“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You may not achieve ideal solutions with the law, but it should allow practical specific actualization, at least in part, of an ideal situation. You are both quite lucky, in that in your main work you can deal directly with the ideal. In writing and in painting you tackle it. The creative artist is always involved in the expression of the ideal, and his work expresses that ideal as best he can.

In the matter of publishing, or selling paintings, others are involved—others who very rarely in their lives experience that important encounter between, say, the self as actualized and the idealized sensed self, between the painting or the poem as an ideal and the actualization of that ideal. You cannot give such people a general impression of what you want. If you are concerned with such matters as covers that do not live up to your ideals of what covers should be, then you must begin your definitions. Ruburt has primarily been concerned with the ideal that is behind all of his books, and with the practical matter of getting those out into the world. (Pause.) He was willing to put up with a good deal to do so, to overlook lacks of taste in presentation, say.

Ideals are vital, for they provide an impetus toward beneficial action, action that is meant to lead to some actualization of that ideal in fact. An ideal represents events that do not as yet exist in fact. They should serve as plans for concentrated action.

On the other hand, of course, the very individuality implied in art itself tells you that even the ideal must follow its own eccentric patterns, and that man must find his own way out of his l-a-c-k-s (spelled). Ruburt, however, would rarely deal with such issues at all, though he was aware of them, so you felt you bore the brunt. You cannot expect Prentice to understand the nature of your own idealism, or Ruburt’s, in such a way that Prentice as an entity can apply that idealism to its packaging. Not unless you define, you specify. You get together, the two of you, on each issue, as it happens, and make your decision together, and stick by it. You have not done this before because each of you would become irritated at the other’s mode of behavior.

[...] 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. [...]

People will be drawn toward those paperbacks, and led toward “the ideal.” [...] It can never make the ideal shoddy, if the ideal is within to begin with.

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. [...] Beside, the expressed ideal may seek routes actually far more advantageous than ones you might have, planned for it.

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. [...] 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.

[...] You are left with vague idealized feelings of wanting to change the world for the better, for example — but you are denied the personal power of your own impulses that would otherwise help direct that idealism by developing your personal abilities. [...] This leads to lingering frustration, and if your ideals are strong the situation can cause you to feel quite desperate.

[...] Many have high ideals, but ideals that have never been trusted or acted upon. [...] They have concentrated upon the great gaps that seem to exist between their ideals of what man should be, and their ideas of what man is.

[...] 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. [...]

THE IDEAL, THE INDIVIDUAL, RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND THE LAW

You are a fanatic if you consider (underlined) possible killing for the pursuit of your ideal. For example, your ideal may be — for ideals differ — the production of endless energy for the uses of mankind, and you may believe so fervently in that ideal — this added convenience to life — that you considered the hypothetical possibility of that convenience being achieved at the risk of losing some lives along the way. [...]

[...] Had he begun the work of actualizing his ideals through his own private life, he would not be in such a situation. The expression of ideals brings about satisfaction, which then of course promotes the further expression of practical idealism.

(10:53.) It means that you are not willing to take the actual steps in physical reality to achieve the ideal, but that you believe that the end justifies the means: “Certainly some lives may be lost along the way, but overall, mankind will benefit.” [...] In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal you give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives.³ Your justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism — and the quality of human life itself suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. [...]

Give us a moment… Let us look at the many forms idealism can take. [...] 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. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] The ideal of the country was and is an excellent one: the right of each individual to pursue an equitable, worthy existence, with dignity. The means, however, have helped erode that ideal, and the public interpretation of Darwin’s principles was, quite unfortunately, transferred to the economic area, and to the image of man as a political animal.

(9:54.) While you believed in competition, then competition became not only a reality but an ideal. [...] Competition, however, has been promoted as the ideal at all levels of activity. [...]

[...] “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. [...]

Such action serves as a safeguard so that you do not overemphasize the gaps that may exist in yourself or in society, between the reality and the ideal condition. Many people want to change the world for the better, but that ideal seems so awe-inspiring that they think they can make no headway unless they perform some great acts of daring or heroism, or envision themselves in some political or religious place of power, or promote an uprising or rebellion. The ideal seems so remote and unreachable that, again, sometimes any means, however reprehensible, eventually can seem justified (see Session 850, for example). [...]

The blueprints for “ideal” developments exist within the pool of genetic knowledge, providing the species with multitudinous avenues for fulfillment. Those blueprints exist mentally as ideals. [...]

Your natural athletes, for example, show through their physical expertise certain ideal body conditions. They may personify great agility or strength or power: individual attributes, physical ideals (pause) which are held up to others for their appreciation, and which signify, to whatever extent, abilities inherent in the species itself.

Your searches toward understanding excellent performance in any area — your idealisms — are all spiritually and biologically ingrained. If many of the conditions we have mentioned in this book are less than ideal in your society, then you can as an individual begin to change those situations. [...]

