16 Idealist

“To Dream the Impossible Dream..”

Song from the play: Man of La Mancha

Symbols & Color

• Star: Sage Set – Also the Background Image and Border Color
• Attitude Gauge: Attitudes Group
• Pharaoh: Exalted – Scope and Orientation
• Diamond: Expression Axis
• Color: Blue – Sage Set

Implications of the Upright Position or the Positive Pole

“Peace man!” was a phrase that was used by the “hippies” 1960’s, mocked by many others at time, but the unity and pressure it brought to bear helped to eventually lead America OUT of the Viet Nam War. Whatever one’s beliefs, when an idea has energy amassed behind it, power begins to flow toward it. This iconic gesture was chosen because it represented an ideal, which accepted reality as it joined together all allies of similar conviction. The result proved capable of creating a reality where only an ideal once existed.

Card messages in the Illuminated position

+ Coalescence,

(Optimistic, Visionary, Strategist, Prophet, Good-willed, tireless)

1. Ideals are the expression of our highest desires. Yet, there is a tendency to fixate on outcomes and rather than the details of how to accomplish them. Coalescence of all that you have learned will reveal a solution inclusive of all those factors. Incorporate many perspectives and you will achieve your goal.
2. “It should be” that what is as yet unattained can only come into existence when enough people hold the same vision. Share your ideals with someone and then listen to theirs. Invite others to brainstorm and collaboratively you will coalesce a better, clearer, more grounded version of what you all want.
3. Translate your dream into a workable model and plan, and you will manifest that reality.
4. Are the principles which you assert are good and right, really thought out? Are they helpful? Idealism can hold both sound and delusional ideas as equally important.
5. What you think of as ideal is only part of the picture. Let things coalesce a bit longer and everything will come into focus.
6. Ideals can change as you mature. But a principle should not. Don’t do anything rash in the name of an idea(l). You might just sell-out those people or associations you value the most.
7. Keep your eye on the standards you hold and apply them evenly.
8. Translate your dreams into a workable model and plan. You must actively pursue them or they remain pie-in-the-sky fantasy.
9. The “big idea” person is just what you need. If it isn’t you, that’s OK, you know what to look for.
10. Ideals can change, but principles should not. Don’t do anything rash in the name of an ideal. Or you are likely to sell out those people or associations which you care about most.
11. Make your dream into a reality by taking it from the Intellectual Center (the mind) and transferring it to the Moving Center (your actions) and see how the Emotional Center reacts as you walk toward it. Every step will give you means to feedback to incorporate.

Quotes illustrating the quality of the Overleaf in this pole

• “I am an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way.”  Carl Sandburg
• “The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.” Friedrich Nietzsche 
• “I’m not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic – the part of you that you treasure most – to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?” ― Kenneth Cain, Emergency Sex: And Other Desperate Measures

Interpretation of the Reversed Position or the Negative Pole

Idealism, defined outside the Michael Teaching, refers to the philosophy that believes that reality is constructed by our mental constructs and conscious reasoning; like assembling building blocks in a configuration according to one’s own standards. Where a more colloquial use means “high standards”;
Michael’s use is a combination of both. Yet, in this pole, Naïveté signifies a childish or childlike tendency to believe reality should actually conform to one’s ideals, no matter how skewed, spurious, or distorted, they might be. When the blocks are knocked over, crying, or a tantrum may ensue. Don’t pout. Get up and reassemble your ideas, and maybe getting a few more for support.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

+ Naivete

(abstraction, rationalizing, denial, foolish, disappointed, disillusionment)

1. It is naive to think ideals have one possible expression (i.e. the way you see it!) Ideals are meant to guide, not to imprison. Ideals not realized or lived create suffering. Are you trapped by an ideal?  Do you believe that yours is the only solution? Flesh out your ideals and let them become fruitful actions, otherwise they are dreams than die on the vine.
2. Life seems difficult and inaccessible at the moment because it does not match your pictures of reality. Abstraction and imagination lead one into fantasy, not vision. 
3. Perfectionism is the pursuit of some absolute. Yet nothing ever stops evolving. Don’t let the great become the enemy of the good, lest you will make the perfect the enemy of the real.
4. Are you trapped by an ideal? A single, unitary vision of how it “should be”? If you are, try doing exactly the opposite and the contrast will shed some much need light on what can be.
5. Ideals not realized or lived, create suffering that is usually projected onto someone else. If you can’t live up to them stop making others do it for you.
6. If life seems difficult or incomprehensible right now, it is because it doesn’t conform to your vision or expectations of reality. Best to take in the evidence before you and either recast your ideal or let reality recast your actions.
7. Being foolish doesn’t mean you have a thought that is bold or unique. If you act like Pollyanna, who simply thought “everything will work out in the end”, yet do nothing to direct the means to that end, wake up with the same tomorrow as they had today.
8. H. L. Mencken, that Cynic (Card 17) journalist and political commentator of the last century pretty much nailed the negative pole Idealist is the tendency for overgeneralization: “An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.”

Quotes illustrating the Overleaf in this pole

• “Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens.” Anonymous
• “Though dreams can be deceiving, like faces are to hearts, they serve for sweet relieving, when fantasy and reality lie too far apart.” Unknown 
• “An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.” H. L. Mencken
• “(the) author sees the ‘congested idealism’ of the generally discontent as reservoir that will support centralized power even while disagreeing with many specific provisions.” ― Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here

Relevance within the Michael Teaching

“It should be” refers to the motive of the a persons who want to bring into form their pictures of how reality would best work,. . . according to them!

