This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
There are very few things in the mind which eat up as much energy as worry. It is one of the most difficult things not to worry about anything. Worry is experienced when things go wrong, but in relation to past happenings it is idle merely to wish that they might have been otherwise. The frozen past is what it is, and no amount of worrying is going to make it other than what it has been. But the limited ego-mind identifies itself with its past, gets entangled with it and keeps alive the pangs of frustrated desires. Thus worry continues to grow into the mental life of man until the ego-mind is burdened by the past. Worry is also experienced in relation to the future when this future is expected to be disagreeable in some way. In this case it seeks to justify itself as a necessary part of the attempt to prepare for coping with the anticipated situations. But, things can never be helped merely by worrying. Besides, many of the things which are anticipated never turn up, or if they do occur, they turn out to be much more acceptable than they were expected to be. Worry is the product of feverish imagination working under the stimulus of desires. It is a living through of sufferings which are mostly our own creation. Worry has never done anyone any good, and it is very much worse than mere dissipation of psychic energy, for it substantially curtails the joy and fullness of life.
Energy | Future | Imagination | Joy | Justify | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Past | Worry |
I'm talking about paying attention to your inner voice, paying attention to the heart. Science has shown us that the heart is made of 65% of the neurons that are in the brain. So there's scientific evidence to show that there is a thinking heart. And this has also been proven with heart transplant patients who are then thinking thoughts they've never thought before and saying things they've never said before. They would go back to a relative of the heart donor who would say, "My husband used to say that." We think as much with the hearts as we do with the brains. Our culture has emphasized the intellectual part, the rational part. It's ironic that the leading edge of science is showing that there's more to it than that! It just proves to me what the great traditions have taught from time immemorial: There's an invisible world, an inner world, and we all have that inside of us. Most of us are very good at covering up the inner voice that's speaking to us all the time. What we have to do is find ways to connect with that inner voice, and listen to it.
Attention | Culture | Evidence | Good | Heart | Husband | Science | Talking | Thinking | Thought | Time | Think | Thought |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.
Work |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to relect complexity.
Conformity | Energy | Individual | Integration | Self | Selfishness | Will |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
If one has failed to develop curiosity and interest in the early years, it is a good idea to acquire them now, before it is too late to improve the quality of life. To do so is fairly easy in principle, but more difficult in practice. Yet it is sure worth trying. The first step is to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention, with skill rather than inertia. Even the most routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn become more rewarding if we approach them with the care it would take to make a work of art. The next step is to transfer some psychic energy each day from tasks that we don’t like doing, or from passive leisure, into something we never did before, or something we enjoy doing but don’t do often enough because it seems too much trouble. There are literally millions of potentially interesting things in the world to see, to do, to learn about. But they don’t become actually interesting until we devote attention to them.
Attention | Care | Curiosity | Day | Energy | Enough | Good | Habit | Skill | Work | World | Worth | Learn |
Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
I can restructure your mind and all your habits; of thinking, talking – restructure for your sake, not for mine – not that I will teach you that it is right or wrong but to do something to help you to feel more yourself and actually give you the kind of person that you have always dreamt to be.
Here's one who wants to settle doctrinal differences without recognising a supreme judge. Here's another who goes on talking about an 'independent church', without knowing where it is to be found. Here's yet another who defends 'power' and 'rights' but can't say who should exercise them.
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence - against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people. And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences at this day at home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate.
Day | Government | Light | Peace | People | Talking | Time | Government | Think |
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
A culture is born when a great soul awakens, stands out of the mental state of perpetual childhood primary human form of the formless end, limit output and decay of the infinite and duration. It grows on the ground of a landscape exactly definable, which it remains bound as a plant. A culture dies when the soul has made the entire amount of its ability, in the form of peoples, languages, religious doctrines, arts, sciences, and thus it returns to the primary psychic state.
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
I ask permission to be like everybody else, like the rest of the world and what's more, like anybody else: I beg you, with all my heart, if we are talking about me, since we are talking about me, please resist blasting the trumpet during my visit and resign yourselves to my quiet absence.
By sympathy with the happy, compassion for the sorrowful, delight in the holy, disregard of the unholy, the psychic nature moves to gracious peace.
Compassion | Nature | Sympathy |
We’re talking about why the universe looks like it’s been fixed up for habitation. For most people, the first interpretation is, “Well, God did it.” What I’m saying is that that gets us nowhere at all. It just shoves the problem off to some other realm. But saying “God did it” is no worse than saying “the laws of physics did it.” They both basically appeal to something outside the universe. The problem with saying God did it is that God himself or herself is unexplained, so you’re appealing to an unexplained designer. It doesn’t actually explain anything; it just shoves the problem off.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
When you are talking to others, hold the eyes of the one you are talking to, and speak with all the force of truth and the love of God behind your words. And when you shake hands, do so consciously, so that you give the magnetism of your sincere friendship. Try to help that person. Be positive and develop your own spiritual magnetism, and you will have the power to change others. With the eyes you can convey that magnetism. Just look at the one you want to help, and think, "God's blessing is flowing through me." Never feel you are the doer.
Change | Force | God | Love | Power | Talking | Truth | Will | God |
We are at a bifurcation point, a fork in the road. People have to not only become more self-aware, but also start talking about it. . . but it could go either way. Our future is not foreordained. We are at a tipping point in civilization. This means we have to be ready to choose a good path.
Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!
Revolution | Society | Talking | Society |
The energy of hatred won't get you anywhere; but the energy of forgiveness, which reveals itself through love, will transform your life in a positive way… The warrior of light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle, he does not have time to think of the enemy's blows, and so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. In times of peace, he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say, He's mad. Or, He lives in a fantasy world. Or even, How can he possibly believe in such illogical things? But the warrior knows that intuition is God's alphabet and he continues listening to the wind and talking to the stars.
Energy | God | Instinct | Intuition | Life | Life | Light | Listening | People | Talking | Time | Will | God | Think |