[...] You can become involved now in a new exploration, one in which man’s civilizations and organizations change their course, reflecting his good intents and his ideals. You can do this by seeing to it that each step you personally take is “ideally suited” to the ends you hope to achieve. You will see to it that your methods are ideal.

[...] You must take small practical steps, often when you would prefer to take giant ones — but you must move (underlined) in the direction of your ideals through action. Otherwise you will feel disillusioned, or powerless, or sure, again, that only drastic, highly unideal methods will ever bring about the achievement of a given ideal state or situation.

[...] When you do not take any steps toward an ideal position, then your life does lack excitement. [...] You may contemplate the end of the world instead, but in either case you are propelled by a sense of personal frustration, and perhaps by some degree of vengeance, seeing in your mind the destruction of a world that fell so far beneath your idealized expectations.

[...] When you give lip service to ideas with which you do not agree, you are betraying your own ideals, harming yourself to some extent, and society as well, insofar as you are denying yourself and society the benefit of your own understanding. [...] I simply want to help you practice your idealism in the acts of your daily life.

Now: Dictation … These idealizations (as discussed in the last session) are certain kinds of psychic patterns, then, occurring at different levels. [...] Such idealizations provide their own impetus; that is, they will grow toward their own greatest fulfillment.

The idealizations themselves are made of “conscious” stuff. [...] The structure of probabilities provides on the one hand a system of barriers, in which practical growth is not chosen or significant; and on the other hand it insures a safe, creative, rich environment — a reality — in which the idealization can choose from an almost infinite variety of possible actions those best suited to its own fulfillment.

[...] The idealization of motion, however, in that person’s mind, or of change, may be denied expression at any given time — but it will nevertheless seek expression through experience. [...] Because you are now a conscious species, in your terms, there are racial idealizations that you can accept or deny. [...]

In any system the idealization has already accepted certain kinds of events as significant, and has rejected other (quite-as-probable events) as nonsignificant. [...]

You must realize that fanatics always deal with grandiose ideals, while at the same time they believe in man’s sinful nature, and the individual’s lack of power. [...] Their ideals then seem even more remote. [...]

[...] In his grandiose, idealized version of reality, he saw that race “set in its proper place,” as natural master of mankind.¹

He believed in heroic characteristics, and became blinded by an idealized superman version of an Aryan strong in mind and body. [...]

The political arena was the practical working realm in which those ideals were to find fruition. [...]

[...] He must be in one way or another a symbol of those idealized qualities that the individual and the massed natives of the land give lip service to. These ideals are highly vital and important. The strength of the inner unrecognized hatred and aggression can be disastrous, and yet it works for the service of the ideal.

[...] Without the struggle for these ideals a complacent vacuum develops. Now the real struggle for these ideals results in strength. [...] (Long pause.) If there is an honest struggle, an honest effort toward peace and brotherhood, then even if war erupts on a practical level then the psychic development is healthier than if no effort toward peace is made, or if ideals are merely mouthed.

[...] Your nation, because of its greatness and ideals, must judge itself accordingly against those ideals. [...] Those who point the finger now however know, in one respect, that they have the right to do so since you are the ones who have set forth the ideals of peace and brotherhood. [...]

The ideals were mouthed but not believed. Individuals only gave them lip service, and yet individual and mass guilt grew because of the difference between ideals and behavior. [...]

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. [...] The businessman who believed in Darwinian principles and the fight for survival, who justified injustice and perhaps thievery to his ideal of surviving in a competitive world — he suddenly turns into a fundamentalist in religious terms, trying to gain his sense of power now, perhaps, by giving away the wealth he has amassed, all in a tangled attempt to express a natural idealism in a practical world.

[...] Ideally (underlined), your impulses are always in response to your own best interests — and, again, to the best interests of your world as well. [...]

[...] Ideally (underlined), by following your impulses you would feel the shape, the impulsive shape (as Ruburt says) of your life. [...]

[...] It seems you cannot impress the world as you wish, that your ideals must always be stillborn.

[...] He believed in an idealized good, while believing most firmly and simultaneously that man was fatally flawed (loudly), filled with evil, more naturally given to bad rather than good intent. [...] For while he believed in the existence of an idealized good, he felt that the wicked were powerful and the good were weak and without vigor.

[...] But the idea that each person tries to actualize the idealized good as much as they can through their daily lives — their work, social structures, and so forth — and in the meantime use certain criteria that will help them judge for themselves whether or not their actions are really in line with their ideals. [...]

Before we end this particular section of the book, dealing with frightened people, idealism, and interpretations of good and evil, there is another instance that I would like to mention. [...]

(8:38.) He concentrated upon the vast gulf that seemed to separate the idealized good and the practical, ever-pervading corruption that in his eyes grew by leaps and bounds. [...]

