“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In your mind you creatively envision the ideal—the sanity of some future culture that, hopefully, our work and others will bring about: if not tomorrow, some “time.” On the other hand, you face the evidence of today; almost, though not quite, it seems, the worst picture possible, the antithesis of what is desired. And it seems to you that your money is being used to prolong those conditions.

The money is being achieved or accumulated as a result of your search for the ideal, so it appears twice as ironic to you that the funds for taxes be used to pursue national goals bent, it seems, upon the most gross, shortsightedly practical conditions. This is, if you will forgive the term, beautifully and cleverly connected in your mind with “Unknown” Reality—the book. Here again you find yourself often in a dilemma of your making, between the ideal and what seems to be; if not the grossly practical, something close to it.

For there, you envision on the one hand the best possible book, content, production, et cetera; and as if to purposefully torment yourself, you also envision the opposing “gross practical product” that could possibly result—a product that would only mock by contrast the ideal that is also so vividly envisioned.

With the book you are in torment as you contemplate the difference between what seems to be the ideal, and its feared actuality. It literally seems more practical and realistic to you that Prentice will somehow ruin the book, than it does to suppose that they will in any way help in bringing about the ideal.

When you let yourself go, your “natural” feelings lead you to fear that they will mutilate photographs, or in some way cheapen the book, dragging it down from the ideal. You have not really gotten it through your head that such thoughts do not represent practical reality, but impractical reality. But the main problem is the dilemma caused by the difference between the ideal and a feared, opposing actuality.

This applies also to the taxes, for in the back of your mind you also think of the good sane uses, the ideal in usage, to which such money could be given. The conflict causes tensions. The same applies to your feelings, until very lately, concerning your mother and the photographs. Here you had your feelings that photographs of the family would disclose a practical actuality far less than, for example, your mother’s ideal image of herself. You feared that in life she was always wounded by photographs because they showed her to be so far less than she wanted herself to be or appear.

Your money will go into ventures you approve of. Underline that sentence. It will be used to support people or ventures that in one way or another seek goals that are in line with our work. When you thoroughly understand what is meant by the entire safe universe concept, then the physical, cultural climate is understood as a medium through which the ideal can be expressed—can be expressed. The ideal is meaningless if it is not physically manifest to one degree or another. The ideal seeks expression. It seeks those channels that it instinctively knows will yield expression. In doing so it often seems to change or alter in ways that are not understood.

People will be drawn toward those paperbacks, and led toward “the ideal.” Those people are not used to understanding their own symbolism, so symbols are used—again in poor taste, it seems to both of you. In a way this is a kind of snobbery. Truth is not necessarily in good taste, and it comes in many clothes. It can never embarrass you. It can never make the ideal shoddy, if the ideal is within to begin with.

This does not mean there are not, for your understanding, “good products and bad products” from your vantage point. It means that the ideal takes many guises, speaks in many forms and voices. What you think of as disclosure is the apparent difference between the ideal and the actuality, as you understand each.

In a way with the book and with your art, your purpose is the expression of the ideal, and that expression must be physically materialized, obviously. If you were running a race you would focus upon your own sensations of speed and agility, trying to bring about a perfection of motion. You would consider it obviously impractical to focus instead upon any impediments that might be in the way. You would know better than to mutter over and over to yourself “I will never make it. I am going to trip here or here or there, or someone is going to trip me up, or certainly someone will throw a stone in my path.” Even though someone may have thrown a stone in your path in the past, as a runner such things would vanish from your mind as you concentrated on the feelings in your body of motion and agility.

(Louder for the next several paragraphs:) Your joy, your challenge, should be in the expression of the ideal as you see it, whether or not you can in your terms count upon the consequences, or the impediments—whether or not the expression comes to fulfillment in your terms—and even if it seems to fall on ground on which it will not grow.

As an artist alone your purpose is expression, which involves disclosure, the difference between the ideal and actual. Be reckless in the expression of the ideal, and it will never betray you. Treat it with kid gloves and you are in the middle of a battle. You demand the best circumstances, the proper conditions, and only then will you face yourself.

Then the joy of the ideal itself is marred for you, and you become over-protective. Your challenge, then, if you believe in the photographs, is to send them out even if it means risking them, rather than refusing the expression of the ideal, which is always self-defeating. You cannot control expression. Beside, the expressed ideal may seek routes actually far more advantageous than ones you might have, planned for it.

(11:00.) You cannot inhibit such expression out of fear, without experiencing tensions. As you become accustomed to the idea of “reckless” expression of the ideal, then it is free to find “more perfect” expression. It clears its own roads.

Your feelings, however, are based upon personal and cultural background—the unsafe universe, in which inspiration must be guarded and protected. It is seen as basically so weak that it requires an artillery of attitudes and a fortress of concepts to protect it. Unimpeded expression of the ideal, however, is the most powerful force in the world, and cannot be impeded.

Your joint ideas of the ideal, its expression, and feared closure, was in the past also largely responsible for your joint embarrassment over Ruburt’s physical condition, your joint shame over his appearance.

He was indeed expressing the ideal of his life to a far greater degree than most, but in those areas, where its expression lagged, the contrast seemed so varied in your joint eyes as to make the ideal seem a lie by contrast. If others had the same attitudes toward someone in the same kind of difficulty, you would straighten them out at once.

Prentice’s mutilation of the photographs is the same thing on your part. You are taught that to be practical is to expect the worst. To expect the best is Pollyanna. Despite that belief, however, you have both managed to express the ideal, and to clear, whether you realize it or not, one area of life after another.

(11:15.) Ruburt’s approach with the gums is a good one. It can work if he changes his beliefs quickly enough, since the overall physical condition is vastly accelerated. His impressions earlier this evening are very significant, as you will both shortly see. Do not consider your own symptoms as weakness, or as something to be ashamed of in the face of the ideal of perfect health.