Lama Chenrezi's Blessing

Suppose a catastrophe was about to happen, and that you prayed and said mantras in order to avert it. Suppose then that you saw many Buddha and Chenrezi images and statues in a totally unexpected context, and that an event occurred to avert the catastrophe. That would be something that would make you think wouldn't it? Such a thing happened to me. A friend of mine was taking me to some good jazz, which I was looking forward to, but at one point he essentially listed what he expected to do at the club, and it involved us "washing down a couple of beers." For some reason my mind started playing with that, and thinking, well I've had enough meditative training that I might be able to drink a beer for social reasons without it leading down the inevitable path of self-destruction. This thought scared me enough to pray to the Lama and say mantras. The desire was still there as we were waiting for the subway, and suddenly the thought occurred to me that my playing with the thought to drink so obsessively was itself a sign that I was not going to be able to drink normally.
I kept saying mantras, and then my brother called, and it was awesome because he said he would come with me to the club, and I was able to tell him on the phone that I wasn't going to drink anything, in front of my other friend. Such a silly thing it seems, but it was tremendously important at the time. Right after that, we passed multiple shops with Buddhist statues in the window, and it seemed totally natural to me, and yet it was totally unexpected, because these were statues in the Tibetan tradition: statues of the Buddha, statues of Chenrezi. The odds of coming across such a thing are pretty slim, actually. It felt to me like the seal on the blessing that allowed my brother to unknowingly come to my rescue like that.

This reminds me of something I've heard multiple times in A.A. Everyone, at some point, the saying goes, will have no defense against that first drink, and such a defense must come from a higher power. It is amazing how closely my experience fits this general mold. I am not about to try to figure out how this happens to Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists etc. Clearly it does. The fact that all of these religions seem inconsistent is irrelevant to the true practitioner I think.