that I have received thru History Lovers. I have
members.
Thanks, Dolores
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++++Message 6480. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Act as If
From: Mary Latowski . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/22/2010 8:41:00 AM
wrote:
> Not sure of the origin of the following but my 1st sponsor used to quote
it
> often:
>
> "Go the the motion and earn the emotion, go the action and earn the
> reaction"
>
> Thoughts?
> Mary Pat Latowski
> South Bend
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:28 AM, jax760 wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I recently came across this which tweaked my curiosity.
>>
>> "The rule for us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether
>> you "love" thy neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find
>> one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone,
you
>> will presently come to love him."
>>
>> "Some Christian writers use the word charity to describe not only
>> Christian love between human beings, but also God's love for man and
man's
>> love for God. About the second of these two, people are often worried.
They
>> are told they ought to love God. They can not find any such feeling in
>> themselves. The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not
sit
>> trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, "If I were sure that I
loved
>> God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer go and do it.
>>
>> pp.131-132 Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
>>
>> Recognizing the AA fellowship suggestions of "Act as If" and "Fake it
till
>> you make it" I decided to follow the trail and the joy in finding the
>> following from William James
>>
>> "If you want a quality, act as if you already had it."
>>
>> Although I find this quote all over the internet I could not source it to
>> a particular work of James.
>>
>> I found this by Norman Vincent Peale
>>
>> Enthusiasm Makes the Difference p.20
>>
>> Many years ago the noted psychologist, William James, announced his
famous
>> "As If" principle. He said "If you want a quality act as if already had
it."
>> Try the "as if" technique. It is packed with power and it works.
>>
>> I also came across this Wiki Post
>>
>> Sam Shoemaker gets the credit for originating the "Act As If" and "Fake
It
>> Until You Make It" practice that is popular in Alcoholics Anonymous and
>> Narcotics Anonymous circles. Note that Shoemaker invented that clever
>> persuasion technique to help in the religious conversion of doubtful
>> newcomers, not to help anyone to quit drinking or drugging:
>>
>> "Act As If"
>>
>> In 1954, the Reverend Samuel M. Shoemaker wrote a story about an
>> unfortunate who came to him admitting that he didn't believe in God and
>> certainly didn't know how to pray. Shoemaker asked him to "try an
>> experiment," as he had nothing to lose. He asked him to get down on his
>> knees and say anything at all that came to his mind, addressing his
thoughts
>> to "The Unknown." He then asked if the man could read just one chapter
from
>> the Bible, from the book of John. Solely out of respect for Shoemaker,
the
>> man obliged, but fighting every step of the way. This went on for some
time,
>> until one day the man actually began praying to God and reading the Bible
>> and other works on his own. The man eventually became a spiritual leader
>> within his church. Shoemaker believed that this was possible because the
man
>> "acted as if he had faith" until faith came by accident, or "until there
was
>> an opening for God to come through."
>>
>> The slogan "act as if" has been used in AA circles ever since.
>>
>> A Ghost In The Closet: Is There An Alcoholic Hiding?, Dale Mitchell, Page
>> 194.
>>
>> The author of this post erroneously gives credit for "inventing" the
>> "technique" to Sam Shoemaker who could have gotten it from either William
>> James or C.S. Lewis. But Sam surely may have introduced this to the
>> fellowship.
>>
>> I also found this by Sam Shoemaker in the October 1955 Grapevine "The
>> Spiritual Angle"
>>
>> "When one has done the best he can with intellectual reasoning, there yet
>> comes a time for decision and action. It may be a relatively simple
>> decision: really to enter wholly into the experiment. The approach is
more
>> like science than like philosophy. We do not so much try to reason it out
in
>> abstract logic; we choose a hypothesis, act as if it were true, and see
>> whether it is. If it's not, we can discard it. If it is, we are free to
call
>> the experiment a success."
>>
>> Several other things in the CS Lewis book caught my eye as I found many
>> similarites with the philosophy of the 12&12. It would appear that
Lewis's
>> writings were an influence on both Sam Shoemaker and Father John Ford who
>> helped Bill with the 12&12. But one example is given below.
