Regarding the statement: "Guides don't try to change one's beliefs-- they take whatever form will best benefit the person being guided."

I suppose a guide will take that approach if it (sorry for using "it") understands that a person is really closed to finding something out. I've communicated with my guides quite a bit, and the more I've become open to learning about something beyond my pre-conceptions the more they have been able to help me. There was a time when I thought of Jesus similar to how Eric and Pauli are expressing, but eventually my guidance started to let me know about him.

Or in other words, it isn't a matter of my starting out as a church-based Christian.

Something similar happened with the subject of unfriendly aliens inteferring with this World. At first I wouldn't hear of it, but eventually, after I became more open-minded, my guidance was able to let me know that such beings exist.

If we do back flips while attempting to not acknowledge something our guidance is going to be very limited when it tries to let us know about something.

Consider this example.  David Oakford was with a being other than Jesus. He asked this being about Jesus. If Jesus didn't exist in any way or didn't matter this being could've told David this, but instead this being arranged it so David "could" meet Jesus.  Clearly David was quite impressed with what he experienced when he met Jesus.

If one goes overboard with dismissing positive evidence, one is likely to not find out what's true. 

When it comes to Buddha, it's hard to say.  How much of the teachings attributed to him actually comes from him? I used to be into Eastern Teachings big time so I am quite familiar with Buddhist teachings. Eventually I've found that they are quite nihilistic.

Below is from my book "Joining the Oneness -  Beyond Nonduality."  It mostly includes excerpts from other sources:

Christian fundamentalists aren’t the only people who may end up in belief system territories for a while. Consider the below words from Frederic Myers (from The Road to Immortality – Chapter IV):

“On the lower rungs of this ladder of consciousness dwell those souls who still cling to human habits of thought, to the earthly personality, to their own individual line of thought. On earth some of them have been extremely learned. But knowledge does not make a wise man. A great Indian Yogi, a Chinese sage, a learned or holy Christian father may dwell for aeons of time within the Third and Fourth Super-terrestrial States. They are typical representatives of Soul-man, and they have his short-comings. They cling to the line of thought which was theirs on earth, and so they remain sadly individualized in it; they are caught in its dream, and are snared in the many errors thereof. For instance the Indian Yogi and the Chinese sage may still seek only to follow the aspiration of their particular religion or philosophy, the freeing of the soul from matter, ecstatic contemplation of the universe.
     
They appear to gain their aspiration; but in consequence they abide merely on one of the lower rungs of the ladder. They believe that they have attained to Nirvana, that they have passed out Yonder, entered into the Mystery of God. But they have done nothing of the kind; for they are still individualized, still clinging to their blissful little dream created when they were on earth. They are living in the stagnant pond. They are progressing neither up nor down. They have no contact with the material aspect of the universe, and their state of alleged ecstatic contemplation narrows and limits experience, confines them still in the prison of their own ego.

I remarked before that when souls reached to the higher rungs of the ladder they became merged in the unifying Spirit, and might at last journey out Yonder, enter into the Mystery of God. In so doing they slough form and no longer express themselves in an outward appearance. But those spirits who pass out Yonder do not dwell in ecstatic contemplation as does the sage or the Yogi, they are, though formless, in contact with the whole of the material universe: an incredible activity of a spiritual and intellectual kind is theirs. For now they share in the timeless Mystery; now they are in the true Nirvana, in the highest Christian Heaven; they know and experience the alpha and omega of the material universe. The chronicle of all planetary life, the history of the earth from the beginning to the end are theirs. Truly they are not merely heirs, they have become inheritors, in deed and in truth, of eternal life. You are, as you climb the long ladder of consciousness, a sum in arithmetic. When you pass out Yonder you become the Whole.
     
The spirit, which lights up the ladder, is an individualized thought of God, a thought that may dwell within its own life, or that may still be in intense and direct contact with God when that thought contacts directly the human ego. A Spirit-man is a human being--of whom perhaps a few score have appeared on earth since time began. He differs from others in that his spirit retains that intense and direct inspiration from God when it enters into time and communicates with the incarnate man. Therefore, Spirit-man alone has expressed eternal truth, either in his life or in his words. When his physical body dies he dwells in Hades, but he does not tarry in Illusion-land. Swiftly he passes up the rungs of the ladder; easily may he become one with the Father. For even while on earth he has known the Father, having drawn his inspiration from the imagination of God."
     
Margaret Tweddell’s book Witness From Beyond says something similar (pages 119-120, as received from Alvin Mattson):

“I talked the other day with a man who is an ardent Buddhist—a very famous, and very sincere, and very gentle man. His feeling of the Buddha was a much deeper and less turbulent feeling that I have of the Lord Jesus. The turbulence in him is stilled. My guardian and guide said that if I could have looked at my body when I had my first illumination of the Lord Jesus, and I could have looked at the Buddhist’s body when he looked at his aspect of God through the Buddha, I would have seen that the Buddhist’s body was layered but that mine was smoothly moving. The Buddhist’s was in layers, one above the other, but mine was like a cone reaching upward. We Christians meditate and pray, and we think upward. We think with our foreheads—we reach up. But the Buddhist doesn’t. He sits, and it is here in the depths of his being."