The ideals are like instructions on a blackboard that will not be erased. When you have learned the lesson you realize that the ideals were not necessary, but until you learn the lesson they are all you have as guidelines. The ideals are mere shadows of instructions. [...]

[...] This information is compared to the ideals that have been reached in the manner I have told you; and the ideals themselves originate in the dream state, and are then translated into terms that are practical physically.

[...] The ideals of which you speak are your protection, built-in survival mechanisms that warn of danger, invisible fences like psychic signs saying beware.

[...] The ideals keep the race pointed in beneficial directions. [...]

We are back, then, to the matter of the ideal and its actualization. [...] 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?

Consciousness attempts to grow toward its own ideal development, which also promotes the ideal development of all organizations in which it takes part.

[...] That was to be, and is, the ideal. [...] Treatment in the marketplace, or in society, often shows great divergence from that stated national ideal. [...]

[...] The country was — and still is — brimming with idealism.

(Long pause at 9:37.) That idealism, however, ran smack into the dark clouds of Freudian and Darwinian thought. [...]

[...] Idealism is tough, and it is enduring, and no matter how many times it is seemingly slain, it comes back in a different form. [...]

[...] There are many schools for spiritual advancement that teach you to “get rid of the clutter of your impulses and desires,” to shove aside the self that you are in search of a greater idealized version. [...] They provide in-built spiritual and biological impetuses toward your most ideal development (underlined). [...]

[...] Behind them you will almost always find an inhibited impulse — or many of them — that motivated you to move in some ideal direction, to seek a love or understanding so idealized in your mind that it seemed impossible to achieve. [...]

[...] The inner self then becomes so idealized and so remote that by contrast the physical self seems only the more ignorant and flawed. In the face of such beliefs the ideal of psychic development, or astral travel, or spiritual knowledge, or even of sane living, seems so remote as to be impossible. [...]

If you examine such troublesome stimuli, you will always find that they originally rose after a long process, a process in which you were afraid to take small positive steps toward some ideal. [...]

Certainly Seth is saying that Jane’s books (and his) represent her acknowledgment of and search for an ideal. [...] (See Seth’s material on “ideals set in the heart of man” in sessions 696–97 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.) Apropos of such concepts, I’ll close these introductory notes by quoting from a personal session Seth gave for Jane and me, in which he reiterates the importance of the individual and the pursuit of the ideal. [...]

“When you thoroughly understand what is meant by the entire safe-universe concept, then the physical, cultural climate is seen as a medium through which the ideal can be expressed. The ideal is meaningless if it is not physically manifest to one degree or another. The ideal seeks expression. [...]

[...] Such an endeavor essentially involves the pursuit of an ideal, and represents our attempts to give physical and mental shape to the great inner, creative commotion of the universe that each person intuitively feels. Of course Jane and I want Seth’s ideas and our own to touch responsive reflexes within others; then each individual can use the material in his or her own expression of that useful ideal, letting it serve to stimulate inner perceptions.

“In a way, with [this] book and with your art, your purpose is the expression of the ideal, and that expression must be physically materialized, obviously. Your joy, your challenge, should be in the manifestation of the ideal as you see it, whether or not you can in your terms count 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.

“The therapy of value fulfillment will attempt to put individuals in touch with their basic instincts, to allow them to sense the impulsive shapes of their lives, to define their own versions of the ideal through the recognition of it as it exists in their own impulses and feelings and abilities, and to help them find acceptable and practical methods of exerting their natural power in the practical actualization of those ideals.”

[...] You are born seeking the actualization of the ideal. [...]

[...] Then we will have less frightened people, and fewer fanatics, and each person involved can to some extent begin to see the “ideal” come into practical actualization. [...]

Then in the 861st session itself — which was not for Mass Events, as stated — Seth briefly mentioned the material on ideals and impulses he’s been giving in recent book sessions. [...]

[...] This does not mean that in a beloved person you react only to your own idealized self, for you are also able to see in the other, the beloved’s potential idealized self. [...] This vision is quite able to perceive the difference between the practical and the ideal, so that in ascendant periods of love the discrepancies in, say, actual behavior are overlooked and considered relatively unimportant.

Hatred always involves a painful sense of separation from love, which may be idealized. [...]

[...] Hatred can contain love and be driven by it, particularly by an idealized love. [...]

[...] You often do love another individual because such a person evokes within you glimpses of your own “idealized” self.

[...] Each person senses an ideal, and has good intent, but those ideals and good intents are distorted by beliefs, and by the conditions accompanying them.

[...] They sense an ideal, but those ideals and abilities are everywhere distorted by millions of other considerations. [...]

Dick, again, uses golf in order to actualize to some extent his feeling toward an ideal. [...]

Your covers represent the attempt to express an ideal in the context that exists in the publishing field. [...]