dredg

I haven't posted much around here but I do read a lot of the forum posts on various subjects. I did post a thread awhile back ago about the need for a higher power. I had over 1500 views and it turned into a bit of a debate.

For a long time I have had more of an atheist point of view. As an engineer I try to view things very logically and have only believed in a higher power when I was younger.

For the past two weeks I have been on quite the binge where I was drinking every night and getting drunk about every other. I can't drink during the day because of work but after 7:00PM all bets are off. I finally decided that enough is enough after waking up soaked from night sweats.

I have been practicing AVRT for the past 4 days for the first time. It has worked so far, I haven't been sober for 4 days straight since last summer. I went to AA in the past only a couple of times and then joined a general outpatient group last June that was 12 step based but very preachy. As you can imagine someone with no real belief in a higher power wouldn't last long and I didn't.

After my about 20 days of sobriety, the general outpatient group gave me a silver 24hr coin. I read the prayer on the back and just chucked it in my pocket. I quit going to any sessions shortly after that.

Yesterday was really hard for me. I travel a bit for my job and this is when I usually do my really heavy drinking, in a hotel room, No kids, no
responsibilities, just me and my vice. I had some really strong cravings last night after work traveling to a hotel. I used AVRT to overcome most of the cravings but still found myself finding the best route to a liquor store on the GPS. I finally threw it down, threw up my hands and said, "If your there help me now. please!"

I woke up sober this morning and was very proud of myself. I exercised, ate a healthy breakfast and started getting ready to hit the road for my drive home. I grabbed my pants out of my suitcase and out fell a coin on to the ground... The 24hr coin.

I really don't know what to think about this because I can't explain it really. To have a coin that I received last Summer still be embedded in my pant pocket all the way until November? Then it appears after defeating a very hard night of strong urges to drink, after not seeing it for 5 months, after not having any real length of sobriety for 5 months or even remembering it existed. WOW!

Anyway, I don't know how to take this. A very strange coincidence? Something more? All I know is it hit me hard...

Just wanted to share this with others.

bbthumper

THanks for sharing! Neat stuff.

Willingness to believe can go a long way.

DrunkTx

My burning bush was similar. Sometimes the gentlest look and it appears. keep the faith or the.sobriety at least.

Fernaceman

Pretty awesome story.

Of course it happened for a good reason.

Mulch

I have always felt that everything happens for a reason.. to give us an experience, teach us something, give us strength, help make a needed decision, or a change, etc., etc.

But no matter what you believe, it certainly was a neat thing to have happen - that is for sure! Nice.

Maylie

I love stories like these! Thanks for sharing it

awuh1

I have seen a few other stories like this here on SR. It also happened to me. Something happens shortly after just the slightest bit of seeking, after just the slightest willingness to believe in a greater “something”.

It is my firm belief that it is in the seeking itself that God reveals (him/her/its) self. Seems like your prayer may have been answered.

It’s a bit advanced, but you might wish to look at the concept of synchronicity in light of your experience. Here’s a link Synchronicity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MIRecovery

I call these God moments. God can be the master plan for universe, it can quantum physics, string theory, it can be the law of relativity. If a mathematical formula can govern sub atomic particals why can they not govern a 24 hr coin dropping out of your pocket. Just because we do not understand the math does not mean it does not exist

Christopher99

Very cool story. Thinking back on that moment may help you beat some of the urges in the future. Goodluck mate

vinyl

In my understanding there is no mystical or religious significance to anything that transpires at any moment, just the present experience and good old fashioned science. From my understanding, you found a coin at a moment in your life where you were struggling and then attached significance to the moment, the coin and your current struggles. This is all OK and a great lesson in the randomness of life and how everything is in continuous change and impermanent.

If this moment did not happen, you may not have had that experience of touching your struggle so deeply. So as humans we want to give thanks somehow or attach a higher being to that experience. In my understanding it's important that we thank life for being so random and impermanent. We don't need to give someone or something credit. We should examine that moment, learn from it and prepare for the next moment knowing anything can happen at anytime.

What was joyous can become painful and what was enlightening can suddenly become dark. If for instance you do drink again tonight, what significance did finding the coin really mean? Well, if you believed it was due to some higher power you may then become crushed emotionally. But if you realize it was just a wonderful, random moment, you may be prepared for the urge to drink and decide it's just another moment to learn from instead.

We don't have to attach constructs, higher powers or anything to an experience. We can just be there in the moment, touch it, learn and prepare for the next with amazement. In this way we begin to unfold and see life for what it is, rather than what we're trying to make it be.

When we lose all of these attachments and the anxiety drops away, our cravings become moments we can understand rather than act upon, such as drinking due to all the extra stuff we add to our experience like higher powers attached to a coin we stumbled upon during our suffering.

Just another thought to consider and it's just my own understanding.

escapist

Einstein believed in God.

Hevyn

That was a wonderful story, dredg - I'm so glad you shared it.

dredg

I have lived most of my adult life believing that if you can't recreate something in a controlled setting, then it doesn't exist. I however, believe that humans tend to try and place things unexplained into boxes. It's our nature to do so to try and understand them and to label it. Sometimes you just have to not try and pick a moment apart to explain them. You just accept it for what it is.

All I know is that this gave me one of those WTF moments in life. I'm not drinking today and that's all I care about.

vinyl

Actually, no he did not and this has been misunderstood by his teachings often.

A quote by Albert Einstein on the matter:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

Source: Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman (eds) (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton University Press. p. 43.

This is how some misinterpret his actual belief:

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

Source: Cable reply to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein's (Institutional Synagogue in New York) question to Einstein, "Do you believe in God?".

Xune

Actually he didn't believe in God, especially a personal God who cares about us. It's an urban myth perpetuated by many.

Einstein, was, just as he said many times, an agnostic and he seemed to recognize that many would call him an Atheist.

"I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ... It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility and beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it. And that is all."

"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."


'"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere..."

" "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

"About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church... As long as I can remember. I have resented mass indoctrination. I cannot prove to you there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws"

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls..."

...and now you know the truth.

Religious views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sasha4

Please stop about Einstein and God and everything else.

This is a really great thread about a nice moment. Don't lets spoil it, especially not for the original poster and me.

For those that want to believe, let us just enjoy and smile.......please.

Xune

Niceties aside, no matter how uncomfortable the truth is.

It is just that, the truth.

Someone made an incorrect claim about an important and influential person and I corrected them.

No more, no less.

Mark75

Signal Grace

Dee74

Phew, I'm glad we sorted that Einstein thing out....

In all seriousness, I'm way more interested in Dredg and the story they were sharing than I am whether Albert Einstein was a believer or not.

Let's not drag this thread off into a sectarian corner.
If this thread is not your thing, you're free not to participate.

D

Dee74

Dredg

I don't know whether it's a sign from God, or whether it's a sign you don't check your pockets much...

but I find my life filled more and more with resonant coincidences and those 'moments of meaning'...and I love it that way

D