I have been giving some consideration to what our name means: Emissaries of Divine Light. It is not the name of a religion; it is not the name of a belief system; it is not the name of a sect or organization. It is a job description. It is a description of what we came to be.

The first creative command in the story of Creation was “Let there be light.” Looking around at the planet in this day, it’s fairly evident that there is a definite shortage of light appearing through human beings. We are here to address that.

In following out this consideration, one of the things that came as a big relief to me was remembering that our natural state is a state of innocence. That is hard to believe, in looking around the world right now, I know, but it is true nonetheless. Innocence is the only place where there is rest. Innocence is a state where I don’t think I have to know a lot. I don’t have to run the world—that’s already in very good hands. I just have to be available and open.

I remember the first time that thought occurred to me. It was shortly after I came in touch with this body of people called Emissaries of Divine Light. It was shocking to me that I would experience what I did. I was forty-two and had had quite an eventful life up to that point. Not satisfying or happy but eventful. Yet now I was having an overriding experience of innocence, which lasted for enough time for it to really land in me. At that time I had the luxury of not having much responsibility except to come Home, which kept me occupied. And then, further to that, there came the responsibility of knowing my own experience to be a means by which others might come Home, too, if they chose to.

So in considering this matter of innocence, I had known the feeling of the loss of innocence but I did not know that there was a possibility of regaining it. I knew the devastating and devastated feeling of the loss of it and I believe that, for many of us, the sense of innocence gets lost in a way that is devastating.

I am speaking personally, but I would have you walk with me in this because I’m also speaking collectively. There was a time when the human race lost its sense of innocence too. The things that I will describe to you were true for me and I do believe they have been true of the human race.

First was shame at the loss of innocence, and it didn’t matter that I could tell myself I was tricked. Then there was guilt, and then there was fear. There was something so profound about that fear that I couldn’t let myself go there. I recognized that it was there but I did not want to delve into it. All kinds of traumatic things happened at that time, and one of them was that I left home. I am still relating this also to the human race: the human race left Home. It couldn’t actually leave Home, nor could I actually leave true Home. But I could, and we did, leave the consciousness of that home.

That, I believe, is the largest malaise that’s present on the planet now, which allows for the awful things that go on and could be justly described in that phrase “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Man having lost consciousness of Home and the Creator of that home.

How do we return to that consciousness? I know that I’ve often heard the statement “Love is the answer.” That statement used to take me to a very cynical place years ago. It doesn’t anymore because it’s the truth: love is the answer. True love is the answer.

I would like to suggest something else too: Love is the question. Is what I’m doing activated, motivated, governed by Love? Or am I still reacting out of some old patterns that maybe up to this point have worked, or may have seemed to work? I’m in a process of reviewing those things for myself.

I am doing my best to be conscious of what is motivating me. Am I acting this way or doing this thing because people seem to like me when I do that? I believe politicians know how to use that one. Advertisers know how to use that one. And actually, a lot of churches know how to use that one: “God will love you if…” And I have not been exempt from that either.

My true knowing is that I do not need to behave in a way to satisfy anybody else’s sense of what’s pleasing to them. There is only one Lord of the Universe, and it isn’t anybody out there. That doesn’t mean I’m inconsiderate; it doesn’t mean that I just go around doing what I like and not caring about other people’s feelings, because I’m asking this underlying question: Is what I’m doing governed by Love? So I would like to stay with Love being the question, because even while acknowledging that Love is the answer, first of all, I have to ask that question.

Hopefully there will come a time when that question won’t need to be asked, because Love will already be in expression everywhere. There’s so much that won’t need to be talked about; we will just need to be living it. My understanding is that this was how things were created to be, because it is all that makes sense.

In Richard Heinberg’s book Memories and Visions of Paradise, which to me is such an evocative book, he writes of times described in different world cultures “indicating a very different way of living.” Then there was a gap, and then there was what we have now. It is lovely to consider his descriptions. One of the things he wrote about was a Chinese culture that left no trace. That is really poignant. No waste, no damage, just living on the Earth in a gentle way.

I believe that that state is possible of restoration, which is what we, as emissaries of divine light—written with a small “e,” small “d” and a small “l”—are about. It’s not about the name. It’s about the job description, and that’s what we are all here to do. And we are blessed to be in really good company.