Infinite Way Letter
March 1955
By Joel Goldsmith
Part 6 of 7
Punishment
Sometimes secrets, so deep and so profound are revealed to us that we are shaken from head to foot, and when this happens we learn something not only new, but something that must make a drastic change in our lives. Such is the experience when we realize the nature of punishment and the reasons for punishment in our experience.
To understand that God neither rewards nor punishes is an important step in your spiritual development. If you have been at all impressed with this statement, you have pondered and meditated upon it, and somewhere along this line of inner reflection you have come to the realization that all of the religious theories which have been taught on the subject of punishment have been erroneous, and this itself should have made a startling change in your life. If you have the courage to continue your inner cogitation along this line, ultimately you will be led to the truth about punishment and the reason for punishment, and this will give you the opportunity to remold your life.
God is individual being, which means that God is the only Self, and there is no way for any hurt or evil to enter to defile the infinite purity of the Soul of God, nor anything at which evil can strike or attach itself. God is the Self of you, therefore God is the Self of me, and if I were in any way to hurt or offend you, to whom is my offence directed but to myself? This clarifies the Master’s words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me:” and with this understanding you begin to see that every bit of good done by you at any time in your entire life has been a good done to, for, and within yourself; and you also begin to see that every evil or thought of evil you have ever directed toward another, every lie and evasion of truth has been directed toward your own self, and therefore the punishment is inflicted upon you by you, because your act or thought of deceit, supposedly directed toward another, was actually directed toward yourself.
When the Master repeated the age-old wisdom: “Wherefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets;” He was giving us a principle: unless we do unto others as we would have others do unto us, we injure not the others but ourselves. In this present state of human consciousness it is true that the evil thoughts and dishonest acts and thoughtless words that we send out to others do harm them temporarily, but in the end always it will be found that the injury was not nearly so much to them as it was to ourselves.
In the days to come, when men recognize the great truth that God is the Selfhood of each individual, the evil aimed at us from another will never touch us, but will immediately rebound upon the one who sends it. In the degree that we recognize God as our individual being, we also realize that no weapon that is formed against us can prosper, since the only “I”, the only “Me”, is God, and we will not fear what man can do to us, since the Selfhood of us is God and cannot be harmed, and our realization of this will quickly send back the evil, and much more quickly than has heretofore been the case.
Once the first realization of this truth comes to us we understand that there is no longer any use concerning ourselves with what our neighbor does unto us, but looming large in our consciousness will be the realization that we must watch ourselves—morning, noon and night we must watch our thoughts, our words, our actions, to see that we ourselves do not send out anything of a negative nature which would be bound to have its result within our own being.
Never for a moment believe that this will result in your being good in order to avoid punishment. This revelation goes far deeper than that: it enables you to see that God is your Selfhood, and that anything of an erroneous or negative nature that emanates from any individual is given power only in the degree that you yourself give it power. In your meditation it will result in the revelation of the nature of your true being—of God as the nature of your Life and Soul, and in that realization you will see that this is the truth of all men, and that the only way and mode of successful living is to understand your neighbor to be yourself.
And so it is that whatever of good or of evil you do unto others, you do unto the Christ of your own being—“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
End Part 6