*** The Problem with Idealization *** FREE INTRO via Zoom 5/9 @ 6 pm MT

FREE INTRO TO HEALING IDEALIZATION – Idealization Sabotages Our Dreams

The Problem with Idealization

When we idealize, we fantasize about a future that never comes true. We fall into the pattern of believing that "only if" or "when" we reach a certain circumstance, will things be better. When that circumstance comes and nothing changes, we spin an excuse or extend the deadline for making things better. This is what keeps us living in a possibility that never emerges. We feel great about our prospects because we have not actually had to do anything.

Idealization keeps us from confronting how to manifest our dreams together by participating in a shared, mutual manner. Rather than constructively building the opportunities we want, we make excuses and end up victimizing ourselves, while blaming others for any lack of engagement or personal success. It seems natural to us to look for the easy way rather than commit ourselves to the process of actually making changes.

In a way, Idealization is a negative use of imagination, where our fears attach us to issues that we then project on others as negative perspectives, desires or dreams. By blaming others, we keep the attention away from how we had a hand in precipitating current events. Usually, it is our selfishness, self-centeredness or ‘need to be perfect’ that solidifies our self-importance and the narcissism of believing that we are always the victim.

The impact of Idealization is that we are always seeking either positive or negative reasons to make meaning of our lives. Either everything is great because of some potential circumstance that's going to happen, or we believe nothing great will ever happen. Either way, we are completely minimizing our options. While this process of vacillating between one extreme and the other creates a sense of change in our life, it produces no real change in our life circumstances. We go from hope to no hope, and back to hope again. We time-shift, where we re-create past circumstances by imagining that they happened differently. These shifts allow us to remake our past, keeping us focused on the positive associations we wish to emphasize, which is an Idealized version of our life.

When we constantly replay these experiences, it reinforces a false sense of safety and security and evokes wish fulfillment that solidifies into egoic, personality self-importance. This keeps us from dealing with the real problems that exist or actually improving our circumstances. Idealization is always about people, places and things. We can idealize ourselves or others, see the positives about a place or the worst about that location, or proclaim how a particular process improves or limits our options. What we do not understand is that we use these polarities to create false stability in our lives by compromising our beliefs, our experiences (experiential modalities of sensations, feelings, emotions and thoughts), and our presence in time. The more we compromise, the less we can distinguish what is true from non-congruent falseness.

When we idealize, we sacrifice our ability to be truthful or to recognize the truth because we cannot see both the good and bad simultaneously. As a result, we lose the power to discriminate. When we see only the good or only the bad, we can’t perceive the downside of the good, or the upside of the bad.

Someone who is influenced by Idealization patterns is not a reliable observer. That is how we find that relationships that were good originally can change on a dime to be the worst we ever feared. To compensate (for their Idealization), we tend to interpret their confusion as an opportunity to impose our good ideas upon them (our Idealization). Projecting personal desires is much easier than establishing (with others) transpersonal desires.

As we heal idealization, we learn to accept reality as it is. We see opportunities in what is flawed and incomplete. The key for us is to practice Passionate Indifference, where we enjoy the process and do not count on the goal to make us happy. When our partners can also be Passionately Indifferent, it creates the possibility of Radiant Self-Unifying Love because we can be ourselves without pretenses. Since Idealization encourages us to fall in love with our idea of partners rather than an imperfect flawed human, this is why Higher Alignment suggests that Idealization limits and demeans the experience of true love.

Healing Idealization - Idealization Sabotages Our Dreams is a 12-week Zoom series on Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m. MST, from May 16 through August 8, 2023.

Join us on Zoom on Tuesday May 9 at 6:00 p.m. MDT for our FREE INTRO to Healing Idealization. Our Free Intro topic is “The Problem with Idealization”.