Mammele: I think I’ve maintained a healthy amount of cynicism for the last 5-10 years. 🙂 To seriously address your question, I have personal practices because they are what I feel Hashem wants from me. Whatever the particulars of those are don’t matter. I in no way imagine that I am gaining anything that anyone else isn’t by keeping any Chumros that I have. Just because I feel the Sugya goes one way and therefore I have to act in accordance doesn’t mean that I imagine that someone else who a) doesn’t know the Sugya or b) reads the Sugya a different way is any worse in the eyes of Hashem than I am. I will leave the judging up to Him. So long as one acts in accord with legitimate Halachic practice, I will never have the arrogance to claim that I am better or have more Schar than them. And I feel it necessary to strongly disagree when others do that.
Joseph: You are confusing what Ba’al Nefesh Yachmir means. You have the cause and effect backwards. You are assuming that being Machmir makes one a Ba’al Nefesh. It doesn’t. It means one who already is a Ba’al Nefesh should be Machmir. And I will contend that a Ba’al Nefesh gets the same Schar for keeping “CY” as a Stam person does for keeping his version of CY, i.e. Chalav Stam. Does the Ba’al Nefesh have a bigger Chelek for being a Ba’al Nefesh in the first place? Maybe. But that’s really not anything for anyone down here to decide.