Instinct to Live When men and women pour so much alcohol into themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation, they seem bent upon self- destruction. They work against their own deepest instinct. As they are progressively humbled by the terrific beating administered by alcohol, the grace of God can enter them and expel their obsession. Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully with their Creator's desire to give them new life. << << << >> >> >> "The central characteristic of the spiritual experience is that it gives the recipient a new and better motivation out of all proportion to any process of discipline, belief, or faith. "These experiences cannot make us whole at once; they are a rebirth to a fresh and certain opportunity." TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 64 LETTER, 1965 247 Have You Experimented? "Since open-mindedness and experimentation are supposed to be the indispensable attributes of our `scientific' civilisation, it seems strange that so many scientist are reluctant to try out personally the hypothesis that God came first and man afterward. They prefer to believe that man is the chance product of evolution; that God, the Creator, does not exist. "I can only report that I have experimented with both concepts and that, in my case, the God concept has proved to be a better basis for living than the man-centered one. "Nevertheless, I would be the first to defend your right to think as you will. I simply ask this question: `In your own life, have you ever really tried to think and act as though there might be a God? Have you experimented?'" LETTER, 1950
Instinct to Live When men and women pour so much alcohol into themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation, they seem bent upon self- destruction. They work against their own deepest instinct. As they are progressively humbled by the terrific beating administered by alcohol, the grace of God can enter them and expel their obsession. Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully with their Creator's desire to give them new life. << << << >> >> >> "The central characteristic of the spiritual experience is that it gives the recipient a new and better motivation out of all proportion to any process of discipline, belief, or faith. "These experiences cannot make us whole at once; they are a rebirth to a fresh and certain opportunity." TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 64 LETTER, 1965 247 Have You Experimented? "Since open-mindedness and experimentation are supposed to be the indispensable attributes of our `scientific' civilisation, it seems strange that so many scientist are reluctant to try out personally the hypothesis that God came first and man afterward. They prefer to believe that man is the chance product of evolution; that God, the Creator, does not exist. "I can only report that I have experimented with both concepts and that, in my case, the God concept has proved to be a better basis for living than the man-centered one. "Nevertheless, I would be the first to defend your right to think as you will. I simply ask this question: `In your own life, have you ever really tried to think and act as though there might be a God? Have you experimented?'" LETTER, 1950
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