This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To love our neighbors as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all the modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of it.
Existence | Love | People | Relationship | Universe | Wisdom |
Truth is always congruous and agrees with itself; every truth in the universe agrees with all others.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely to You.
Individual | Universe | Wisdom |
I have traversed the universe from the deepest depths of the empyrean to the peristaltic movements of the atoms in the elementary cell. And on all sides stretched mysteries, marvels, and prodigies without limit, without number, and without end. I felt the unfathomable thought, of which the Universe is the symbols, live and burn within me; I touched, proved, tasted, embraced my nothingness and my immensity; I kissed the hem of the garments of god, and gave Him thanks for being Spirit and for being Life.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The political organization of the state rests both on force and on faith.
Faith | Force | Organization |
We are material in the hands of the Genius of the universe for a still larger destiny that we cannot see in the everlasting rhythm of worlds.
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
For as a picture is often more beautiful and worthy of commendation if some colors in themselves are included in it, than it would be if it were uniform and of a single color, so from an admixture of evil the universe is rendered more beautiful and worthy of commendation.
The first paradox of our lives is that nothing is fixed; and yet nothing is random or accidental, either. We co-create with our spiritual source. We have free will, and yet we are not in control. The second paradox is that when we set our intention for what we desire, we achieve it usually only after we have released our need to have it. This is the paradox of intention (personal desire and will) and surrender (letting God or the universe provide what is best for our highest good). You are both a finite earthly being, and an infinite soul of greater spiritual dimension. Your are both/and. You are the drop of water and the wave. You direct yourself, and you are directed.
Control | Desire | Free will | God | Good | Intention | Need | Nothing | Paradox | Soul | Surrender | Universe | Will | God |
Whenever the hidden, the unfathomable, is experienced whenever the meaning of all things is felt and grasped, then it is ether the devoutness of silence, that most intimate feeling of the living God, that deepest force of religious intuition and emotion, which takes hold of man, or, again, it is the uplift to imagery which is stirred up within him, the poetry which sings in prayer of the ineffable.
Force | God | Intuition | Man | Meaning | Poetry | Prayer | Silence |
Let’s imagine a visual image of your “life” as an energetic field. This energetic field attracts to you people, opportunities, and events. Within that field is a central point of purpose around which incoming energy is organized. Affecting and modifying that central point of purpose are energetic sub-fields of beliefs, attitudes, past experiences, expectations, unresolved emotional states, and other unconscious material. At all times, we emit a certain energy pattern based on our physical, emotional and spiritual states. The model of a magnetic force field is intended to suggest that we not only radiate our energy from a centralized self-organizing, indwelling purpose, but that energetic field also attracts in, or magnetizes to itself, those people and things that will help fulfill that purpose.
Energy | Events | Force | Life | Life | Model | Past | People | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Will |
Saint Bonaventure, born John of Fidanza Bonaventure
This universe of things is a ladder whereby we may ascend to God, since among these things are God’s footprints, some God’s image, some corporeal, some spiritual, some temporal, some eternal.
For millennia, shamans and witch doctors... made no distinction between physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. To them, all symptoms were signs of something awry in the individual’s relationship with the larger universe of spirits and animal powers.
Distinction | Individual | Relationship | Universe |