This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.
For myself I have a history of speeding decision-making with regard to men. I always fall in love quickly and without risk assessment. I tend to not only see the best in everyone, but to assume that all emotionally able to reach their highest potential. Innumerable times I fell into the highest potential of a man, instead of himself, and long maintained that connection waiting for him to realize his own size. In many relationships I have been a victim of his own optimism.
Feelings |
Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more,—Macbeth shall sleep no more!
Everyone makes their own path, and I must make mine. The Bhagavad Gita - and ancient Indian Yogic text - says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life perfectly. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly. It is mine.
The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.
Day | Mind | Need | Noise | Peace | Silence | Wants | Will |
We are not alien visitors to this planet, after all but natural residents and relatives of every living entity here. This earth is where we came from and where we'll all end up when we die, and during the interim, it is our home, And there's no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don't at least marginally understand our home.
Ego | Fortune | Life | Life | Mind | Perfection | Right | Silence |
Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.
Ego | Mind | Perfection | Silence |
Why must everything be repeat and repeat, never finish, never resting? You work so hard one day, but the next day you must only work again. You eat, but the next day, you are already hungry. You find love, then love goes away. You are born with nothing, you work hard, then you die with nothing. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old.
This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.
Ceremony | Culture | Feelings | Joy | Need | Order | Safe | Tradition |
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And there my little doves did sit with feathers softly brown and glittering eyes that showed their right to general Nature's deep delight.
Melancholy | Words |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
O Life, how oft we throw it off and think, — 'Enough, enough of life in so much! — here's a cause for rupture; — herein we must break with Life, or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged, maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!' — And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes and think all ended. — Then, Life calls to us in some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, above us, or below us, or around. Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's, tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed to own our compensations than our griefs: still, Life's voice! — still, we make our peace with Life.
You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.