“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause at 9:32.) That is why fanatics feel justified in their (underlined) actions. When you indulge in such black-and-white thinking, you treat your ideals shabbily. Each act that is not in keeping with that ideal begins to unravel the ideal at its very core. As I have stated [several times], if you feel unworthy, or powerless to act, and if you are idealistic, you may begin to feel that the ideal exists so far in the future that it is necessary to take steps you might not otherwise take to achieve it. And when this happens, the ideal is always eroded. If you want to be a true practicing idealist, then each step that you take along the way must be worthy of your goal.

THE PRACTICING IDEALIST

(As we prepared for the session I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind if Seth commented on a particularly vivid dream I’d had last night. I’d written a detailed account of it upon arising, as I do with all dreams I recall, and Jane had read it as we ate breakfast. I wasn’t sure that she heard me now, though. “I think Seth’s going to add a Part 4 to this book,” she said, “and he’s going to call it ‘The Practicing Idealist.’ And I want to keep changing it to ‘Practicing Idealism,’ because his heading sounds too much like it’s already been used. Wasn’t that a book? I think it might have been written by a political figure, though I’m not sure….”

(I could only reply that I didn’t know of a book called The Practicing Idealist. Then:)

[...] Sometimes it is difficult to identify idealists, because they wear such pessimistic clothing that all you can see are the patterns of a sardonic nature, or of irony. On the other hand, many who speak most glowingly, in the most idealistic fashions, underneath are filled with the darkest aspects of pessimism and despair. If you are idealists, and if you feel relatively powerless in the world at the same time, and if your idealism is general and grandiose, unrelated to any practical plans for its expression, then you can find yourself in difficulties indeed. [...]

If you want to change the world for the better, then you are an idealist. [...] If you want to change the world for the better, but you believe that it will grow worse, despite everyone’s efforts, then you are a truly despondent, perhaps misguided idealist. [...]

(10:14.) Fanatics are inverted idealists. [...] They are unfulfilled idealists who are not content to express idealism in steps, one at a time, or indeed to wait for the practical workings of active expression. [...]

[...] Roger, let us call him, is an idealist at heart, but he believes that the individual has little power in the world, and so he did not pursue his personal idealism in the events of his own life. “Everyone is a slave to the system.” [...]

[...]

[...] Jonestown, Harrisburg, and When Is an Idealist a Fanatic?”

In a manner of speaking, you must be a practicing (underlined) idealist if you are to remain a true idealist for long. [...]

[...] You might become an idealist in reverse, so that you find a certain excitement in contemplating the occurrence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes. [...]

[...] Each person is an idealist. [...]

You will understand, if you are a practicing idealist, that you cannot kill in the name of peace, for if you do so your methods will automatically undermine your ideal. [...]

Only when the natural impulse (to act constructively) is denied consistently does the idealist turn into a fanatic. Each person in his or her own way is an idealist.

(Pause.) A particular idealist believes that the world is headed for disaster, and [that] he is powerless to prevent it. [...]

The idea [of democracy] expresses the existence of a high idealism — one that demands political and social organizations that are effective to some degree in providing some practical expression of those ideals (emphatically). When those organizations fail and a gulf between idealism and actualized good becomes too great, then such conditions help turn some idealists into fanatics. [...]

So how can the well-meaning idealist know whether or not his good intent will lead to some actualization? [...] When does the idealist turn into a fanatic?

Let us look briefly at that entire affair, remembering some of our earlier questions: When does an idealist turn into a fanatic, and how? [...]

The President at the time, and through all of his life before (pause), was at heart a stern, repressed idealist of a rather conventionally religious kind. [...]

[...] “The best” idealist is a practical one—someone who realizes that most men like to work with specifics. [...]

Ruburt felt that your idealism could threaten the practical distribution of the books, so that his idealistic purpose—to get those words out—could be held back. [...]

The leader of Jonestown was at heart an idealist. When does an idealist turn into a fanatic? [...]

[...] Seth faces such questions squarely, and deals with the motivations of both the fanatic and the idealist. And people are idealistic. [...]

[...] They are often idealists, who beneath it all — beneath the enthusiasm, the intelligence, and sometimes beneath extraordinary ability — still feel that life could no more than sully those abilities, dampen those spiritual winds, and darken that promise that could never be fulfilled.

[...] When does the law act as a practical idealist? [...]

[...] I think he picked up on the precognitive element to show himself that his pictures of the past were too idealistic.

“The statue of the deer represents that idealistic image of the past; finding it broken in Brenner’s yard connects its real environment where Rob lived as a small boy [on Harrison Street] to Wilbur Avenue where he lived later; meaning that he’d idealized both backgrounds. [...]

[...] It is intellectual, yet carries the underlaying thrust of emotional hope—the distorted voice of the beleaguered, weary, ironic idealists.

[...] Now many scientists are “idealists.” [...]

[...] In the bookstore you felt that in a way the store was bigger than life, however, and in the granary dream Debbie’s drawings of you are idealistically bigger than life. [...]

[...] Here indeed he saw a symbolic representation of Ruburt—not one that could be physically materialized with his bone structure as a woman, but a figure of idealistic physical proportions that also possessed great mental faculties to match.

[...] He had to see what both extremes were extremes—not practical or idealistic. [...]

The people who died were idealists — perfectionists of exaggerated quality, whose very desire for the good was tainted and distorted by those beliefs just mentioned. [...]

[...] He may—or of course she may—on other occasions receive messages from the devil, or demons, which on their part represent the person’s feelings about the physical self that seems to be so evil and contradictory in contrast to the idealistic image. [...]

[...] You would find yourselves quite hampered in [any] idealistically perfect environment. [...]