For people who are involved in nondual teachings (such as Buddhism) the above quote from Margaret Twedell’s book might sound puzzling and questionable. When I was involved in nondual teachings and meditated accordingly, I tried to tune into myself and experience myself as pure awareness, with little thought that there might be a being such as God that I could connect with. I now realize that in some way a divine Creator exists, plus many beings who live completely according to love and light. Rather than being Mr. Lonesome as I meditate I open up to the presence of those beings. I realize that a marvelous state of love and oneness exists where it isn’t necessary to negate the existence of the beings who make up this oneness. Therefore, my being isn’t layered upon itself, it has opened up to the presence of the many beings of love and light that exist including God.

Also--this relates to what Frederic Myers spoke of--because I now realize that the manifested part of reality isn’t a problem as long as one uses one’s creative aspect of being in a wise and loving way, there is no need to push away manifested existence as some non-dualists (including some Buddhists) do.

Below is what Frederic Myers had to say about Buddhists who try to deny what the creative aspect of being has to offer (from Chapter X of The Road to Immortality):

“THE Buddhist maintains that the Universe is unreal. It is unreal only so long as you are caught in its web, governed by its laws, controlled by its matter or by that invisible substance I have called an air of matter.

The term "unreal" implies falsehood, sham, humbug. The soul, when he manifests himself in form, is limited by that form. He cannot know truth because he is imprisoned in that shape. He has, during his life on those first five planes, a limited view. Like a horse, wearing blinkers, he has a very poor idea of the world about him. The essential unreality arises through this specialized view merely of a piece of the road before him. Further, the form lies in the picture of this road which it conveys to the soul. So the Buddhist is in one sense right when he claims that the Universe is unreal.

But when the sage claims that the ultimate goal is one of extinction within Nirvana--extinction though not annihilation--he is using dangerous terms. He claims that we are extinguished once we reach this state of grace, this World of the Absolute. He suggests, however, that at any rate we are existing in unconditioned being; we are entirely apart from the Universe, freed from its essential unreality.

Actually, only on the Seventh plane when we are one with the Supreme Idea do we realize the reality of the Universe. It is unreal so long as it imprisons soul and spirit. It is real once these are merged and freed from it, dwelling in the infinite liberty of Pure Intelligence.

Once that state is attained we perceive that old masterpiece, the Universe, as a Whole. We realize it in every microscopic detail, and in its greatest proportions. We perceive the Whole of it as an intellectual concept within the Supreme Idea. We perceive the part of it that is playing out its drama. And thus we exist as the seer and the lover, experiencing all that life as an act of thought. So we reach the zenith of experience. We know the reality of the material Universe, we are aware of the other reality, the Idea, which contains its duplicate from the beginning to the end as a thought. We cannot be said to be extinct. We are one in the great harmony of Mind, we are individual in the love of the Creator for His creation which is contained within him, which is manifested in part.

We receive from all those myriad spirits who control parts of the material universe the complete impression of it in its least, in its greatest aspects. Therefore we live as never before, we are caught in no Nirvanic swoon. And we join in that contemplation of the destruction of the present Universe, of the creation, life and extinction of other universes, and so on endlessly. We live in the intellectual concept of them all and we are aware of that part which now plays out its drama on the stage of eternity.

Try to realize the dual character of existence when you think of the word "Universe"; then it may be easier to understand the nature of life.

There are physical atoms and there are psychic units. The psychic unit develops as it dwells within and without the physical atoms, in the various stages of existence. The psychic unit dwells within the fantasy of ever finer and finer substance, gaining all the while. The psychic unit escapes from that substance, returns to its home in the Idea. But this escape does not mean annihilation. It is one now and yet many, just as the physical atoms of the human body are one and yet many.

Understand, therefore, that the Universe is only unreal so long as you dwell within its confining web, within form. It is real when you are free from it and are able from Out Yonder to survey it as a whole and to know it as an act of pure thought."

Also, from Chapter IX:

“AGAIN the choice must be made. Is the soul prepared to make the great leap, prepared to pass wholly from time into timelessness, from an existence in form into formlessness? This is the most difficult of all questions to answer. Only a very few reply in the affirmative when first faced with it.

The Seventh state might be described as the "passage from form into formlessness." But pray do not misunderstand the term "formlessness." I merely wish to indicate by it an existence that has no need to express itself in a shape, however tenuous, however fine. The soul who enters that Seventh state passes into the Beyond and becomes one with God.

This merging with the Idea, with the Great Source of spirit does not imply annihilation. You still exist as an individual. You are as a wave in the sea; and you have at last entered into Reality and cast from you all the illusions of appearances. But some intangible essence has been added to your spirit through its long habitation of matter, of ether the ancestor of matter, of what the scientists call empty space, though, if they but knew it, empty space is peopled with forms of an infinite fineness and variety.”

I intuit and know that truly Christed Consciousnesses know and teach that this is a universal potential for all humans, rather than proclaiming themselves as completely special and unique like some so called teachers have done.

In many peoples eyes at the said time of the Christ,  the physically incarnated Jesus was exactly that was he not?

Yet, I am open to the idea that the Christ did not incarnate or even be crucified. Not experienced explorers as yourselves, so there is time to do go "out there" and see.