The creative process begins with what we have been calling the “eternal love affair.” Anything creative begins with that. It is love that draws us into any creative process. For any group of people, what is it ultimately that is drawing them together, drawing them to do something together, if not love in some way? And where love is allowed to be fully present, it blossoms in such a beautiful way. Where we allow ourselves to fall deeply in love in whatever way with the people around us, we may sense a hidden potential, and the creative process can begin to move. If it does, the adventure begins.

In that process, we get to find out a lot about ourselves—what we are made of, and what our challenges are. We get to find out that while the creative process looked like it was something out there that we were going to do—that it is a great feat to be accomplished in the world—there are large portions of the creative process that are taking place inside us.

I was thinking about a person who is in my life, and trying to understand how all this is for them. My best way of understanding them is that they have a lifetime project they were working on inside. In some way that might be true of each of us. Most of us seem to have enough unresolved inside to keep us going for a lifetime. I can report personally it hasn’t stopped yet. Maybe it will one day, but there is definitely a profound internal process that’s going on. In the midst of everything that’s happening outside of me, all these glorious things that appear to have potential “out there,” there is whatever is happening inside that is very much a part of the picture.

At some point a person may realize that there is a relationship between these wonderful things that they see as potential out there, and whatever it is that is transforming and changing inside them. If a person has a desire to accomplish great things, that realization may incent them to work on the stuff inside so that the external accomplishments go better.

There is something glorious to do on earth. There is something glorious to participate in with other people. I have a taste of that sometimes in what happens with a body of people, or even one other person. I catch visions of how beautiful that could be. It’s then that I ask myself, “Isn’t there some way I could transcend my own internal life projects to participate in that larger possibility? Isn’t there some way I could handle my own scene so that I could fully and wholeheartedly participate with other people in a clear way to create something that’s beautiful, something that realizes the potential I see and touch?”

I believe there is. I believe that there is a way for me, and for us, to handle our internal lifetime projects in such a way that we participate fully with other people in love and in truth, and create something that is virtually unprecedented in the world. That’s a fantastic belief, the idea that we could create something unprecedented in this world that we live in. It’s a little crazy because, by definition, things are going as they’re going, and they just seem to keep going that way. Something is required to hold the belief that it could be different—that in our interchanges there could be a fullness of love and strength and truth, that we could stand as solid, strong individuals across from each other and bring our power, and do so in a generative and creative way with each other so that there was an interplay of energy that brings something glorious. I believe that’s possible. And not only do I believe it, but I have a taste of it. I experience it.

What I believe is that there could be more, but that for there to be more, it requires something more of you and of me. We have to handle our lifetime projects in a way that is creative, in the way that let’s our contribution to what is happening in the world be creative. I believe it’s possible to engage in the world in a clear and clean way and still work our internal projects, which evidently need working, as far as I can tell.

I have something to share on a flipchart. I’ve seen a lot of these over the last few days as we have met as International Emissary Trustees and as a gathering of Emissary servers. This is a chart that the Trustees created. It is a statement of our 2009 Spiritual Priorities:

Build the tabernacle.

Open vibrational gateways for the radical outpouring of Holy Spirit.

Become more deeply engaged in the creative process that brings restoration in consciousness.

Consciously use every circumstance for world service.

I’d like to focus on the second one, the opening of vibrational gateways for the radical outpouring of Holy Spirit. Our work with our lifetime projects and our emotional gateways has a relationship to vibrational gateways. Emotional gateways and vibrational gateways are not the same thing. We could work with our emotions from now to when the cows come home, or whatever other phrase you want to put in there, and it really wouldn’t make that much difference if there wasn’t a larger spiritual opening. We could work our anger, or our sadness and grief, or our fear forever and it wouldn’t necessarily make a difference. Whatever we thought was problematic wouldn’t necessarily go away.

But where there’s an awareness that there is a higher reality, if we are willing to work the emotional factors, that higher reality can coming streaming through us. We have the opportunity of finding that our emotional experience is a gateway, and something beautiful does stream through. The corollary to that is that if there are emotional patterns that we won’t work, there are vibrational gateways that won’t open for us. And if we’re put in a position where it seems to us that we’re being asked to work with those emotional patterns through the circumstances of our life, we will find ourselves sorely challenged—challenged to come out of our comfort zones.

