There is a peculiar moment in the Course when you arrive at a heading that sounds almost suspiciously biblical: “The Rewards of God.”
It feels like the spiritual equivalent of a loyalty program.
Collect enough points, behave well enough, forgive your brother quickly enough, and voilà… Heaven mails you a gold card.
Butof course, the Course smiles at us and says:
There is nothing to earn…nothing to achieve….nothing to win.
Only something to remember.
And remembering, fortunately, is much easier than performing.
The ego sees threats everywhere… except where they actually are.
In fact the text explains that the ego never recognizes the real source of threat.
Like a jumpy cat staring suspiciously at a harmless curtain..the ego sees danger in all the wrong places.
You know those moments:
Someone respond in a sarcastic way…or frowns at you.
Someone posts something dramatic on Facebook and suddenly your stomach has opinions.
The ego becomes a full-time detective, looking for clues that “prove” you’re unsafe, unloved, unappreciated,
or ..and this is its favoriete melodrama….: alone !
But the Course taps us on the shoulder: “The ego is no more than a part of what you believe about yourself.”
So is nothing more than a ‘belief’, a thought wearing a costume.
The threat is not outside, it is simply the idea that the little self is all you are.
And once you question that idea the world you see relaxes with you.
The ego promises safety only if we obey its rules.
Stay alert….Stay in control…Stay defended….Stay separate.
But God’s reward is a strange one, because it’s not a reward at all, it says:
You are safe because you were created safe.
You are loved because Love cannot do otherwise.
You are whole because wholeness cannot break.
Imagine giving a child a flashlight and watching him panic when the battery dies. He has forgotten the sun exists……That is us !
We keep shaking the flashlight of the ego, hoping for light, but the sun of God’s Love is literally behind us, waiting for us to turn around.
A “reward” we already have…but forgot to claim.
The text continues with a surprisingly practical spiritual rule:
Do not forget what you owe your brother.
Not in the moralistic sense…..but in the “remembering” sense, because every time you treat someone as if they are something other than God’s beloved, you reinforce the idea that you are something other than God’s beloved.
And every time you see innocence in another, even for one tiny second, you touch your own innocence.
Here is an example : You’re driving. The person in front of you is moving at the exact speed designed to awaken all your spiritual lessons at once.
Your ego wants to send him a small bouquet of insults.
But the Holy Spirit places a hand on your shoulder and says: “Try something kinder. See what happens.”
So you experiment.
Instead of thinking…: Why is this person ruining my life?
You think…: Maybe this is my teacher today.
Suddenly, the story is not so inportant any more and you discover you were never angry at the driver. You were angry at the tiny self you believed you were.
See?
Your brother didn’t need your forgiveness. You needed the experience of forgiving.
That is another one of God’s “rewards”: the joy that returns when you stop punishing yourself for believing you are small.
This is perhaps the most comforting message in the whole section:
Your true Self never feels threatened.
It doesn’t flinch…It doesn’t panic…It doesn’t calculate escape routes.
It simply Is.
And every time you feel fear, or guilt, or defensiveness, it’s a sign you are listening to a mistaken part of your mind.
Not a sin. Just a misunderstanding.
Like waking from a nightmare and realizing the monster was made of pillows.
The Course says that suffering continues only as long as we believe in the illusion that causes it…and belief can change. Even slowly or clumsily or
with humor.
God is not timing your progress.
He is simply delighted every time you remember that pain is not your natural state.
So here we are, reading about “rewards” at a time when the world seems obsessed with earning, achieving, and proving. But God’s Love doesn’t function that way.
We don’t have to qualify.
We don’t have to pass a test.
We don’t have to be spiritually impressive.
We just have to be willing.
Even a little.
And in that willingness, God meets you with everything He Is.
A reward that was never withheld,only unnoticed.
With love and light
G.