Today, we are standing on the threshold of a new chapter in world history. Religion, which for millennia has been the expression of separation between human and God, and which has been instrumental in scaring and subjugating the common man, is undergoing a radical change. Religion is now in the process of becoming the most practical tool in the hands of humans to give us the ability to live our lives within a much higher paradigm, which will allow us to experience oneness with the creator. This oneness will eliminate all the problems of our lives that arise out of a perceived separation among humans and between humans and God, with which we are one. Any religion that fails to undergo this transformation will eventually cease to exist. The Bible tells us that we were created in the image of God; yet, for a long time, our species has created a God in the image of ourselves. God became our excuse for all the barbaric behavior we expressed through the ages. If God was angry, violent, and jealous, then unless I considered myself better than God, I, as a human, was certainly entitled, even obligated, to display those same traits. So, by projecting their emotions and desires onto God, humans covered their own backs; consequently, prayer reflected that mindset. God had to be bargained with. Sacrifices had to be made. One way or another, favors had to be paid for, just as regular people did in dealing with each other. If rules were broken, punishment would have to follow. Prayer became a way of begging God for results. Instead of knowing God as unconditional love, an uplifting, awe-inspiring power of Grace, we dragged him down to our world of illusions and made him part of that dualistic world, where seemingly everything is opposed by its opposite force. Life became a big fight. And out of this projection, humans even created the devil so that God himself had to encounter opposition. This God we have created has obviously not served us well, if at all. As a consequence, many have blamed the God we created, and thus turned away from him. Many others claim the problem is that we have not followed the rules we originally made and, in a diametric switch, ascribed to God. It is probably one of the toughest things in life to accept responsibility for one's actions and to stop pointing fingers and accusing others for the results of our own actions. Yet, the time has come, on a global scale, when many people are beginning to experience the mystery of who we really are and to accept that we are nothing but the divine Creator, moving in and out of form, and that we are not separated from him at all. We are beginning to see that we can express this divinity in our behavior, indeed in all activity, and to the degree that we do, the consequences of this behavior are dramatically different. It is this that Jesus, who became the Christ, was attempting to demonstrate and teach. It is this that we killed his body for, because we were not ready to accept this divine inheritance. What Jesus showed us, however, was not an optional future. It is the only future we have-that is, if we are to have one at all-and this future is now. In the hands of divine beings such as ourselves, prayer done the right way is one of the highest, most powerful tools for communication with our source. Let us use this tool abundantly. (innercirclepublishing.com)