This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It usually happens that the more faithfully a person follows the inspirations he receives, the more does he experience new inspirations which ask increasingly more of him.
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The human world represents a purgatorial-like range of opportunities and choices, from the most grim to the exalted, from criminality to nobility, from fear to courage, from despair to hope, and from greed to charity. This if the purpose of the human experience is to evolve, then this world is perfect just as it is.
Charity | Courage | Despair | Experience | Fear | Greed | Hope | Nobility | Purpose | Purpose | World |
Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion
There is an experience of being in pure consciousness which gives lasting peace to the soul. It is an experience of the Ground or Depth of being in the Centre of the soul, an awareness of the mystery of being beyond sense and thought, which gives a sense of fulfillment, of finality, of absolute truth.
Absolute | Awareness | Consciousness | Experience | Fulfillment | Mystery | Peace | Sense | Soul | Thought | Truth | Awareness |
We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
Example | Experience | Learn |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The subjective experience of life, whatever its content, is profoundly influenced by the level of consciousness, as are the choices that appear as options. Whether the endeavor of life is satisfying or pleasant is dependent upon one’s positionalities, which determine how the situations are contextualized.
Consciousness | Experience | Life | Life |
Vacancy of experience cannot be compensated for by a lack of bias.
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first requisite [of creativity], and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
Creativity | Experience |
If one waits in emptiness one comes to realize that the void is God: it is not a preparatory stage but the experience of God Himself.
Experience | God | God |
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the unique person you really are.
Authenticity | Cause | Courage | Experience | Freedom | Responsibility | Unique | Approval |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Experience | Freedom | Will |
An individual does not comprehend his or her self as a linear sequence – a succession of roles or a trajectory of “socialize” beings, learning and then acting out (or deviating from) a set of socially appropriate rules of behavior. Moreover, identity in old age is not merely the sum of the parts, whether roles, achievements, losses, or social norms. Instead, people dynamically integrate a wide range of experience – unique situations, structural forces, values, cultural pathways, knowledge of an entire life span – to construct a current and viable identity.
Age | Behavior | Experience | Individual | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | People | Self | Unique | Old |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Security is almost an illusion (or superstition). It does not exist in nature, nor does humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Adventure | Danger | Daring | Experience | Illusion | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Security | Danger |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.
Change | Experience | Individual | Will |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Because Release is a gift – a reality not earned, not merited, not attained in any way – there flows naturally from the experience of release, the experience of Gratitude. Gratitude can best be defined and understood as the only possible response to a gift, to something recognized as utterly, freely given. Gratitude is the vision – the way of seeing – that recognizes “gift.”
Experience | Gratitude | Reality | Vision |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Happiness – the joy of living – comes in the experience of gratitude that flows forma vision of one’s life as a reality received, a gift given freely and spontaneously. Such a vision removes self from the center, thus healing self-centeredness by revealing the folly of the illusion of control.
Control | Experience | Folly | Gratitude | Illusion | Joy | Life | Life | Reality | Self | Vision |
Experience is connected to myth. Being immersed in self-experience is living one’s own myth, one’s own life story… As our connectedness to living depends, we learn that experience is the teacher. And experience cannot be programmed. We are our own mythmakers, knowingly or unknowingly.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The primordial experience is the source of [creativity]… In itself it offers no words or images, for it is a vision seen “as in a glass, darkly.” It is merely a deep presentiment that strives to find expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and, by carrying it aloft, assume a visible shape.
Creativity | Experience | Vision | Words |
Personal identity as a phenomenon can be studied only in the present; the researcher cannot know about those themes which have been altered or abandoned, because the integration of experience takes place only through presently existing frameworks of understanding.
Experience | Integration | Present | Understanding |
The sacred is revealed to us in the experience of our failure.
Experience | Failure | Sacred |