Stephen Levine Quotes

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

— 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

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

— Stephen Levine

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

— 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

“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

“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

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

— Stephen Levine

“I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)”

— 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

Pouring mercy into the darkness, Miao Shan becoming the bodhisattva Kuan Yin. She liberated hell, singing: Old stories, legends of creation, won't keep Hades from becoming paradise. Rumi said for the person who loves the truth "Their water is fire." He made spring out of winter. He learned from his mistakes. There were moments when numb from thinking we forget we pass through hell on our way to heaven. And if that heavenly glow does not distract us too much, dehypnotized by grace, we continue past heaven into the boundless enormity which dwarfs it.

— 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

“The "third eye" ... "our sacred Cyclops" ... our "good" eye, the only one that can see beyond our conditioned ways of seeing. It is, of course, a knowing eye, not a seeing one. It is the eye through which we look within to experience the universe unfolding. It is the single eye that concentrates duality into the One: the eye of insight, the locus of the point of remembrance on the ascent to death, as well as the point of forgetfulness on the descent into birth.”

— Stephen Levine

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

— 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

“Love is not what we become but who we already are”

— 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 Levine

“Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.”

— 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

“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

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

— Stephen Levine

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

— 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

“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

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

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

“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

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

— 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

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

— Stephen Levine

“We've all been should upon enough.”

— Stephen Levine

“Buddha nature, is like the sun which is always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of I am.”

— Stephen Levine

“You can call it wisdom, or sanity, or health, or enlightenment. I use the word God as a short-cut. I am comfortable with the word God because I don't have the foggiest idea of what it means.”

— Stephen Levine

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

— 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

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.

— Stephen Levine

“Always try to see yourself through God's eyes.”

— Stephen Levine

“Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.”

— Stephen Levine

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

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

— Stephen Levine

“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 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

“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

“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