Stephen Levine Quotes

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)

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)

Once we can see the major shifts from liking to disliking, from opened to close, we will be able to acknowledge them before they gain momentum.

To heal is to touch with love that which was previously touched by fear.

remember that what will die in a year's time is not our essential being but our ability to interact physically with those we love and cherish. You

Aging teaches us to follow our life force inward. It is an object lesson in how awareness is gradually drawn towards the center ...

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)

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.

It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!

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.

Pity arises from meeting pain with fear. Compassion comes when you meet it with love.

Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.

[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)

The saddest part about being human is not paying attention. Presence is the gift of life.

Naming of things as they are, without embellishment, make approachable those afflictive emotions and heavy states that obscure the heart. We know that we can't let go of anything we don't accept, the noting brings us into the presence of that which often distracts us from the present. It allows the healing in. And as we observe the appearance of things, we more easily acknowledge their subsequent disappearance, and some come to an appreciation of impermanence.

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.

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)

What is it like after you die? Just like it was before you were born.

[T]hose who insist they've got their 'shit together' are usually standing in it at the time. (16)

When your fear touches someone's pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone's pain, it become compassion.

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.

If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.

Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.

The mind is in a constant state of flux. No thought, no feeling, no sensation lasts for more than an instant before it is transformed into the next state, next thought, the next sensation. Note those moments ... As they pass through, note such states as confidence, bewilderment, effort, trust, distrust, pleasure, discomfort, boredom, devotion, inquiry, pride, anger, desire, etc.

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.

If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)

Death is perfectly safe. (55)

Having written extensively about the practice of mindfulness in A Gradual Awakening I suggest that you refine your practice with this book as well as Jack Kornfield's excellent A Path with Heart. We

A drop of pond water
under the microscope
just like in science class
but now your are the pond
& the microscope is mindfulness

Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.

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)

When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.

Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought.

Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.

Forgiveness is mental floss! Build the capacity to forgive slowly - start with little unkind acts, otherwise you'll sabotage yourself. When we forgive, we forgive the actor, not the action.

To know your life is to know intimately what you are feeling. Or to put it another way: to be aware of what state of mind predominates in consciousness. The noting of mental states encourages a deeper recognition of what is happening while it is happening. It allows us to be more fully alive in the present rather than living our life as an afterthought. It enables us to watch with mercy, if not humor, the uninvited swirl of "mixed emotions" not as something in need of judgment but as a work in progress.

God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.

Often when we hear people speak about meditation, we hear about wisdom, we hear about knowledge. But what, actually, is the effect, what's the use, of wisdom or knowledge? Understanding. When you understand mind, you're not at its mercy. When you don't understand, you're lost in the midst of it.

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.

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.

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.

Note which states of mind accompany each moment of like and disliking. When we recall the statement, "Physician, heal thyself," this is where the healing begins. It is particularly important to notice that this constant liking and disliking that leaves us exhausted at the end of the day. It is from this mechanical response / reaction that our actions and reactions arises.

[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)

When we recognize that, just like the glass, our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, then life becomes precious, and we open to it just as it is, in the moment it is occurring. When we understand that all our loved ones are already dead - our children, our mates, our friends - how precious they become. How little fear can interpose; how little doubt can estrange us. When you live your life as though you're already dead, life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime, a universe unto itself.

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change, our heart opens, and our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings. We watch all life in transit, and what matters becomes instantly apparent: the transmission of love; the letting go of obstacles to understanding; the relinquishment of our grasping, of our hiding from ourselves. Seeing the mercilessness of our self-strangulation, we begin to come gently into the light we share with all beings. If we take each teaching, each loss, each gain, each fear, each joy as it arises and experience it fully, life becomes workable. We are no longer a "victim of life." And then every experience, even the loss of our dearest one, becomes another opportunity for awakening.

If our only spiritual practice were to live as though we were already dead, relating to all we meet, to all we do, as though it were our final moments in the world, what time would there be

Your distance from your partner is the distance from your heart. The things that make relationships difficult are some of the most precious aspects to us.

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

The mind is a useful tool but not a very good friend.

It is trust in our vast 'don't know' that allows room for the truth, that allows the next intuition to float to the surface.

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.

Because noting states of mind as they arise keep us present, it allows us to meet difficulties at their inception – before they become more real than we are.

The basis of the practice is to directly participate in each moment as it occurs with as much awareness and understanding as possible.

...forgiveness is not a condoning of the unskillful act which has caused injury, but a touching of the actor with mercy and loving kindness.

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.

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.

The only service you can do for anyone is to remind them of their true nature.

What we describe as "our life" is not the sum total of what has passed through our hands but what has passed through our minds. Our life isn't only a collection of people and places, it is a continuum of the ever-changing feelings they engender. It isn't only what you've touched, it's what you've felt of what you touched.

When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.

That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)

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. When we see resistance in the mind, stiffness in the mind, boredom, restlessness ... that is the meditation. Often, we think, "I can't meditate, I'm restless," "I can't meditate, I'm bored," "I can't meditate, there's a fly on my nose." That is the meditation. Meditation isn't to disappear into the light. Meditation is to see all of what we are.

Approach illness as an experiment in staying present, in opening your heart in hell. Discuss how we fear our hidden pain even more than death, and how noting and mindfulness brings that pain to the surface where it can be healed.

Love is not what we become but who we already are

The secret of chanting is in the listening, not the voicing, and a circuit is completed between mind and heart that opens intuition and gently increases the volume of the still small voice within.

[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)

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.

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?"

Death is just a change in lifestyles.

Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.

Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.

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.

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.

We see not just that which is uninjured, but that within us which is uninjurable.

As we begin to see where we have been absent from life, increasing possibilities audition for our approval.

For all of us there is an approach to the seemingly unapproachable. This is the life-affirming work of learning to stay present even under difficult circumstances, to embrace mental, physical, and spiritual pain using techniques suitable for each particular level of discomfort.