Really, I did.

Uh oh, you say, another religious fanatic.

I’m not.

In fact, as a Jew, I don’t remember ever particularly wanting to see Jesus. The thought has also crossed my mind that if my parents were alive, this would be one event they wouldn’t want to hear about.

I had met a very cute red-haired Christian minister one week before my sighting and found myself feeling almost in love with him. I remember saying to myself, “This guy feels like Christ.”

Now how would I know that?

And yet I did, at the same time consciously dismissing my thoughts as meshugess (Yiddish for craziness.)

The following week, I’m driving along US 1, eyes fixed upon the road, when suddenly a movie begins to unfold deep within my eyes, what some might call a vision. It was as if my eyes were looking in while looking out at the same time.

And then I’m seeing this guy Jesus carrying a heavy cross.

Had I time to plan this vision, I know I would have chosen a much better place than US 1.

Nevertheless, there Christ was, carrying a huge brown wooden cross on his back that seemed to weigh three times as much he did. Seeing him laboring underneath the weight, my heart broke at the sight, and at the same time, an enormous love for him bloomed inside me.

But it seemed that Christ wasn’t the only recipient of this enormous love that kept expanding my heart. All of humanity seemed to find its way in there too.

What a relief to feel this great unconditional love for everybody, so different from the small pieces of compassion I sometimes muster up. But here was my heart that had seemingly stretched large enough to include all who wanted in.

This must be, I thought, the same love that saints and gurus also feel.

I also have to say that this experience lasted no longer than about 15 minutes.

Afterwards, somebody asked me whether I planned to become a Christian. That seemed funny to me since I had felt the real love of Christ, not the warmed-over pablum that gets served up in some, not all, churches for aspiring religionistas.

Those blessed persons who come to serve us on earth as mystics, saints, gurus, or sons of God, are not interested in our shrinking their love into non-evolving standards of judgment, constraint and distinctions.

I know my Christ wouldn’t, and certainly not my beloved guru Ma Jaya.

Like elephant spirituality on facebook

~

Editor: Elysha Anderson