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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.

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
Life
Enhances
Prepares
Whatever
Death

More quotes by Stephen Levine

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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.
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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The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
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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.
Stephen Levine
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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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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
Stephen Levine
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Death is perfectly safe. (55)
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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Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.
Stephen Levine
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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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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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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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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The demons aren't the noise. They are our aversion to the noise...when you can accept discomfort, doing so allows a balance of mind. That surrender, that letting go of wanting anything to be other than it is right in the moment, is what frees us from hell.
Stephen Levine
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Death is just a change in lifestyles.
Stephen Levine
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In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same -- Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence.
Stephen Levine
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If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.
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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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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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