My beliefs are varied and encompass more than simply the Christian tradition. I've spent some time writing some of it down in the past and I'll work to get some of it in here.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that during the "lost" years of Jesus life he either studied WITH Eastern religious figures in Egypt, or travelled to the far East and studied there as well. 

Perhaps the early Gnostic Christians who aspired to "become a Christ" as their highest ideal were closer to what Jesus taught than we are???  After all the highest ideal of a Buddhist practitioner is to "become a Buddha."  This isn't to say that we should be aspiring to leave the legacy that Jesus did, He blazed the trail for us to follow.  Simply that we should aspire to be Christlike and that in itself is a lofty goal.  Society trains us from early childhood to be very much the opposite.  Sadly I have to include "church society" in that broad statement.  Christians spend too much time on the institution and not enough on the teaching of Jesus.