It was a combination of factors, but the clincher was a series of "premonitions" [I prefer to call them "spiritual connections"] over 2+ years that involved an old girlfriend, who changed my life 50+ years ago, and my wife, both being very devout Italian Catholics who are simply the nicest people I have ever known. These premonitions were unlike anything I had ever experienced before and, as a matter of fact, I really didn't believe in them-- until they happened to me.
Also, being closer to home and known in my wife's church, there was more I could do there to help people out. I loved the Reform synagogue I had belonged to, and I do help over there as well periodically, but the half-hour drive at night reduced my ability to get there because of my eyesight that can't be corrected enough for night driving.
There's a bit more, but these were the two main factors.
BTW, thanks for asking, and what about your spiritual journey?
Thanks for sharing your story. I hoped I was not being too nosy but I took a chance.
So, were you raised with any religion or believing in God, or did you come to belief later in life?
My story is no doubt a lot different from yours. I never really has any premonitions or spiritual experiences per se, except for the time when i first read
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh with serious intent and absolute desperation. That happened right after I had a life crisis about six years ago and I was at the brink of suicide. I had been at that brink many times before but this time was different because I had come back my religion after a long hiatus about a year and a half before that, so I was at a different place in my life. Before that when I was suicidal I had no hope... Anyhow, what happened was that I picked up that book called Gleanings and started to read it on the bus ride to work and it just hot me like a ton of bricks who God was and who Baha'u'llah was,and I stated crying and could not stop. That was the real beginning of my spiritual journey.
Mind you, I had been a Baha'i for about 43 years at that time but I was not engaged and I knew nothing about God because that is not why I joined the religion; I joined because I am an idealist so I was drawn to the teachings and the primary message of Baha'u'llah, the unity of mankind and world peace.
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Anyhow, I started in the middle of my story, so now I am going back to the beginning. I like telling stories almost as much as I like hearing them...
To try to make a long story short, my mother and father were raised as Christians, Greek Orthodox and Anglican, but they both dropped out of the Church long before their children were born, probably right after they married sometime in the 1940s. To not be a Christian in the United States was practically unheard of back in those days. So my brother and sister and I never saw a Bible or the inside of a Church and we never gave it a second thought.
Then when my brother was in his early 20s he got curious about religion so he read about all the great world religions,especially Christianity. As I recall he told me he read the Bible cover to cover five times. Then after all that he discovered the Baha'i Faith and read about it. I do not recall how long it was before he became a Baha'i, but it was in 1968. Then he told my sister and I about it in 1970 and we both read about it and became Baha'is shortly thereafter. About five years later he told my mother about it and she became a Baha'i, so that was the whole nuclear family because my father had died in 1964, before he ever heard of the Baha'i Faith. My father had one sister who was a confirmed atheist but all my mother's brothers and sisters were either Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox.
I said I was going to try to make a ling story short, but that has not worked out very well so far, so now i am going to try to be more concise and you can cask me any questions about the last part of my story if you want to. So after I became a Baha'i I had a lot of psychological problems. This was unrelated to the religion, but rather owing to the difficult childhood I had, so I was not very active in the religion for very long and eventually I dropped out of activities. I was in "recovery" for a long time, but I was also in college for over 15 years so I was very busy, However, I never lost my belief in Baha'u'llah, although I was not tight with God at all because I was never close to God in the first place,and I was angry at Him for my suffering for about 10 years before I returned to the religion..
The last part of this story starts in January 2013 when I decided to try To engage with my religion again and try to resolve my issues with God, and that is when I first came to forums. First In I started posting in a Baha'i forum and after that I branched out to other forums. That is when I started learning about Christianity and to a lesser extent about Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. About a year after that I started my own forum but after that I started posting on a forum that was primarily nonbelievers and that became my primary forum until I left about two and a half years ago and came to this forum. I recently returned to that atheist forum so now I am here and there. I like talking to atheists because most of them are very sincere people, they just don't see any evidence for God. But also I have an atheist bent, although I never doubted God;s existence for one minute.
The last seven years has been quite a spiritual journey, and I think I have grown more in these years than in all the previous years put together, in spite of all the counseling and support groups I attended during the previous years. I believe it was my willingness to give my religion and God another chance as well as the participation in forums that helped me grow spiritually. I am quite an introvert so this gives me an opportunity to socialize without going out. Let me put it this way: My ordinary lifestyle is sheltering in place, so now everyone has experienced the way I normally live.
I sure hope I did not bore you to tears.
