Stephen Levine (author) Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

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
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.

Stephen Levine
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.

Stephen Levine
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
How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die?

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.

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

Stephen Levine
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
Meditation isn't to disappear into the light. Meditation is to see all of what we are.

Stephen Levine
It doesn't matter how long you forget, only how soon you remember!

Stephen Levine
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.

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

Stephen Levine
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.

Stephen Levine
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.

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.

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.

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

Stephen Levine
That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom.

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

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.

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

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.

Stephen Levine
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