Stephen Levine Quotes

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

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Death is just a change in lifestyles.

If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48)

Love is not what we become but who we already are

Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.

Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.

Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.

The saddest part about being human is not paying attention. Presence is the gift of life.

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.

Healing comes when we meet our wounded places with compassion.

Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)

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.

Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.

The only service you can do for anyone is to remind them of their true nature.

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.

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.

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)

That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)

Enlightenment is freedom, the thought of enlightenment is prison. The truth exists in the moment. If we´re anywhere else, seeking something outside of the moment, we´re in prison.

There is nothing to do but be.

Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.

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.

Death is perfectly safe. (55)

Always try to see yourself through God's eyes.

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.

[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)

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.

When we turn to our innate wisdom for the harmony of mind and gut, we heal the entrance to the heart as it seeks to beat in rhythm with the world.

How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)

What is it like after you die? Just like it was before you were born.

We've all been should upon enough.

Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.

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.

If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.

Loss is the absence of something we were once attached to. Grief is the rope burns left behind, when that which is held is pulled beyond our grasp.

When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.

God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.

I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)

The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.

If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.