This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We have accepted the watertight compartments of society, the fragmentation of living as factual and necessary. We live in relationship to these fragments and accept the internalized divisions—the various roles we play, the contradictory value systems, the opposing motives and priorities—as reality. We are at odds with ourselves internally; we believe that the inner is fundamentally different from the outer, that what is me is quite separate from the not-me, that divisions among people and nations are necessary, and yet we wonder why there are tensions, conflicts, wars in the world. The conflicts begin with minds that believe in fragmentation and are ignorant of wholeness.
Acceptance | Action | Awareness | Culture | Desire | Meaning | Passion | Peace | Problems | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Service | Society | Will | Society | Awareness |
Compassion does not manifest itself when we live on the surface of existence, when we try to piece together a comfortable life out of easily available fragments. Compassion requires a plunge to the depths of life—where oneness is reality and divisions merely an illusion. If we dwell at the superficial layers of being, we’ll be overly conscious of the apparent differences in human beings on the physical and mental level, and of the superficial difference in cultures and behavior. If we penetrate to the essentials, however, we will discover that there is nothing fundamental that differentiates any human being from another, or any human being from any other living creature. All are manifestations of life, created with the same life principles and nurtured by the same life-support systems. Oneness is absolute reality; differentiation has only transitory, relative reality.
Learning | Meaning | Question | Will | Understand |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
In painting I want to say something comforting in the way that music is comforting.
Heart | Inspiration | Meaning | Soul |
As a therapist, I am a companion. I try to help people tune into their own wisdom.
Meaning |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally, as if she belonged to neither; and indeed, for the time being she seemed to vacillate; she was man; she was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in. The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her. She was a feather blown on the gale. Thus it is no great wonder if, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged….
Even the most seemingly materialistic daydreams - the transformed life we imagine in a new dress, a new car, a new house - allow us to rise above the here and now, projecting ourselves into an idealized future. In the process, we learn truths about who we are, what we desire, and who we might become. Those things may matter only to our minds, but that doesn't make them any less valuable or any less real.
Ideals | Meaning | Principles | Purpose | Purpose |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Now, again, he paused, and into the breach thus made, leapt Ambition, the harridan, and Poetry, the witch, and Desire of Fame, the strumpet; all joined hands and made of his heart their dancing ground.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.
Battle | Birth | Children | History | Imagination | Life | Life | Longing | Majority | Meaning | Men | Nothing | Talking | Thought | Will | Old | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There is nothing staid, nothing settled, in this universe. All is ripling, all is dancing; all is quickness and triumph.
Experiment | Knowledge | Meaning | Friends |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What is this terror? What is this ecstasy, he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.
Little | Meaning | Revelation |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer.
Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The noise of rifles and cannons woke us; the flashes of tracer bullets and gun shots entered the hut. The chief doctor dashed in and ordered us to take cover on the floor. One prisoner jumped on my stomach from the bed above me and with his shoes on. That awakened me all right! Then we grasped what was happening: the battle-front had reached us! The shooting decreased and morning dawned. Outside on the pole at the camp gate a white flag floated in the wind.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.