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

Stephen Levine

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Stephen Levine
Age: 78 †
Born: 1937
Born: July 17
Died: 2016
Died: January 17
Poet
Screenwriter
the United States of America
Stephan Levine
Larger
Lived
Death
Much
Never
Life

More quotes by 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.
Stephen Levine
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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.
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
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That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)
Stephen Levine
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The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
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Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
Stephen Levine
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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
Stephen Levine
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How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)
Stephen Levine
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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
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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.
Stephen Levine
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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
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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
Stephen Levine
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Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.
Stephen Levine
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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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 Levine
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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.
Stephen Levine
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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
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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 Levine
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We've all been should upon enough.
Stephen Levine
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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