For Baba-in Love.

When I was 13 years of age, I had a vision of God that was inconsistent with the educational experiences I had been having in Hebrew school. In addition, it was inconsistent with the teachings of the Torah, as I then understood it, and my experience of Judaism as an insular spiritual system, separate from all other religions and tacitly expected by my community as the only way to God. Had I stayed the course, perhaps I would have gradated upwards to find great unity in mystical Judaism or, more simply, in the keeping of the Sabbath. However, my experience was so definitive and true to me as a real and everlasting experience of God, that following anything other than that interior impulse would be blasphemous, not only to me and my soul, but to all of humanity and all existence in all forms. This recognition was utterly devastating to my comfortable sense of familial and social decorum that I still to this day have profound agony in its memorial wake. In order to preserve this truth, I had to walk away from my Bar Mitzvah.
I cannot nor will not describe in detail this vision, but needless to say I have followed it to the best of my ability since, many times to joy, often times to overwhelming suffering. Here is the great reality for me: I cannot NOT follow this path, with its inherent sweetness and terror. What I know I trust, and to me that unshakeable and inextinguishable flame is called Love. Nothing has ever rang truer to me in any form, in any concept, in any external or internal shape. Love is the only truth, there can be nothing greater than Love, it is our birthright, our responsibility, our agency, our dignity to fight for Love unlike anything we have ever fought for. Nothing else lasts, all else is illusion, and deep down inside all of you, in the dark and gorgeous recesses of your heart, mind and soul, you know this is so. Call it what you will, Moshiach, Christ, Buddha, Allah, by any other name, by any definition, this Tao, this that cannot be named, this Bhagavad Gita, is the only thing that is real. Does this mean that I am a closed system, only able to see and feel light? Can I not understand the dark place of the unconscious, in which dwells the underworld of the soul? Indeed not! The soul is numinous and everything shone up to the light becomes light. I implore each of you to follow your truth, your heart, your mind, your bliss. Find yourself. This is not a religious statement, it is the greatest religious commandment of all.

Thank you my beloved guru. Blessings to all beings in all territories of consciousness and formlessness. May all beings surrender to the glory of Love.
Sai Ram, In Christ's name,
Tony