The "Rewards of God (Love)"

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This project of Love has been correctly identified as your very "reason for being or existence." And your efforts synchronistically parallel many of our own here. (Care must be taken to keep the two separate, for they are cllearly related.)

Reference is to the Pneumarium Project. It is now entering its sixth year. It has been very challenging to keep up any public interest in this project for spiritual education. Yet in the Soul, it is recognized as irreplaceable. Like you, we have had challenges with funding, but our major area of difficulty has been "drumming up" interest. This is written after several promotional emails have gone forth, mostly, without responses.

Most people respond to this major undertaking with a giant yawn or a great snore. This can be discouraging in the extreme, especially on our not-so-good days, when the donkey is weak.

The principle that guides us here is that we must follow the interior recommendations of the Lovemind no matter what the public response is.
Great achievements and accomplishments of the Spirit must never be allowed to be controlled, regulated, or even influenced by public response or opinion.

From the view of publicity or money, the ministries of both Jesus and the Buddha were extreme and somewhat dismal "failures." Neither was recognized much during his own lifetime, and neither had much public support. It is remembered with poignancy how once, when Jesus was gathering a group to hear him speak about the "kingdom of God" in Jerusalem, only four of us showed up to hear him speak. Even he was somewhat saddened, but he said words that will never be forgotten: "God is no bean-counter; it is as important to touch one heart as ten thousand." His eyes were full of sad sincerity.

His lesson was, as he later said, that spirituality is not a "commodity." It is not to be "sold" or "vended" like beans or tomatoes. Love that is rewarded on earth (by fame or money) will not receive any "heavenly" reward, he implied in his famous Sermon on the Mount. (Mt. 6:1)

It is our human glory to be able to serve Love, and love is always its own, and often only, reward. Serving Love, our treasures are great in the "kingdom of heaven."

So, the "success" of this otherworldly ministry is never to be measured by the criteria used to measure "success" in all other fields.

Success is the smallest increase in the happiness or mental wellbeing of one other person, or of the self. That is the spiritual equivalent of a billion dollars!

You already know all this, of course; at best, this is only a reminder of what you already know, not a "new teaching." But selfevaluation is much more crucial to success in any ministry than is public support or economic "success." We must do what Love tells us, when Love tells us. We must follow Love to the ends of the earth, even when it empties our pocketbook and our heartminds, even when we have no treasure to give. Time is the only "currency" of the cosmos; it is the "gold" of the universe. And time can be "given to God" (Love) no matter what our level of poverty. We show that we respect our calling when we give it all, or much of, our time. We have nothing greater to give.

We have continued this fine work of teaching Love in the midst of apathy, ignorance, and even poverty. For doing the right thing is not rewarded by such trinkets and baubles as dollars. It is much more richly rewarded by an interior sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and contentment. It is rewarded by Love, joy, and peace. So, when we meet economic challenges, we are challenged, not to stop the finest work of Love, but to modify it in some way. Perhaps the cosmic Mind does not want us to rent an office; perhaps It wants us to work out of our home; perhaps it is moving us toward greater simplicity. This is not a simple "all stop" or "all go" proposition; our path might require modification, and we might have to work in non-traditional or unconventional ways, to "cut corners."

But what you have is too valuable, too precious, to let it go, or let it pass. We are both being challenged to give our life-projects everything that we have; and, when we are exhausted, to give still more.

CAUTION: This finest of commitments can, as has often been said, exhaust, or even harm, your donkey; so, use with caution. Love asks for, sometimes demands, the very last psychon of mental energy that we can give. And Its rewards are sweet, it is true; but it does not "reward" the way the world rewards, with money or with material things. Instead, It seeks to sustain our Souls.
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