>>
>> 12&12 p.109
>>
>> From great numbers of such experiences, we could predict that the doubter
>> who still claimed that he hadn't got the "spiritual angle," and who still
>> considered his well-loved A.A. group the higher power, would presently
love
>> God and call Him by name.
>>
>> CF - Lewis ..."presently come to love him."
>>
>> If anyone else has any insight on Act as If or Father John Ford's work on
>> the 12&12 I'd be quite interested.
>>
>> God Bless
>>
>> John B
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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++++Message 6481. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Singleness of purpose
From: Kimball ROWE . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/23/2010 1:14:00 PM
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I have never seen SINGLENESS in print, so I suspect it is just an adjective
made
up to describe the purpose of the AA fellowship. The single purpose is not
exactly the same as the sole purpose or the primary purpose.
Sole/Primary/Single Purpose
Sole Purpose of AA:
"Sobriety - freedom from alcohol - through the teaching and practice of the
Twelve Steps, is the sole purpose of an A.A. group. Groups have repeatedly
tried other activities and they have always failed. If we don't t stick to
these
principles, we shall almost surely collapse. And if we collapse, we cannot
help
anyone." (a statement by Bill W. which was reaffirmed as a guiding principle
of
A.A. by the members of the A.A. General Service Conferences of 1969, 1970
and
1972.)
Primary Purpose (Individually):
"Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve
sobriety." (from the AA Preamble)
Primary Purpose (Group):
"Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the
alcoholic
who still suffers." (Tradition 5)
Single Purpose (much like the sole purpose):
"Our Society, therefore, will prudently cleave to its single purpose: the
carrying of the message to the alcoholic who still suffers." ( A.A. Comes of
Age, page 232)
If you consider "teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps" the same as
"carrying of the message," then the sole purpose and the single purpose are
the
same. In reference to the individuals primary purpose, I used to have an old
Akron pamphlet that talked about the individuals "secondary" purpose, "to be
restored back into the society from which we came," but alas, I can no
longer
find the pamphlet.
----- Original Message -----
From: Glenn Chesnut
To: AAHistoryLovers group
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 1:54 PM
Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Singleness of purpose
From: "Dolores" >
(dolli at dr-rinecker.de)
I have a question, where does the phrase
"Singleness of Purpose" come from? Who used
it first?
Dolores
- - - -
From the moderator:
I would start by looking at the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the
chapter on Tradition Five, "Each group has but one primary purpose - to
carry
its message to the alcoholic who still suffers."
1st line of 5th paragraph refers to: "this singleness of purpose"
And then the 1st line of the next paragraph refers to: "the wisdom of A.A.'s
single purpose."
And then several paragraphs further along it says: "Thank heaven I came up
with the right answer for that one. It was based foursquare on the single
purpose of A.A."
Also see the chapter on Tradition Eight:
The first paragraph says: "Every time we have tried to professionalize our
Twelfth Step, the result has been exactly the same: Our single purpose has
been
defeated."
Glenn Chesnut (South Bend, Indiana, U.S.)
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++++Message 6482. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Re: Act as If
From: Jenny or Laurie Andrews . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/22/2010 3:07:00 AM
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Apropos: "If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray
for
the person or the thing you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in
prayer
for everything you want for yourself to be given them, you will be free ...
Even
when you don't really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and
you
don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and
you
will find you have come to mean it..." (Freedom from Bondage, Big Book).
Also, "If you don't like people, put up with them as well as you can. Don't
try
to love; you can't, you'll only strain yourelf." (E.M. Forster)
To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com
From: glennccc@sbcglobal.net
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:52:50 -0700
Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Re: Act as If
Hans Vaihinger, the "Philosophy of As If," was
the important figure here.
John,
All of these references that you have given go back, either directly or at
second hand, to a German philosopher who was very famous and extremely well
known in the very late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During that
period, all sorts of people read him and were influenced by his ideas,
although
he has become little more than a footnote or a sentence or two in modern
works
on philosophy and the history of philosophy.
__________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Vaihinger
<