Stephen Levine Quotes

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

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

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

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

Death is perfectly safe. (55) ~ Stephen Levine

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

Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell. ~ Stephen Levine

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

Death is just a change in lifestyles. ~ Stephen Levine

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 Levine

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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 ~ 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

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

Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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

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

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

If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody. ~ Stephen Levine

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. ~ Stephen Levine

Love is not what we become but who we already are ~ Stephen Levine

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

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

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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 ~ 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

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

As Stephen Levine says, "When your fear touches someone's pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion. ~ Nina Angela McKissock

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 ~ Stephen Levine

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

[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

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

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

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. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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. ~ Stephen Levine

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

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 Levine

Into the woods
you have to grope,
But that's the way you learn to cope.
Into the woods to find there's hope
Of getting through the journey. ~ Stephen Sondheim

hey bitch, you're never too old to rock and roll ~ Stephen King

Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don't; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create. ~ Stephen Covey

Come on and take your medicine! ~ Stephen King

God, he could be a prick. A moody, stubborn prick who I would avoid if I knew what was good for me.
It seemed I never quite learnt my lessons very well in life. ~ Nina Levine

It's easier to be God than to see God. ~ Stephen Gaskin

It's peculiar to eat naked, but not crazy. What's crazy is to shoot yourself. You've got to get these things in perspective. ~ Stephen Dobyns

There are many reasons why I hate college football. The 4-hour games drone on longer than Steve Lyons during the American League playoffs. The ever-expanding season threatens to creep into early July. Boise, Idaho, hosts a bowl game. And it's played on blue artificial turf. ~ Stephen Rodrick

When things go wrong, they keep going wrong until there's tears. ~ Stephen King

God always asks for a sacrifice. His hands are bloody with it. Why? I can't say. I'm not a very smart man. P'raps we brought it on ourselves. ~ Stephen King

I tell you the truth, a man may not make himself king; only the blessing of him who holds the kingship can elevate a man to that high place. For sovereignty is a sacred trust that may not be bartered or sold; still less may it be stolen or taken by force. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

When the Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six. ~ Stephen Templin

President Bush has embarked on an eight-day tour of the continent. He hopes this one goes better than the other ones he's made recently. Obviously he's not doing that well in North America [on screen: '36% Approval'], his South American trip had a few bumps [on screen: 'Angry mobs of torch-carrying bumps'], Europe seems to think the president doesn't care what they think, but hey, who cares what they think? They could at least thank him for what he's done for their burning effigy industry. ~ Stephen Colbert

Most people think of Stephen King as a horror author, but his best work usually comes with a side order of nostalgic Americana. ~ Stewart Stafford

It wasn't the execution per se; except for the warden's bizarre blue shirt, it had seemed as prosaic as getting a tetanus shot or a shingles vaccination. That was actually the horror of it. Something ~ Stephen King

You could help me by shutting up, Eddie said, and the grill spoke no more. He found himself wondering if he had offended it, then wondered if perhaps he should kill himself and spare the world a problem. ~ Stephen King

How come when I'm with you, life seems to whiz ~ Stephen Bly

strangulation may often be discovered many weeks, ~ Stephen B. Ubaney

The problem is, most people believe that real science is too difficult and complicated for them to understand. But I don't think this is the case. To do research on the fundamental laws that govern the universe would require a commitment of time that most people don't have; the world would soon grind to a halt if we all tried to do theoretical physics. But most people can understand and appreciate the basic ideas if they are presented in a clear way without equations, which I believe is possible and which is something I have enjoyed trying to do throughout my life. ~ Stephen Hawking

I write to find out what I think. ~ Stephen King

Similar to the Bodhisattvas of India, the Buddhist way-showers, I play the role of the guide along the esoteric trail and aim to bring the seeker across the water. There I wait and watch from the shore as the pilgrim continues. This is not my journey; I have brought the sojourner to this place, to this state of grace and divine connection, and I set my intention and prayers that all is well. Great Spirit – be with us now! ~ Stephen Poplin

..(As to what they might be resting upon, Stephen was determined not to consider). ~ Susanna Clarke

So, in effect, my first sale was actually two books. ~ George Stephen

The movie business has been in enormous flux. It's always changing, and you've got to scramble. The Internet came along and devoured the DVD backend of the movie business. Suddenly you're watching dollars turn into nickels, and that's interesting to me. ~ Stephen Gaghan

Don't waste time making money ... use Cosmic Ordering. ~ Stephen Richards