This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Purpose is about developing relationships. Purpose is about bringing attention and intention into the present moment, moving ahead with new ideas, giving and receiving support, volunteering, mentoring, listening to the imagination and intuition, communicating, taking action based on inner direction and hints from the external, being adaptable, taking responsibility and ending the victim stance forever surrendering to the divine will and working with the lessons developing fluidity, tolerance, compassion, and the ability to love.
Ability | Action | Attention | Compassion | Giving | Ideas | Imagination | Intention | Intuition | Listening | Love | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Will | Victim |
People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego.
Challenge | Competition | Ego | Enough | Good | Life | Life | People | Philosophy | Sense | Vision | Work | Friends | Learn | Understand |
Perhaps the biggest danger is the way a culture of self-help fosters both feelings of inadequacy and hopes for unattainable ideals… foolproof prescriptions for fulfillment and meaningful lives. The futile quest to become a complete all-round wonderful person, fully in control of our health, wealth and happiness.
Control | Culture | Danger | Feelings | Fulfillment | Health | Ideals | Self | Wealth | Danger |
Men and women are biological facts. Ladies and gentleman - citizens - are social artifacts, works of political art. They carry the culture that is sustained by wise laws, and traditions of civility. A the end of the day we are right to judge a society by the character of the people it produces. That is why statecraft is, inevitably, soulcraft.
Art | Character | Civility | Culture | Day | Men | People | Right | Society | Wisdom | Wise | Society |
Charisma is the ability to inspire followers with devotion and enthusiasm to a cause. It encourages disciples rather than independent persons. It is a way of investing oneself with authority over other rather than vesting others with authority over themselves.
Ability | Authority | Cause | Charisma | Devotion | Enthusiasm |
Refining your ability to think should be your investment priority; it always provides the best returns.
The mystic vision of God, or ecstasy of felt union with Him, is, to those who attain it, an affair of ravishing emotional intensity, of vivid intellectual illumination, and on both of these counts of supreme value.
To lead, you have to make a declaration of independence against the estimation of others, the culture, the age. You have to decide to live in the world, but outside existing conceptions of it. Leaders do not merely do well by the terms of their culture they create new contexts, new things, new ways of doing and being.
Age | Culture | Estimation | World |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
The ability to become bamboo is a metaphor for reaching beyond the perceptual, intellectual, and feeling habits, expectations, and assumptions of your own psyche and traditions in order to allow the embracing and the understanding of those of another. In actually becoming bamboo it is essential to listen to another with an open mind and heart, and thereby to embrace what you were previously unwilling or unable genuinely to encounter.
Ability | Heart | Mind | Order | Understanding |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
When asked what are the desirable qualifications for any young person who wishes to become a politician, Churchill replied: It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
What is wrong with our culture is that it often offers us an inaccurate conception of the self. It depicts the personal self as existing in competition with and in opposition with and in opposition to nature. We thereby fail to realize that if we destroy our environment, we are destroying what is in fact our larger self.
Competition | Culture | Destroy | Nature | Opposition | Self | Wrong |
T. Berry Brazelton, fully Thomas Berry Brazelton
Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles, with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them – all of these further a child’s brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months. Research demonstrates that the early responsiveness of caring parents sets the tone for future self-esteem, trust, problem solving, ability to communicate successfully and motivation for future learning.
Ability | Children | Esteem | Future | Learning | Parents | Reading | Research | Self | Self-esteem | Smile | Trust |
Lowering consumption need not deprive people of goods and services that really matter. To the contrary, life’ most meaningful and pleasant activities are often paragons of environmental virtue. The preponderance of things that people name as their most rewarding pastimes are infinitely sustainable. Religious practice, conversation, family and community gatherings, theater, music, dance, literature, sports, poetry, artistic and creative pursuits, education, and appreciation of nature all fit readily into a culture of permanence – a way of life that can endure through countless generations.
Appreciation | Conversation | Culture | Education | Family | Life | Life | Literature | Music | Nature | Need | People | Poetry | Practice | Virtue | Virtue | Appreciation |
Those very characteristics which are demanded by war – the ability to tolerate uncertainty, spontaneity of thought and action, having a mind open to the receipt of novel, and perhaps threatening information – are the antitheses of those possessed by people attracted to the controls, and orderliness, of militarism.
Ability | Action | Mind | Orderliness | People | Thought | Uncertainty | War | Thought |
Now whether the difficulty is real or whether it is imaginary, the results are the same, you become whatever you think. If God is with you, how can you possibly feel inferior to anyone? You have equal access to all the good that comes from God. You can demonstrate your faith in His ability to give it to you by living His life. So change your thought patterns right now. Make up your mind to beat this feeling by faith in God, and you will. He can who thinks he can!
Ability | Change | Difficulty | Faith | God | Good | Life | Life | Mind | Right | Thought | Will | God | Thought |