This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of God.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not.
Memory |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Now is the time to unite the soul and the world. Now is the time to see the sunlight dancing as one with the shadows.
Memory |
Rupert Sheldrake, fully Alfred Rupert Sheldrake
The universe is not in a steady state; there's an ongoing creative principle in nature, which is driving things onwards.
Saint Anthony of Padua or Anthony of Lisbon, born Fernando Martins de Bulhões NULL
The spirit of humility is sweeter than honey, and those who nourish themselves with this honey produce sweet fruit.
Contemplation | Heart | Mercy | Providence | Quiet | Contemplation |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
If the memory is annihilated, the devil is powerless, and it liberates us from a lot of sorrow, affliction and sadness.
Blessings | Desire | God | Heart | Knowledge | Means | Meditation | Noise | Nothing | Pleasure | Quiet | Sense | Silence | Soul | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Work | God | Thought |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
As the soul becomes purged and purified by means of this fire of love, it becomes ever more enkindled in love. This enkindling of love is not always felt by the soul, but only at times when contemplation assails it less vehemently.
Experience | Freedom | God | Good | Imagination | Quiet | Reason | Soul | Spirit | Strength | Time | God |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
Any kind of thought or meditation or pleasure would impede and disturb the soul and would introduce noise into the deep silence which the soul should observe in order to hear the deep and delicate voice in which God speaks to the heart in this secret place. When the soul is led into silence, it must forget even the practice of loving advertence… it must practice that advertence only when it is not conscious of being brought into solitude or interior rest or forgetfulness. Pure contemplation consists in receiving. The soul approaches God more nearly by not understanding than by understanding. Faith is darkness to the understanding. God brought them to this solitude and emptiness of their faculties and operations that He may speak to their hearts. God is leading you through the state of solitude and recollection and withdrawing you from your labors of sense. Return not to sense again. Lay aside your operations for they will now be a great obstacle and hindrance to you, since God is granting you the grace of Himself working within you. God is bearing the soul in His arms… and thus, although it is making progress at the rate willed by God Himself, it is not conscious of such movement. Three kinds of love: 1. the soul now loves God, not through itself but through Himself. 2. the soul is absorbed in the love of God and God surrenders Himself to the soul with great vehemence. 3. the soul love Him for Who He is.
Absolute | Forgetfulness | God | Habit | Hope | Journey | Knowing | Knowledge | Means | Memory | Method | Regard | Rights | Silence | Soul | Will | God |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.
Contemplation | Forgetfulness | God | Knowing | Memory | Soul | Strength | Time | God | Contemplation |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The Divine assails the human soul in order to renew it and thus to make it Divine… The soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away. The sensual part is purified in aridity, the faculties are purified in the emptiness of their perceptions and the spirit is purified in thick darkness. The soul itself should be destroyed since these passions and imperfections have become natural to it. One hour of purgation here is more profitable than are many there.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
On that day God will not judge us about psalmody, nor for the neglect of prayer, but because by abandoning them, we have opened our door to the demons.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The soul went by a very secret ladder, which is living faith. In this purgative night the desires, affections and passions of the soul are put to sleep.
Darkness | God | Love | Memory | Reason | Soul | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | God | Intellect |
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
Consequently a human being is blessed who has virtues, whether or not he has any other blessings besides. If he has virtues and other advantages too, he is blessed in a general sense, as one said who was wise in divine matters. If he has virtues alone and for their own sake, he is blessed in a more circumscribed sense. For some things are thought of in a more circumscribed way, as when we think of two cubits, others in a more general way, as when we think of a heap. For you can take away two measures from a heap, and will be left with a heap. If you take away all bodily and external advantages from the condition of general blessedness, an leave nothing whatever but the virtues, it remains a state of blessedness. For virtue, by itself, is sufficient for happiness. Therefore every bad person is wretched, even if he has all the so-called blessings of the earth, if he is deprived of virtues. And every good person is blessed, even is deprived of all earthly blessings, since he has the radiance of virtue. It is because of this that Lazarus rejoiced, at rest in the bosom of Abraham.