Quotes by Stephen Levine - Page 2

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definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay.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 / Poet
Definitions
Healing
Pain
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Appreciation
Cheating
Lying
Copy Quote
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.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Enlightenment
Moments
Prison
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
People
Safety
Spiritual
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Actors
Forgiving
Littles
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Cutting
Ideas
Mean
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Going Away
Pain
Praying
Copy Quote
People ask what must they become to be loving. The answer is ‘nothing.’ It is a process of letting go of what you thought you had become and allowing your true nature to float to the surface naturally.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Answers
Letting Go
People
Copy Quote
There is a delicate balance that we need to honor as we try to find meaning in any event or state of mind: Many people confuse finding meaning with finding a reason, putting our finger on something or someone for blame.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Inspirational
Honor
People
Copy Quote
[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 / Poet
Let It Go
Self
Suffering Of Others
Copy Quote
Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way -- in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Letting Go
Mean
Suffering
Copy Quote
Buddha nature, is like the sun which is always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of I am.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Clouds
Light
Shining
Copy Quote
Non-attachment is not the elimination of desire. It is the spaciousness to allow any quality of mind, any thought or feeling, to arise without closing around it, without eliminating the pure witness of being. It is an active receptivity to life.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Attachment
Feelings
Mind
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Motivational
Healing
Pain
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Different
Want
World
Copy Quote
The demons aren't the noise. They are our aversion to the noise...when you can accept discomfort, doing so allows a balance of mind. That surrender, that letting go of wanting anything to be other than it is right in the moment, is what frees us from hell.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Balance
Letting Go
Mind
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Mind
Positive Thinking
Roots
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Believe
Heart
Suffering
Copy Quote
In all serious disease states we find a concomitant low oxygen state... Low oxygen in the body tissues is a sure indicator for disease...Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen in the tissues, is the fundamental cause for all degenerative disease. Oxygen is the source of life to all cells.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Breathing
Cells
Oxygen
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Fear
Desire
Strong
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Eye
Healing
Love You
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Compassion
Gratitude
Pain
Copy Quote
When your fear touches someone's pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion. To train in compassion, then, is to know all beings are the same and suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Inspirational
Compassion
Pain
Copy Quote
Letting the last breath come. Letting the last breath go. Dissolving, dissolving into vast space, the light body released from its heavier form. A sense of connectedness with all that is, all sense of separation dissolved in the vastness of being. Each breath melting into space as though it were the last.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Space
Light
Rest In Peace
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Essence
Pain
Suffering
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Atheist
Believe
Heart
Copy Quote
The process of growth is, it seems, the art of falling down. Growth is measured by the gentleness and awareness with which we once again pick ourselves up, the lightness with which we dust ourselves off, the openness with which we continue and take the next unknown step, beyond our edge, beyond our holding, into the remarkable mystery of being.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Art
Dust
Fall
Copy Quote
...healing comes not from being loving but from being itself. It is not a case of being clear but of clear being. This healing is not about anything else but being itself. Nothing separate, no edges, nothing to limit healing. Entering, in moments, the realm of pure being, the gateless gate swings open- beyond life and death, our original face shines back at us.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Healing
Loving Life
Swings
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Joy
Mindfulness
Ongoing
Copy Quote
It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term the Beloved. The experience of this enormity we falteringly label divine is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being-- our greatest joy-- but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.
Stephen Levine / Poet
Compassion
Healing
Names
Copy Quote
Why do so many of us not give ourselves permission to be alive until we are absolutely assured that we will die? ...If we are not in [this present millisecond of life and conscious experience], we are not alive; we are merely thinking our lives. Yet we have seen so many die, looking back over their shoulders at their lives, shaking their heads and muttering in bewilderment, "What was that all about?"
Stephen Levine / Poet
Life
Giving
Thinking
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Attitude
Believe
Good Life
Copy Quote
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 / Poet
Afterlife
Believe
Ideas
Copy Quote
There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for.
Stephen Levine / Poet
God
Baby
Flower
Copy Quote

Related Poet Authors

William Blake
Poet
Monday, Nov 28, 1757
Sunday, Aug 12, 1827
Walt Whitman
Poet
Monday, May 31, 1819
Saturday, Mar 26, 1892
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1772
Friday, Jul 25, 1834
Robert Frost
Poet
Thursday, Mar 26, 1874
Tuesday, Jan 29, 1963
Lucy Larcom
Poet
Friday, Mar 05, 1824
Monday, Apr 17, 1893
Khalil Gibran
Poet
Saturday, Jan 06, 1883
Friday, Apr 10, 1931
Zoketsu Norman Fischer
Poet
Zoe Whittall
Poet
Monday, Feb 16, 1976
Zbigniew Herbert
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 29, 1924
Tuesday, Jul 28, 1998
Yvor Winters
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 17, 1900
Thursday, Jan 25, 1968
Yvonne Zipter
Poet
Yusef Komunyakaa
Poet
Tuesday, Apr 29, 1947
Yunus Emre
Poet
Yosa Buson
Poet

Thursday, Dec 25, 1783
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Poet
Monday, Jul 18, 1932
Saturday, Apr 01, 2017

View All Poet Quotes

Top Authors

George Orwell
Novelist
Thursday, Jun 25, 1903
Saturday, Jan 21, 1950
Theodore Roosevelt
26Th U.s. President
Wednesday, Oct 27, 1858
Monday, Jan 06, 1919
Muhammad Ali
Professional Boxer
Saturday, Jan 17, 1942
Friday, Jun 03, 2016
Lucy Larcom
Poet
Friday, Mar 05, 1824
Monday, Apr 17, 1893
Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Jean De La Bruyere
Wednesday, Aug 16, 1645
Thursday, May 10, 1696
Benjamin Franklin
Founding Father Of The United States
Sunday, Jan 17, 1706
Saturday, Apr 17, 1790
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
Jordan Peterson
Psychologist
Soren Kierkegaard
Philosopher
Wednesday, May 05, 1813
Sunday, Nov 11, 1855
Dalai Lama
Saturday, Jul 06, 1935
Rodney Dangerfield
Comedian
Tuesday, Nov 22, 1921
Tuesday, Oct 05, 2004
Thomas Sowell
Economist
Monday, Jun 30, 1930
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Zig Ziglar
Author
Saturday, Nov 06, 1926
Wednesday, Nov 28, 2012

View All Authors

Stephen Levine Quotes - Page 2

App & Tools

Related Poet Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Poet Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page