Quote

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

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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
Live
Safety
Little
Surprise
Take
Caught
Time
Dead
People
Path
Unsafe
Dies
Numb
Spiritual
Allowed
Littles
Keeps

More quotes by Stephen Levine

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Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
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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.
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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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The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
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That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)
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It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!
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Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.
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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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Death is perfectly safe. (55)
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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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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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Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way -- in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old.
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Much thought has at its root a dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is the urge for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. When there is wanting in the mind, that moment feels incomplete. Wanting is seeing elsewhere. Completeness is being right here.
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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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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
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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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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
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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