By a Friend of Truth
The ultimate reward every spiritual seeker is pining for is the vision of God, the company of his Chosen Ideal. However, we all make the experience that God is apparently not very generous in this respect – how can we then keep our spirits up?
The worst solution to this problem is the easiest, and perhaps the most common one: Instead of trying harder to reach Him/Her, to correct our course of action, to understand His way of looking at things better and to do what pleases Him rather than us, we paradoxically do the exact opposite and use spiritual titbits to make us believe that we are already having some sort of God vision and are very close to Him.
For example, we could attribute our worldly success to our spiritual efforts. How foolish! As if God took the shape of money, name and fame to reveal Himself! Were the holy men who inspire us rich and popular; did they nicely stay within the confines of customs and anxiously fulfill the expectations of society? Before they got His vision, they certainly did not.
Since every mistake – if corrected – can bring us closer to God, there must be some grain of truth in this “worst case scenario” as well. When we carefully analyze “our” success, we notice that we never achieved it on our own, but had always profited from the help of many other people. Thus, it was never our own success. But it cannot simply be said to be other people's success either, since they are just like me. Who is then to praise? If there is no one else, why not give the credit to God...
