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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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Stephen Levine
Age: 78 †
Born: 1937
Born: July 17
Died: 2016
Died: January 17
Poet
Screenwriter
the United States of America
Stephan Levine
Appropriateness
Freed
Acting
Heart
Mind
Neediness

More quotes by 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.
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If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
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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.
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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
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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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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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Oxygen plays a pivotal role in the proper functioning of the immune system. We can look at oxygen deficiency as the single greatest cause of all diseases.
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Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
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.
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That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)
Stephen Levine
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[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
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.
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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.
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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
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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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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
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I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
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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Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.
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