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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
Mind
Toward
Like
Child
Turns
Pain
Mother
Children
Acknowledges
Heart
Frightened
Much
Acknowledge
More quotes by Stephen Levine
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
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.
Stephen Levine
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
Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.
Stephen Levine
Death is just a change in lifestyles.
Stephen Levine
That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)
Stephen Levine
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
Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
Stephen Levine
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
Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.
Stephen Levine
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
The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
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
It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!
Stephen Levine
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
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
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
We've all been should upon enough.
Stephen Levine
Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
Stephen Levine
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
