From the Book: A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s purpose
Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying
forces. Instead of bringing about an end of violence and hatred through a
realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence
and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different
religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief
systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense
of self. Through them, they could make themselves 'right' and others 'wrong'
and thus define their identity through their enemies, the 'others', the 'nonbelievers'
or 'wrong believers' who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in
killing. Man made 'God' in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, and unnamable
was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as 'my god'
or 'our god'...and yet in spite of all the insane deeds perpetrated in the name
of religion, the Truth to which they point still shines at their core. It still
shines, however dimly, through layers upon layers of distortion and misinterpretation.
It is unlikely; however, that you will be able to perceive it there unless you
have at least already had glimpse of that Truth within yourself. Throughout
history, there have always been rare individuals who experienced a shift in
consciousness and so realized within themselves that toward which all religions
point. To describe that non-conceptual Truth, they then used the conceptual
framework of their own religions.