“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many difficulties arise when you compare yourselves to stylized or idealized versions of yourselves—to composite images of yourselves that you may have picked up along the way—a subject that we have mentioned earlier. [...]

[...] In such cases you are unable to really estimate your own progress of your own accomplishments, for you are not looking at them based upon your own capabilities and inclinations, but using the hypothetical idealized images instead. [...]

[...] Part of your accomplishment lies in our sessions and your own considerable work with the notes, and with the invisible aura contained in those notes, for there in a different way you are painting a portrait—a portrait of two lives from a highly individualistic standpoint, extremely unique—and that is the kind of experience that would be ripped out of your life’s fabric, were you the hypothetical idealized version with whom you sometimes relate—a version highly romanticized, let me add. [...]

(Pause.) Fanatics exist because of the great gap between an idealized good and an exaggerated version of its opposite. The idealized good is projected into the future, while its exaggerated opposite is seen to pervade the present. The individual is seen as powerless to work alone toward that ideal with any sureness of success. [...] Behind all this is the belief that spontaneously the ideal will never be achieved, and that, indeed, on his own man is getting worse and worse in every aspect: How can flawed selves ever hope to spontaneously achieve any good?

[...] Joint action seems the only course, but a joint action in which each individual must actually be forced to act, driven by frenzy, or fear or hatred, incensed and provoked, for otherwise the fanatic fears that no action at all will be taken toward “the ideal.”

[...] When you say “no,” or deny, you always do so because in your mind and feelings, a present situation, or a proposed one, falls far short of some ideal. [...] But never negate the present reality of yourself because you compare it to some idealized perfection.

[...] It can accept deviations from the ideal vision without condemning them. It does not compare the practical state of the beloved’s being with the idealized perceived one that is potential.

In this vision, the potential is seen as present, and the distance between the practical and the ideal forms no contradiction, since they coexist.

[...] They cannot be plowed under for some ideal that exists apart from them.

In your terms, the ideal itself arises because of the intimate daily chores and activities of living; the sacredness of the body’s motion and all of those questions that arise between its motion and the time when it will be silent. [...]

As lovers can see the “ideal” in their beloved, and yet be well aware of certain inadequacies, certain deviations from the ideal, so can you, loving yourself, realize that what you think of as imperfections are instead gropings toward more complete becoming. [...]

[...] Do not deride yourself because you have not reached some great ideal, but start to use those talents that you have to the best of your ability, knowing that in them lies your own individual fulfillment.

[...] The ideal in their minds becomes so great that they are always dissatisfied with their own performance yet they are afraid to make a start.

You make your own reality, Man’s “evil” exists because of his misunderstanding of his own ideals, because of the gap that seems to exist between the ideal and its actualization. [...]

[...] The contrasts between, say, the superior self or the idealized self, and the debased self, may vary. [...]

The Christ figure represents the exaggerated, idealized version of the inner self that the individual feels incapable of living up to. [...]

(9:10.) A private note: what you want to do, ideally speaking, is the best thing to do.

Ideally speaking, your impulses lead you in your own proper direction, knowing the shape of your life, and your abilities and your needs. [...]

[...] The religious area in general, from time immemorial, has dealt intensely and sometimes one-mindedly with “the good ideal.” That ideal, however, different in one area than in another, was usually self-righteously applied with a vengeance and fanatical zest, so that all things outside it were seen as evil.

[...] In such concepts any natural goodness, or natural intent in man becomes not only invisible psychologically to the fanatic, but man’s natural nature appears as a direct threat to the ideal projected by dogma of any kind.

When ideals are set more or less artificially, greatly divorced from man’s nature, he cannot begin to live up to them. [...]

Such systems distort the very nature of idealism by placing the ideal in such an exalted position that it can never be attained, for by giving up the self you have you are to attain instead a wholly pure, wholly loving, idealized, spiritual self. [...]

(Pause at 10:10.) At the same time, there is much discussion about the good of mankind, ideal principles, goodness, charity and faith—but these are seen as possible only within the group, for the exterior world, you are told, is full of evil and corruption. [...]

