Welcome to this global spiritual community, Emissaries of Divine Light.

We are re-creating spirituality, church, synagogue, temple, and ashram. We are a global tribe bringing new vision to the world.

This is a re-creation of spirituality and culture. It is an evolution and honoring of all that has gone before, and yet a reality unto itself. We embrace what is now and what is emerging. So good to be with you in this.

We are a multigenerational community. As I hosted a barbecue over at my home at Sunrise Ranch, I noticed we had people in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. And there are children and teenagers in our midst too.

Multigenerational community gives us the opportunity to both appreciate the wonder of every age and also see how we are all essentially the same at whatever age we are—we are all human beings having a human experience. I celebrate all humankind as a multigenerational community.

This past Monday was July 4th, Independence Day here in America. I found myself thinking about a word that is used in the American Declaration of Independence, and I know of no other place where it is used: unalienable.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What would you imagine the word unalienable might mean? Here is what Webster has to say. Something is unalienable when you cannot give it away, and nobody can take it from you. It can’t be separated from you.

Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots said that we are endowed with what they called rights. They are not the kind of rights you have to demand from somebody else. As they said, they are given by the Creator. Governments cannot take them away and they cannot give them to you, even though you can trespass against them. They are yours. We are all born with them.

They named certain rights, but they said there were other ones too. What would you say is foremost among our unalienable rights? I say it is the right to love. Is that not true when you think about it? I include all the dimensions of love—and we have to include the romantic. But I am not just talking about that. I am also talking about love of country and community, love of your brother, your sister, family, and the world. And I am talking about the love of the Creator and the natural world.

Your right to love is unalienable. Nobody can give it to you—it was given to you from inside, from the very source of love.

Like you, while people have loved me and taught me what it is to love, no person gave me the unalienable right to love and no one can take it away from me. Another person can choose not to receive it from me. That is unrequited love. You can love a person, and they might not love you back. They might not receive it; they might treat you like dirt. They may trespass against you. But they cannot stop you from loving. All the other unalienable rights come from that one great right to express love.

We could call this right a power. We receive the empowerment of love. Is it not true that the people we hold in the highest esteem are the people who proved that out? Here are two such people known to almost all of us.

Nelson Mandela. If you speak his name in South Africa, you will feel a hush in the room. He is beloved by people of all races there. But you do not have to be South African to love Nelson Mandela. He is loved around the world.

Here is a man who was sent to prison and walked out 27 years later to free his country. He walked out as a Being of love, emanating love, loving the people of his country, regardless of race.

Nelson Mandela was a member of the African National Congress, a political party in South Africa. But he loved his whole country, and he loved all his people.

Though he had been imprisoned, he forgave his oppressors. No one could take away his power of love. That is what inspires people around the world to hold him in the highest esteem.

Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was another person who realized his unalienable right to love. Looking past the religious interpretations of the significance of his life—looking to the record of his life and teaching—what stands out more than anything? Love. He loved.

Jesus taught love—that is one thing. Love one another, he said. But it is another thing to actually love, no matter what—to prove that love is an unalienable right. He had the right to love, and nobody could take it away. He forgave and loved, no matter what anybody did—despite all the betrayal, all who let him down, all the attack, and all the disappointment.

Jesus claimed his unalienable right to love for himself, and in doing so he claimed it for the world. And so it is for anyone. When we claim this right for ourselves, we are claiming it as true for any human being and for humankind. For Jesus, no matter how human culture has attempted to distort his life and teaching—and despite using his memory for political gain—the supremacy of his love in the culture of the world cannot be taken away. It is unalienable for him, and it is unalienable for the world. It is our right, awakened in us by him.

Is our right to love ever tested? Is your unalienable right to love ever tested? Wow! After what they did? 

Think of this question: Did you ever feel powerless in a situation? Somebody does something, or the turn of events goes a certain way. You are there in the middle of it all, and it seems like there is nothing you can do.

I had such an experience recently. Here is how my thought process went.

I am a goner. There is nothing I can do. I am a total victim of this.

And then, on the other hand, I thought:

That cannot be true. I cannot believe that there is nothing I can do, and I cannot believe that I am a victim. I will not live my life as a victim. That is not who and what I am. I have the unalienable rights of creatorship. I have the power to create—the right to create—that nobody can take away from me.

The primal power of Creation is love. And I can love you, no matter what. I may not like what you do. I may have to ask you to stop. But here is the thing: you cannot make me stop loving you. You cannot stop the power of love in me.

That is an all-powerful place from which to live.

The Founding Fathers identified another unalienable right—liberty. And Jesus said this about it:

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Liberty and freedom are related to the truth. When we do not see the truth and do not know it, we feel imprisoned. We do not see a way. We feel victimized. The truth is, we are a creator and there is always something that a creator has to do, beginning with love. The motivation and power behind creatorship is love.

When we give ourselves to love, we find the inspiration of love’s intelligence, which is truth. Love’s intelligence becomes available to us if we will find it. We are here to love, and we are here to create. And there is a way to create. There is a thing to do. But we have to see it and accept it. That is the truth that sets us free.

We need the intelligence of love to create. We cannot just sit there in love without being inspired by the intelligence of love if we are to create. So, we have to come into our wisdom and see what is available to us. No, we cannot do a certain thing, but we can do this. We can express what is true, no matter what. We can shine the light.

In my circumstance, I found that there was a range of my life where I would not shine the light. I would not speak the truth. I had begun to believe that I could not speak the truth. And so, my mouth was shut related to the factors at hand.

I began to see that I had an unalienable right to speak and write the truth. That is another amazing power that we have. They say that the pen is mightier than the sword. The pen is mighty when it writes the truth. What comes out of our mouths is powerful when it is true.

When something is really true, it is not just our truth. There can be my truth and your truth. But there is a truth that transcends us all. When someone comes along and speaks that higher truth, there are almost always others who point fingers at them, denying the truth they bring and impugning their reputation. That certainly happened to Jesus.

Others can claim, Oh, that is just what you are saying. They can claim that you are a partisan, bringing a partial and personal truth. But the truth of love is what is true, and that is what matters.

A person who loves fully and authentically is here to reveal a higher truth, a higher reality. They reveal a reality of oneness, a reality of the love that is behind all people and all things. And that is what the true patriot knows—we are one.

We are one people. And you could fight against it. You could point to me as being partisan, one person, fighting against other factions. But the true patriot knows there is a higher truth. No, I am not just a Republican; I am not just a Democrat. I am an American. I am a citizen of this world. I am a Being of this world. I will play my part. I will be an American. I will be a Democrat, or I will be a Republican. But I am part of a higher truth, one truth, the truth of a higher love.

We each have our own perspective. We see and understand what is true from that perspective, and it comes out differently for you and for me. When I speak the one truth, it comes out as me. I can’t help it. I am not a generic expression of truth. It comes out as David. And so it is for you and all of us. It comes out as us. And in fact, our individuality is lit up when we bring the light of the one reality of truth. It cannot help but express itself uniquely as us, as an individual.

Let’s shout that from the rooftops! Light up the world with that. That is what I am here to do—find a way to open my mouth and let the truth that is inside out. It is the truth of the love I am, not a partisan truth. It is not the truth of being against something else. It is the truth of love that we each have to bring.

That is the nature of this global tribe. For us at Sunrise Ranch, we are happy to be your tribe, and we are honored to be in a place physically in one locality. We are a tribe here together, holding the heartbeat of our global tribe. So, know that we here at Sunrise feel that responsibility. We are keeping your global home for you. We are holding the love of this home. We are practicing our unalienable right to love.

I hope you can feel it.