This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
The toddler is allowed to regulate his own exploratory behavior. What occurs as a result of this entire mechanism is that nature’s imperative to explore the world at large is overwhelmed by the greater imperative to avoid the pain of a broken relationship with the life-giving caregiver. What will be developed in the child is a capacity for deception as he tries to maintain some vestige of integrity while outwardly appearing to conform. Living a lie to survive a lying culture, the child forgets the truth of who he really is.
Behavior | Capacity | Culture | Giving | Integrity | Life | Life | Lying | Nature | Pain | Relationship | Truth | Will | World | Child |
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Pain | Understanding |
Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
Discipline is the tool required to solve life's problems. What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems directly? Delaying gratification, accepting responsibility, dedication to truth, and balance.
Balance | Dedication | Discipline | Life | Life | Means | Pain | Problems | Responsibility | Suffering | Truth |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
There is no mortal whom pain and disease do not reach.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.
Consciousness | Evolution | Pain | Suffering |
Death is not the greatest loss in life... The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the death of the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
Awareness | Death | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Men | Pain | Tragedy | Loss | Awareness |
The tragedy of life is not death but in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the death of awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in oneself.
Awareness | Death | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Men | Pain | Tragedy | Awareness |
Problems linked to illness, such as psychic crises, but also pains of a physiological nature (fever, migraines, rheumatic pains) can be assumed to be just so many initiatory trials. Uncovering the religious significance of illness and physical pain constitutes in effect shamanism’s essential contribution to the history of spirit.
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
If the world has indeed been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.
Body | Love | Man | Pain | Perfection | Pleasure | Sorrow | Soul | World |
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
Glory | Language | Loneliness | Pain | Solitude |
What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation.
Earth | Grief | Pain | Power | Silence | Soul | Temptation | Time |
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Behavior | Better | Courage | Good | Joy | Light | Man | Meaning | Pain | Thought |