Ideals help us to postpone

To understand something, I must give it full attention, and an ideal is merely a distraction which prevents my giving that feeling or that quality full attention at a given time. If I am fully aware, if I give my full attention to the quality I call greed without the distraction of an ideal, then am I not in a position to understand greed and so dissolve it? You see, we are so accustomed to postponement, and ideals help us to postpone; but if we can put away all ideals,because we understand the escapes, the postponing quality of an ideal,and face the thing as it is, directly, immediately, give our full attention to it, then, surely, there is a possibility of transforming it.