Heh!

When I feel guilty and ashamed about something I have done, when I seek forgiveness or when I suffer and am angry, I want to be personally loved and understood, not judged.

I suppose this is where believers in a personal God (or Gods) differ from those who don't.  For a non-believer there is no personal love from a non-existent being, only some form of internal psychological process that somehow may manifest, maybe, as a sense of another personality....or somesuch.  Reminds me of the difference between taking drugs and talking about them: to the extent there is a real experience, the experience is the primary data, the talking only secondary.  Whereas for those who haven't taken the drug (or have taken the drug but felt no effect...)

Certainly other traditions can't give you this deep personal unjudging love as they don't believe it exists either in a Godhead or in some aspect of the godhead.  

Mind you, number two on your list of Religions You Like should be hinduism--lots of personal business there, reincarnation, all kinds of mystical traditions, there may be dry abstractions but they're not necessary.

Personally, I try and keep away from such things as the forgiveness of God.  If I honestly think I have wronged a person, then it's up to me to go apologise to the wronged person.  If I feel I've been wronged, it's up to me to confront the person & etc.  God's forgiveness is predicated on a view of human nature (that we are fallen) that is another of those jewish concepts that I can't get my head around--God is the all loving father, Eve is tempted by the snake--henceforth she will have pain in childbirth, they will know coldness and hardship...it's symbolic, sure, but I don't recognise anything in there except Father Is Right paternalism writ into the heavens....but that's me!

Oh!  Did I mention the lack of female gods?  That christianity--the abrahamic religions, all of 'em--wiped out the female gods--gave us "My godliness is bigger than your godliness"--and maybe Jesus would have wept;

The catholics have Maria, but it's not the same.

And you...have experiences of Jesus as a personal entity dealing with you most personally, it is definitely Jesus, not another character, and...how do you know it is Jesus you are being personal with and not some other entity that pretends to be Jesus?

~%7)

To view it, tilt your head a bit to the left!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.