Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stephen Levine
Age: 78 †
Born: 1937
Born: July 17
Died: 2016
Died: January 17
Poet
Screenwriter
the United States of America
Stephan Levine
Numb
Direct
Experience
Even
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Stephen Levine

Image
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
Image
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
Image
[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
Stephen Levine
Image
Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
Stephen Levine
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Death is just a change in lifestyles.
Stephen Levine
Image
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
Image
Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
Image
If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.
Stephen Levine
Image
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
Image
Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness.
Stephen Levine
Image
If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
Stephen Levine
Image
Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.
Stephen Levine
Image
When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.
Stephen Levine
Image
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
Image
When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.
Stephen Levine
Image
Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
Stephen Levine
Image
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.
Stephen Levine
Image
It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!
Stephen Levine