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

More quotes by Stephen Levine

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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
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Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
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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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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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Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
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We've all been should upon enough.
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Death is just a change in lifestyles.
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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.
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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.
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Death is perfectly safe. (55)
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Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.
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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.
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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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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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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
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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.
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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
Stephen Levine
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When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.
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Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.
Stephen Levine
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It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!
Stephen Levine