Despite our work as emanations of the celestial Buddhas, we are largely neglected in the modern Buddhism of your people. As the celestial Buddhas are neglected in favor of the historical one, so our Yidams and guardians are declared illusory. Even the historical Buddha is often seen as just an image.
But this is an incomplete picture. The celestial Buddhas are as real as human bodies, ultimately illusory but very important for the present situation. Buddhists can be as short sighted as materialists, ignoring the bigger picture.
Emanations are persons as human being are persons, although persons without physical bodies. As such, they are to be treated with respect. Today people make pictures of them (thangkas) and then ignore them. Those pictures have a function.
There is a golden tunnel reaching to infinity, and the buddha's presence travels through the tunnel as beams of golden light to enter the hearts of his devotees. One way to rise through the golden tunnel is to visualize a series of emanational forms of a Buddha or bodhisattva.
At each step, the meditator honors each form and then rises to the next level. The images are like a staircase - you go up from one to the next. Each image is slightly more subtle, with more light and less form. At each step the soul shines brighter becoming increasingly more luminous.