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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.

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
Children
Acknowledges
Heart
Frightened
Much
Acknowledge
Mind
Toward
Like
Child
Turns
Pain
Mother

More quotes by 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)
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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
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I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
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How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)
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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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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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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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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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Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.
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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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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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Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
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It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!
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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.
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Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.
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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 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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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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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.
Stephen Levine