Reason or cause is also important to the Idealist as it is with the Skeptic. The difference lies in how one goes about getting to this assessment. The Idealist may tend to be deductive in their thinking, looking for the “deep truth” at the bottom of the heap. Whereas a true Skeptic will be inductive, gathering and weighing all the factors and bringing forth a more detailed proof to support or reject an idea. An Idealist does not require proof, but a sense of inner knowing. Essence will choose Idealist as a mechanism for elaborating a picture of reality.

In the positive pole of Coalescence, the Idealists takes a cue from it’s complement and learns to augment its dreams of reality choosing to include things in its vision that actually exist rather than how they envision them. In this way, the dream may become more of a workable blueprint for a life or for a task they have chosen to carry out. Also, since ideals tend to be the core beliefs around which factions are formed, the positive pole can be seen in action when two or more opinions have been aggregated to achieve a larger preeminent principle rather than fight for a specific position. At their best, the Idealist is able to harvest the common seeds of a concepts and mold it into a force.

In the negative pole, Abstraction, reality gets substituted with fantasy and the inner word is superimposed upon the outer word. It is simpler to remain Naïve’ or willfully ignorant because including other points of view might upset the fragile inner reality one clings to. Enthusiastic and with an optimistic desire to prove themselves right and their ideas good, the Idealist is capable of mood swings. Once called “manic depression” now “bi-polar disorder” the Idealist Attitude is at the core of these swings. It is not to say that only Idealists suffer this ailment, but that the extreme views of reality can make their hold on it or more specifically their ability to work in it often tenuous at best. At their worst, negative pole Idealists use aphorisms, quotes, and glib slogans as a way of pretending a hold on reality as to promote their tenets. A substitute for using the Intellect, by adopting ideas that act in blockade of the process of thought. Such a mechanism wants to make everything “positive” because any negative is ugly, harsh, and threatening.

The Idealist are forward thinking people and in the may have a difficult time accepting present circumstances. They will tend to like to look right at you. Idealist likes to manipulate situations to get things “how they should be”. Thus, in the negative pole, the Idealist may show a rigidity and unwavering tendency to not change their mind. It can look like a form of stubbornness, but they will embrace change as long as it seems in alignment with their sanctioned direction. When a person fails to expand their understanding of an issue then it becomes stagnant, and the one asserting it has to compensate by bridging what may appear as fantastic and even nonsensical elements to fill the gaps. This creates foggy, disconnected, and rationalized thinking, distortions and a tenuous hold upon what is real. And since this takes a great deal of psychological energy, one Shadow formulation of this is a person who cannot function outside the bounds of their own imagination.

Famous Persons

JFK, Martin Luther King, Karen Allen, Tammy Baker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ingrid Bergman, Richard Burton, Johnny Carson, Fidel Castro, Bill Cosby, Robert DeNiro, John Dean, Walt Disney, Phil Donahue, Patty Duke, Linda Evans, Jane Fonda, James Garner, John Glenn, Cary Grant, Gary Hart, Goldie Hawn, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Hope, Timothy Leary, Jay Leno, George Lucas, Eddie Murphy, Oliver North, Yoko Ono, Dan Rather, Robert Redford, Martin Sheen, Richard Simmons, Paul Simon, Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Vanna White.

Cultural Relevance

Idealism is the core factor in motivating change and its direction. Competing ideals can form themselves into doctrine and dogma more so than any other mind set. Some of the greatest atrocities have been carried out in the name of ideals. Like the word’s prefix, idea, idealism may evoke a grand vision of the speakers possible future but it may have no tenants related to the present or to current circumstance. Politicians can be visionary or manipulative with their selective use of ideas, some of which may be factually true, but construct a world view which tries to exterminate opposing ideas. In this case, the visionary becomes the extremist. The former Soviet Union and the Cultural Revolution in China are sobering examples of Idealism that had turned away from dealing with real problems and in its place imposed a set of superficial iconic statements meant to keep people from confronting the ugliness of the totalitarian regimes that dominated them.

By contrast, the liberating ideals of the Constitution of the United States, offer a platform for anyone to look into their government and potentially have a useful debate where common ground may be coalesced and real progress set into motion. This happened in the New Deal stemming the Great Depression, the unity shown by the nation in fighting oppression in WWII, and in the Race to the Moon. But since that time, a divergence of peoples, classes, and power have resulted from the dictates of polarized ideals growing ever more far apart. As the nation becomes more divided around religious, economic, and secular factions, the absolutist face of Idealism, rears its ugly head and roars: “we know THE TRUTH.” Then, the ideals are not aspirations but mandates placed upon others. In the most cynical expression of an ideal is this: “we must do everything in our power to get these people in line.” Oppression is then justified from that point forward.

In times of great social disruption, Idealist, we can also call them visionaries, are the beacons around which emergence into a freer, shared responsibly, and more inclusive, emotional and intellectual climate can flourish. However, it is at these same moments when extreme doctrines arise proclaiming the superiority of one way of doing things, rather than showing the efficacy of how that propositions are to be implemented.

Your Attitude might be Idealist if…

1.  I know things would be better if they just would believe this way.
2. When things don’t go as I thought they should, I am often very disappointed.
3. My way is so beautiful and means the world to me.
4.  I have a dream about how the world should be and I should be able to rise to that challenge.
5. People think I live in fantasy land.
6. I don’t like things that are ugly or harsh. That’s not the way it should be.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated 2024

For a Motivation Cards Reading or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com