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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.

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
Idea
Enlightenment
Use
Short
Means
Cutting
Ideas
Comfortable
Mean
Health
Wisdom
Call
Word
Sanity

More quotes by Stephen Levine

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It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!
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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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
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I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
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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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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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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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
Stephen Levine
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We've all been should upon enough.
Stephen Levine
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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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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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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
Stephen Levine
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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.
Stephen Levine
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Death is just a change in lifestyles.
Stephen Levine
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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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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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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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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.
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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Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.
Stephen Levine