulses, and actually prevent constructive action.

We are back, then, to the matter of the ideal and its actualization. When and how do your impulses affect the world? Again, what is the ideal, the good impulse, and why does it seem that your experience is so far from that ideal that it appears to be evil?

What is the difference between a crime and a sin, as most of you think of those terms? Can the state punish you for a sin? It certainly can punish you for a crime. Is the law a reflection of something else — a reflection of man’s inherent search toward the ideal, and its actualization? When does the law act as a practical idealist? Why do you sneer so when politicians show their feet of clay?

As the body wants to grow from childhood on, so all of the personality’s abilities want to grow and develop. Each person has his [or her] own ideals, and impulses direct those ideals naturally into their own specific avenues of development — avenues meant to fulfill both the individual and his society. Impulses provide specifications, methods, meanings, definitions. They point toward definite avenues of expression, avenues that will provide the individual with a sense of actualization, natural power, and that will automatically provide feedback, so that the person knows he is impressing his environment for the better.

I do not want to romanticize criminals, or justify their actions. I do want to point out that few crimes are committed for “evil’s sake,” but in a distorted response to the failure of the actualization of a sensed ideal.