@Deleted member 16771 , I can totally relate to the feeling of, "Seriously, this is what I get in reward for my self control? For the hundreds of small but difficult decisions to "be good"?!"
And sometimes I feel like it's just not worth it, and I get angry at God and myself for being so righteously
stupid. But usually, sooner then later a shift occurs and I get to a better place again.
The best advice I ever got: Every decision is either leading you closer or further from the person you eventually want to be.
The key for me is to remember the big picture and what really matters.
Look at truly spiritual people. Like the real deal. Yes, they experience a life that seems riddled with pain and trials.
But still, it's not their eternal reward I am jealous of.
It's the kind of life they are living now. The spiritual reality they inhabit.
The light and joy on their face. The inner connection with themselves and the Divine.
As an aside, I do think that generally, there are earthly rewards. Eventually and in the ways that matter to someone who is inhabiting a higher plane, if that makes sense.
I think you're absolutely right, of course.
A curious fact about my life, though, is that I have
never 'gotten away with'
anything. Letting myself slip for even a second results in massive and tangible instant karma. It's like the universe holds me to a standard which no-one else is subject to.
Two stories which illustrate this come to mind:
i. This is the most shameful thing I ever did, and I've been honestly debating if I should ever mention it on the forum for quite some time, but here it goes:
When I was a teenager, a big part of my life was the 'Army Cadet Force', which is a uniformed youth service in the UK a lot like the various Scouting movements, but formally attached to the British military and teaching military skills.
Every summer there was a two-week 'summer camp' at one of a number of military bases in the UK. One year, when I would've been about sixteen, I was on a summer camp at Salisbury Plain.
Now, the 'detachment' I was part of was based in my home town, and our adult instructors were mostly locals. At the time my home town had a racism problem, and the far-right British National Party were making electoral inroads. In fact, my region elected a BNP MEP to the European Parliament in 2009. For my part, I had actually experienced 'racism' when I was bullied for being a 'Paki' (I'm not South Asian, by the way, but my skin is darker than many) and was a vehement and vocal anti-racist.
So, predictably, I would get into arguments with my adult instructors about this, because they were vehement and vocal
racists. In fact the whole organisation was. I was well liked by them, though, but they would make fun of me about this and attempt to tease me about it.
So, one day on this summer camp, I was walking back to my billet building when I saw one of my adult instructors walk out of the sergeant's mess. He saw me, and delivered a perfectly crisp 'Sieg hiel!' salute to tease me.
Having had enough of this, I returned the salute and said (I'm not censoring myself here) 'Oh fuck it, fuck all the black bastards!' as a kind of 'I've had enough, I give in' jest response.
At that moment, I turned the corner right into the path of a serving black soldier who'd been attached to the ACF on camp and he confronted me immediately. I tried to explain to him that I wasn't a racist, but he said he didn't care and just never wanted to hear it again. I was absolutely devastated, but I realised later that my adult instructor would have seen this guy walking into my path from his perspective, so perhaps there was something deliberately provocative.
Anyway, I told my adult instructor who 'saluted' me what had happened (though he saw it, of course), and he told me that he'd straighten the whole thing out with the soldier. In actuality what had trasnpired was that my adult instructor approach the soldier in the mess and told him that I wasn't the racist, but '
I'm the fucking racist' (that is, him). He'd used it to provoke a confrontation. Nothing 'happened' as far as I am aware.
Then, for the rest of the camp the cadets were put into sections for various fieldwork, and each section got a serving soldier as a section leader. Guess who led our section? Yeah, the black guy. I had to be with the bloke for the rest of the camp while he thought I was a racist, despite anything I could've said. There were other cadets in that section who I knew were hardcore racists but had no problems at all, and me who assuredly
wasn't being viewed that way. I was deeply ashamed, embarrassed, and yet also filled with a sense of injustice.
I was 'weak', basically, and then
immediately punished for the lapse.
I'll never forget that, and it's a memory that comes back to haunt me occasionally. It's one of two things that 'taints' my conscience, which for a type 1 is a
big deal.
I've never deliberately done anything 'wrong', but I've fucked up in a handful of stupid ways like this before. In every case, though, I don't 'get away with it', I get immediately and heavily punished, as if God himself is watching my every move with a special attention, not to mention what it does to my conscience.
