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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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Stephen Levine
Age: 78 †
Born: 1937
Born: July 17
Died: 2016
Died: January 17
Poet
Screenwriter
the United States of America
Stephan Levine
Holding
Suffering
Might
Things
Caused

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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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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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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.
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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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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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How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)
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Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.
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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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That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)
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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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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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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
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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.
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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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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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The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
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We've all been should upon enough.
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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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Death is just a change in lifestyles.
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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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