Natural Idealism

All of us born into the western world have acquired the beliefs of that world. The beliefs that form much of that world are contained within the tenets of our religions, science and Darwinism. Our habitual patterns of thinking about ourselves are the result of these three cultural systems. The basic premise of religion is that we come into the world tainted by sin, or, at the least, become sinful. Science tells us that our entry into the world is the product of chance and has no meaning other than the propagation of our species, and Darwinism informs us that we are filled with the primitive instincts of the lower echelon species that spawned us. With these beliefs forming our opinions of ourselves it is no wonder we find ourselves in such a sorry state.

In this world view our value lies not in ourselves as IS, but rather in a state we must attain. In other words, our value lies not in the NOW but in the future. Our value is not in the simple fact of our being, but in our ability to become better than we are NOW. Our impulses are not to be experienced, but to be squashed at every opportunity lest we fall back to the earth’s lesser forms of life from which we supposedly evolved. And yet, all of us feel that there is meaning to our lives that we struggle to recognize. This feeling of meaning seems in direct contradiction to the basic premises we are taught to believe. We baptize our infants and yet it is difficult for us to conceive that such angelic creatures come into our lives with sin. Their explorations of our world seem far removed from mere survival and the propagation of the species. Their impulses are far more imaginative than murderous. So maybe, just maybe it is those very beliefs by which we order our lives that turn our children from natural idealists to schooled pessimists.

Idealism is intimately linked to what Seth and Elias and others have referred to as value fulfillment. To understand value fulfillment requires, first of all, a far broader understanding of who WE are. If you believe you are the result of the coincidental joining of egg and one of millions of potential fertilizing sperm and you are happy with that then you probably have a hodgepodge of conflicting beliefs. The conflict results when you try to reconcile your feelings of self-worth and meaning with your belief that, not only you, but the universe in which you live is the result of chance. What if who you are is far bigger than you could have imagined? I like this Seth quote from Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1:

“Moreover, science's thesis meets with no answering affirmation in the human heart - and in fact arouses the deepest antipathy, for in his heart man well knows his own worth, and realizes that his own consciousness is no accident. The psyche, then, possesses within itself an inner affirmation, an affirmation that keeps man from being completely blinded by his own mental edifices.
“There is furthermore a deep, subjective, immaculately knowledgeable standard within man's consciousness by which he ultimately judges all of the theories and the beliefs of his time, and even if his intellect is momentarily swamped by ignoble doctrines, still that point of integrity within him is never fooled.”

There is a part of us that knows this, and it is driven by value fulfillment, whereby we strive to enrich our own lives while at the same time adding to the fulfillment of all other creatures on the planet. This goes to the heart of our connectedness with all things, for if we do harm in our attempt to enrich our own lives we do harm to ourselves. The end never justifies the means and when we believe so and act so we become fanatic idealists. In science’s attempt to separate the world into parts it has fostered the belief that it is sometimes acceptable to sacrifice some for the benefit of all. Subjecting animals to cancer so that a cure can be found for humans is fanatical idealism. When we execute a human for the good of society it is fanatical idealism. When our idealism considers its impact on the good, the bad and the ugly then we begin to move into natural idealism.



We can only fool ourselves for so long before that long buried inner voice again finds its vocal chords. What does that inner voice sound like? It sounds like impulse. Our impulses are one of the means by which our inner self directs our idealism, and when we suppress them they turn dark. CG Jung referred to this as the Shadow. Our murderous impulses are the twisted result of a psyche that is taught to repress our inner voice from the moment we begin to recognize it is there. Our destructive impulses are the child of a belief system that teaches us we are a mere happenstance living on a planet that is itself a happenstance. We have created a world where one person’s ideals are another’s fanaticism. We are imaginative enough to create a world where we can live in harmony not only with our fellow humans, but with every life form on the planet, but we can’t and won’t do it if we continue to see ourselves as either ‘fallen’, or mere happenstance or evolved from ‘lower’ species. We will do it when we finally come to the realization that there is no disconnect between the animals we sacrifice for the sake of science and ourselves. When we awaken to the larger picture of who we really are we will begin the march home to natural idealism, where ‘an eye for an eye’ will be seen as the call to arms of the fanatic idealist.

Bill Marshall