Bill Wiltrack wrote: I've been through that,... in my teens.
It was good. I have the greatest respect for certified Sufi members.
Learned a lot.
Bill you went through a process of looking for yourself.
Sufism is about the love of who you are and who you are is love.
You do not have to subscribe to love. You are love. Love is everything here right now, love is all allowing without judgement or preference. It just is. It never leaves. No thing can leave love. Love is not a thing. Love is everything and no thing.
Love doesn’t come to you. Love cannot come to you. Love never went away. You are the one who went away, so you go to Love. And that's what you were doing in your teens when you looked at Sufism. You were looking for yourself in your apparent separation. Only the apparent separated one searches for itself. Love never searches itself, it's already here completely fulfilled as this divine alive presence of being shared by every other creature. Love looking outside itself is like trying to find love in an image which is like a mirage in the desert where only fleeting happiness is found. True love is being able to stand alone without want or desire. Only when you are empty can you be full filled. When you are not ..God rushes in. That's the only real true love.Nature abhors a vacuum.
''I searched for God and only found myself. I searched for myself and found only God.'' Sufi proverb
PS. I really like you Bill. Your energy is magnetic to this one here.