Stephen Levine Quotes
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Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
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Death is just a change in lifestyles.
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Wanting things to be otherwise is the very essence of suffering. We almost never directly experience what pain is because our reaction to it is so immediate that most of what we call pain is actually our experience of resistance to that phenomenon. And the resistance is usually a good deal more painful than the original sensation.
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Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness.
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Love is not what we become but who we already are
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When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.
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God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.
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There is nothing to do but be.
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When your fear touches someone's pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion. To train in compassion, then, is to know all beings are the same and suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.
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What is it like after you die? Just like it was before you were born.
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The only service you can do for anyone is to remind them of their true nature.
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The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
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We are so numb we don't even know what a direct experience is. We have an experience, then we think about it and we think the thinking about it is the experience.
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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
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Non-attachment is not the elimination of desire. It is the spaciousness to allow any quality of mind, any thought or feeling, to arise without closing around it, without eliminating the pure witness of being. It is an active receptivity to life.
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Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.
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I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
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Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.
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Our addiction to always being right is a great block to the truth. It keeps us from the kind of openness that comes from confidence in our natural wisdom.
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If you want the other person more than anything else in the world, you're in major trouble and the relationship is a wobbly pivot. It's different if the thing you want most in the world is truth, and your partner is the person you want most in the world.
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Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)
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Always try to see yourself through God's eyes.
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There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)
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Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one. . . . Let’s take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted. (132)
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Letting the last breath come. Letting the last breath go. Dissolving, dissolving into vast space, the light body released from its heavier form. A sense of connectedness with all that is, all sense of separation dissolved in the vastness of being. Each breath melting into space as though it were the last.
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Much thought has at its root a dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is the urge for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. When there is wanting in the mind, that moment feels incomplete. Wanting is seeing elsewhere. Completeness is being right here.
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When we turn to our innate wisdom for the harmony of mind and gut, we heal the entrance to the heart as it seeks to beat in rhythm with the world.
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The demons aren't the noise. They are our aversion to the noise...when you can accept discomfort, doing so allows a balance of mind. That surrender, that letting go of wanting anything to be other than it is right in the moment, is what frees us from hell.
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...healing comes not from being loving but from being itself. It is not a case of being clear but of clear being. This healing is not about anything else but being itself. Nothing separate, no edges, nothing to limit healing. Entering, in moments, the realm of pure being, the gateless gate swings open- beyond life and death, our original face shines back at us.
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There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for.
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