Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of inspirational fashion and gift ideas. Visit them online at BookofZen.com. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from The Ideal Made Real by Christian D. Larson, published in 1909.

To have ideals is not only simple but natural. It is just as natural for the mind to enter the ideal as it is to live. In fact, the ideal is an inseparable part of life; but to make the ideal real in every part of life is a problem, the solution of which appears to be anything but simple. To dream of the fair, the high, the beautiful, the perfect, the sublime, that everyone can do; but everyone has not learned how to make their dreams come true, nor realize in the practical world what they have discerned in the transcendental world.

The greatest philosophers and thinkers in history, with but few exceptions, have failed to apply their lofty ideas to practical living, not because they did not wish to but because they had not discovered the scientific relationship existing between the ideal world and the real world.

To understand the scientific relationship that exists between the real and the ideal, the mind must have both the power of interior insight and the power of scientific analysis, as well as the power of practical application; but we do not find, as a rule, the prophet and the scientist in the same mind.

The person who has visions and the person who can do things do not usually dwell in the same personality; nevertheless, this is necessary. And every person can develop both the prophet and the scientist in themselves. They can develop the power to see the ideal and also the power to make the ideal real.

The large mind, the broad mind, the deep mind, the lofty mind, the properly developed mind can see both the outer and the inner side of things. Such a mind can see the ideal on high, and at the same time understand how to make real, tangible, and practical what they have seen.

The seeming gulf between the ideal and the real, between the soul’s vision and the power of practical action is being bridged in thousands of minds today, and it is these minds who are gaining the power to make themselves and their own world as beautiful as the visions of the prophet. But the ideal life and the world beautiful are not for the few only.

Everybody should learn how to find that path that leads from the imperfections of present conditions to the world of ideal conditions, the world of which we have all so frequently dreamed. The problem is what beginners are to do with the beautiful thoughts and the tempting promises that are being scattered so widely at the present time.

The average person feels that the idealism of modern metaphysics has a substantial basis. They feel intuitively that it is true, and they discern through the perceptions of their own soul that all these things that are claimed for applied metaphysics are possible. They inwardly know that whatever the idealist declares can be done, will be done, but the problem is how.

The demand for simple methods is one of the greatest demands at the present time, methods that everyone can learn and that will enable any aspiring soul to begin at once to realize their ideals. Such methods, however, are easily formulated, and are based upon eternal laws. They are as simple as the multiplication tables and will produce results with the same unerring precision.

Any person with a reasonable amount of intelligence can apply them, and those who have an abundance of perseverance can, through these methods, make real practically all the ideals that they may have at the present time. Those who are more highly developed will find in these methods the secret through which their attainments and achievements will constantly verge on the borderland of the marvelous.

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