Most people have their emotional comfort zones. Most people have emotional patterns in which they like to hang out. The person may say to themselves: “I’ll just hang out here. I’ll just be joyful all the time. Maybe that would work—I’ll just go through life being joyful.” We have names for people like that; perhaps “airhead.”

So we all have places we like to hang out, emotionally speaking, whether it is in joy or some other emotion. We probably notice it more about other people than we do about ourselves. The simple willingness to go someplace other than where we usually go emotionally, can create an opening. Particularly if we have a willingness to work through that unfamiliar emotion in a way that brings creative juice to it, that creates an opening through it. Standing in the face of whatever is happening, inside or outside, creates opportunities for openings.

It’s good to be part of the ongoing work together of creating space among us that is open to the movement of spirit. The creation of that space relates to our first priority: “Build the Tabernacle.” The word “tabernacle” is a name for a space that we share in consciousness, where there is an energetic opening.

I would love to be able to do that in a permissive, anything-goes kind of way. Wouldn’t you? For leaders that is particularly true. Wouldn’t you just love to build the tabernacle in your life and with people, in a permissive, anything-goes kind of way? That would be a kind of dream, to be that kind of leader. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all do whatever just came into us to do, and we would just all do that and be together in love, and everything wonderful would just happen, and nobody would tell anybody what to do, and there would be no rules? Wouldn’t we all love to create a Garden of Eden or some kind of paradise that was like that? I would.

But that’s not happening, right? Has it ever happened that way? Never! There could be some moment of joy and liberation—great. But a wonderful experience among people doesn’t happen that way, as much as we wish it would. I’m sure we all wish it would.

So yes, we want love to be present, and love is boundless and love is free, and love is powerful and love is generous, and absolutely forgiving. We all want to know love in its fullness, and we desire that experience right here with us, not just inside us personally, but outside and all around. But what we find out is that for love to be with us fully, there has to be the other element, which is truth. Truth is the way that love gets to be present with us. It doesn’t happen any old way. That is what truth is about.

So the truthful question is this: What is the way that lets love be here among us? How can we set this up so that love gets to be here, knowing that it can’t be here in a permissive, anything-goes kind of way? That doesn’t work. And it has to be the real way it happens, not just the idealistic way. It won’t work based on idealism without realism. When love is present in a messy way, you may still feel it. But if it’s here in a messy way, it ends up being a conflicted way, and it doesn’t really reveal the glory of what love is.

So our first Spiritual Priority, building the tabernacle, is about love being here in a way that it reveals its own true nature in our midst—true love. How do we get to be in love all the time? That is what Emissaries of Divine Light is devoted to. That is what the founders of this program laid out. Their teachings are good starting points. But they are only starting points, because ultimately we have to answer for ourselves how love gets to be present here. That’s ours to answer. That’s our challenge.

PREVIN HUDETZ: Thank you for the call to action. It’s powerful, deep, meaningful. I realize that there are things that are going to stand in the way of that initial vision that you described. But I think that if we do what we can to bring that into existence, we will notice such an amazing shift in our experience that it will be worth it. Even if it doesn’t get all the way there, if we get part of the way there, that’s worth it. Thank you.

HELENA KARCHERE: I want to express my appreciation for everything that happened this morning and the way that it lifted something in my experience with you. I’m sitting here and I’m feeling so grateful that I don’t believe in fate or that things are decided already for us—that the way that we’re going to act or the way that we’re going to be together is somehow just going to happen the way it’s going to happen, and we just have to let that happen. We can own that we are stewards of the creative process. And for me, when I think of building the tabernacle, that’s a lot about choices.

The infrastructure of truth that love comes through is a lot about how we choose to be in the world. I could think that I just have to act out whatever comes to me. But I know that the truth for me is that yes, things come to me, and I can let them bowl me over or I can let them fully into me and let them take over. Or I can meet them with who I truly am and the power of that. That is a choice. We will feel the repercussions either way.