[...] Yet the new self never comes—not the promised, overly idealized self that feels a godly love without distinctions. [...]

Added to that you have the issue mentioned earlier, of my relationship with him and vice versa, and his idea of an idealized self. Now it is that idealized self he is seeing in his mind that should find it so easy and natural to triumph in the public arena, solve people’s problems, always be compassionate and understanding, and certainly not critical of mankind’s foibles. [...]

Now this idealized self was primarily Ruburt’s—but to some extent also you contributed to it, feeling that anyone as gifted as Ruburt, if he were sure enough of himself, would indeed want to go out in that arena and press forward. You both felt a sense of schism between Ruburt’s physical condition and a hypothetical image of Ruburt as someone getting my material and ideally embodying it, so that if not perfect at least the main aspects of the life were smoothed out without contrasts. [...]

He took it for granted that, ideally speaking, he should do such public work, that it was his responsibility, but also that it represented a natural expression of abilities that he was denying because of his fears. [...]

[...] Ideally—but you do not live in an ideal world—this could happen overnight, and with only a feeling of release. [...]

If it seems to you that there is a great gap existing within Christianity, between ideals expressed, and actions, then let me tell you that conditions would indeed be far worse if these ideals had not initially been expressed, and if they were not yearly reaffirmed.

One of the reasons, Joseph, for your own lack of festive spirit in the past has been the result of your realization that this gap between idealism and action is great. [...]

The personality of Christ is an idealization, and a clue to the entity of which each individual personality is composed. [...]

[...] The leaders of religious cults, like that of Jonestown, overexaggerate grandiose ideals of brotherhood and love, for example (as Seth has mentioned), while often forbidding the natural expression of love on the part of one individual for another — assaulting family affiliations and so forth. As a result, the idealized love becomes more and more inaccessible, with the growth of more guilt and despair.

“In the same way the scientific community speaks of grandiose ideals, of man’s triumph over the planet and nature. At the same time these ideals further divorce the scientists from daily practical experience with their fellowman; and since they see animals as objects, they’re bound to see human life in somewhat the same fashion. [...]

[...] Use the model, but let it be a flexible one, in which your ideals work with the material at hand, molding it. Do not exaggerate, however, so that the ideal seems to be a perfection that cannot be attained given the conditions. [...]

[...] Men have committed crimes in misguided searches for an ideal. Great acts of heroism have also resulted, however, and men, it seems, have spent themselves in following an ideal that they hoped to actualize for the rest of mankind. [...] The answer is that as beneficial, as desirable, as good health is, and the performance of an excellent body, man’s pursuit of other kinds of accomplishment, his equally strong desire for knowledge, and his insatiable curiosity, his pursuit of the ideal, often lead him into pathways that result in the body’s difficulties.

[...] Men will die for an ideal. [...]

[...] You each have a tendency to over-idealize yourselves, and therefore to find yourselves wanting by contrast. The over-idealization is rigid. A true idealization involves loving thoughts of the development and fulfillment of your abilities to the best possible condition.

That entire situation however “ideally” should have passed some time ago. [...]

Ideally—and this is a big ideally—there would be no such damage to the body. [...]

[...] You are working toward this ideal, and the ideal is—and you will achieve it—to use all your abilities, all of your capabilities... [...]

[...] But it is the ideal toward which we work. [...]

[...] You are working toward this ideal, and the ideal is—and you will achieve it—to use all your abilities, all of your capabilities—and in doing this, you will help others automatically. [...]

[...] But it is the ideal toward which we must work. [...]

[...] The Platonic, idealized inner world would ultimately result in a dead one, for in it the models for all exteriorizations were seen as already completed — finished and perfect.

[...] They are ideals set in the heart of man,⁵ yet in other terms he is the one who also put them there, out of the deeper knowledge of his being that straddles physical time. [...]

Ideals that before seemed beyond the reach of individuals or of the species will change their character, and become working models that can be used effectively and joyfully.