Stephen Levine Quotes

We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain we, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. (43)

~ Stephen Levine

There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)

~ Stephen Levine

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

~ Stephen Levine

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)

~ Stephen Levine

Death is perfectly safe. (55)

~ Stephen Levine

I have seen many die, surrounded by loved ones, and their last words were ‘I love you.’ There were some who could no longer speak yet with their eyes and soft smile left behind that same healing message. I have been in rooms where those who were dying made it feel like sacred ground. (26)

~ Stephen Levine

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

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

~ Stephen Levine

I have seem even those who have long since abjured God die in grace. . . . Atheists don't use their drying to bargain for a better seat at the table, indeed they may not even believe supper is being served. They are not storing up 'merit.', They just smile because their heart is ripe. They are kind for no particular reason, they just love.

~ Stephen Levine

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

~ Stephen Levine

Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How ewe appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind. (34)

~ Stephen Levine

[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)

~ Stephen Levine

Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)

~ Stephen Levine

Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)

~ Stephen Levine

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)

~ Stephen Levine

Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one. . . . Let’s take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted. (132)

~ Stephen Levine

The mind is a useful tool but not a very good friend.

~ Stephen Levine

Often when we hear people speak about meditation, we hear about wisdom, we hear about knowledge. But what, actually, is the effect, what’s the use, of wisdom or knowledge? Understanding. When you understand mind, you’re not at its mercy. When you don’t understand, you’re lost in the midst of it.

~ Stephen Levine

Meditation is for many a foreign concept, somehow distant and foreboding, seemingly impossible to participate in. But another word for meditation is simply awareness. Meditation is awareness.

~ Stephen Levine

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

~ Stephen Levine

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

~ Stephen Levine

[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)

~ Stephen Levine

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

~ Stephen Levine

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

~ Stephen Levine