This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Offer it up personally, then. Right now. I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer-you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It's not only possible, it's essential.
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Marriage is a game. They (the anxious and powerful) set the rules. We (the ordinary and subversive) bow obediently before those rules. And then we go home and do whatever the hell we want anyhow.
in stillness, I watched myself get eaten by mosquitoes... the itch was maddening at first but eventually it just melded into a general burning feeling and I rode that heat to a mild euphoria. I allowed the pain to lose its specific associations and become pure sensation... and that eventually lifted me out of myself and into meditation.
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Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; they have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all.
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Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can call the good energy with a smile.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Men could not part us with their worldly jars, nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,-- and, heaven being rolled between us at the end, we should but vow the faster for the stars.
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Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It is not merely the likeness which is precious ... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing ... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say ... that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced.
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What would I do if you never came here?' But I was ALWAYS coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.
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One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'
Age | Better | Cause | Earth | Enlightenment | Fame | Famous | Fortune | Good | Illusion | Kill | Labor | Light | Man | Mind | Money | People | Present | Problems | Shame | Terrorism | Work | Worry | Instruction | Understand |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
You believe in God, for your part?--that He who makes can make good things from ill things, best from worst, as men plant tulips upon dunghills when they wish them finest.
Conscience | God | Light | Love | Need | Nothing | Work | God |
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through tears.
Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe. No path is wholly rough.
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Words cannot describe the indignation a proud woman feels for her sex in disfranchisement.