The Gilbert Spirituality MeetUp Group met the other night and the topic was God Stories. We mostly focused on sharing incidents in which events happened which could not be a coincidence – or at least the person involved thought so, which is all that matters.
The idea of synchronicity was developed by Carl Jung and has special meaning for me. It was the way in which I came to believe in God. One of my first conscious “encounters” – after all God is always making Its Presence known but I often am not paying attention – occurred when I was newly on my path.
I walked into the rooms of a 12 Step program of recovery for eating disorders in March 1990 in New York City, bringing with me 19 years of ‘hard core’ atheism. I held a strong belief and daily practice based on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism where reason and logic were the answer to everything and self-sufficiency, along with perfectionism, was extreme. I had a great disdain for organized religion, and would barely give a member of the clergy the time of day if asked to. But, I considered myself a ‘free thinker’!
Six weeks later, abstinent (sober) for that period, I was on my way to Europe for the first time. Being so new to the program and traveling into unfamiliar territory, I was concerned about my ability to remain abstinent. I endeavored to get a copy of the Big Book, the ‘bible’ of the program Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) on which my particular program was based, and secured a copy in the nick of time. Reading this, indeed just having it with me, was to help ‘protect’ me from my disease of compulsive overeating. I had not yet developed a conception of a higher power to help me. I was about to get a clear demonstration of Higher Power at work.