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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

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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
Hell
Fire
Brimstone
Lying
Punished
Place
Cheating
Different
Stealing
Something
Wanting
Appreciation
Somewhere

More quotes by Stephen Levine

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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
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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.
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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
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Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.
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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.
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That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)
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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.
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Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
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I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
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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.
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If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.
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Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.
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The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
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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.
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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.
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Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.
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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.
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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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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.
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