Stephen Levine quotes
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“Death is just a change in lifestyles.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (2012). “Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying”, p.290, Anchor
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“When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Love is not what we become but who we already are”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine (2010). “Healing into Life and Death”, p.67, Anchor
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“Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (2012). “Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying”, p.14, Anchor
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“Buddha left a road map, Jesus left a road map, Krishna left a road map, Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (2012). “Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying”, p.18, Anchor
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“Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way -- in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine (2010). “Healing into Life and Death”, p.55, Anchor
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“If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”
-- Stephen Levine -
“To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : "To Heal Is to Touch With Love" by Bil Hitchcock, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 29, 2015.
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“Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“The saddest part about being human is not paying attention. Presence is the gift of life.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Why do so many of us not give ourselves permission to be alive until we are absolutely assured that we will die? ...If we are not in [this present millisecond of life and conscious experience], we are not alive; we are merely thinking our lives. Yet we have seen so many die, looking back over their shoulders at their lives, shaking their heads and muttering in bewilderment, "What was that all about?"”
-- Stephen Levine -
“The process of growth is, it seems, the art of falling down. Growth is measured by the gentleness and awareness with which we once again pick ourselves up, the lightness with which we dust ourselves off, the openness with which we continue and take the next unknown step, beyond our edge, beyond our holding, into the remarkable mystery of being.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine (1984). “Meetings at the edge: dialogues with the grieving and the dying, the healing and the healed”, Anchor Books
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“In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same -- Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term the Beloved. The experience of this enormity we falteringly label divine is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being-- our greatest joy-- but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“Safety is the most unsafe spiritual path you can take. Safety keeps you numb and dead. People are caught by surprise when it is time to die. They have allowed themselves to live so little.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“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.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (2012). “Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying”, p.51, Anchor
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“In all serious disease states we find a concomitant low oxygen state... Low oxygen in the body tissues is a sure indicator for disease...Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen in the tissues, is the fundamental cause for all degenerative disease. Oxygen is the source of life to all cells.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“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)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to live or die, the work is always the same. (25)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How ewe appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind. (34)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our "sympathetic joy," our happiness at another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it doesn't stop there.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“Sometimes pain and illness are not meant to be removed. You can't second-guess God. Rather than praying for it to go away, it's often wiser to pray that you learn as much from it as you possibly can.”
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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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Oxygen plays a pivotal role in the proper functioning of the immune system. We can look at oxygen deficiency as the single greatest cause of all diseases.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“What is it like after you die? Just like it was before you were born.”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (2012). “Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying”, p.3, Anchor
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“Meditation isn't to disappear into the light. Meditation is to see all of what we are.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“People ask what must they become to be loving. The answer is ‘nothing.’ It is a process of letting go of what you thought you had become and allowing your true nature to float to the surface naturally.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“Always try to see yourself through God's eyes.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Healing comes when we meet our wounded places with compassion.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“I have seen many die, surrounded by loved ones, and their last words were ‘I love you.’ There were some who could no longer speak yet with their eyes and soft smile left behind that same healing message. I have been in rooms where those who were dying made it feel like sacred ground. (26)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain we, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. (43)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“I have seem even those who have long since abjured God die in grace. . . . Atheists don't use their drying to bargain for a better seat at the table; indeed they may not even believe supper is being served. They are not storing up 'merit.'; They just smile because their heart is ripe. They are kind for no particular reason; they just love.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“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)”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine (2005). “Unattended Sorrow: Recovering from Loss and Reviving the Heart”, p.3, Rodale
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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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Loss is the absence of something we were once attached to. Grief is the rope burns left behind, when that which is held is pulled beyond our grasp.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“There is a delicate balance that we need to honor as we try to find meaning in any event or state of mind: Many people confuse finding meaning with finding a reason, putting our finger on something or someone for blame.”
-- Stephen Levine -
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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.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine (2010). “Healing into Life and Death”, p.281, Anchor
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“If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)”
-- Stephen Levine -
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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.”
-- Stephen LevineSource : Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (2012). “Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying”, p.92, Anchor
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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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“...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.”
-- Stephen Levine -
“If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.”
-- Stephen Levine -
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“That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)”
-- Stephen Levine
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