Quotes from Stephen Levine

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

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?

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

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

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.

Always try to see yourself through God's eyes.

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

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

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

Death is just a change in lifestyles.

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

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

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.

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.

Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.

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

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.

Aging teaches us to follow our life force inward. It is an object lesson in how awareness is gradually drawn towards the center...

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

The basis of the practice is to directly participate in each moment as it occurs with as much awareness and understanding as possible.

the secret of chanting is in the listening, not the voicing, and a circuit is completed between mind and heart that opens intuition and gently increases the volume of the still small voice within.

Approach illness as an experiment in staying present, in opening your heart in hell. Discuss how we fear our hidden pain even more than death, and how noting and mindfulness brings that pain to the surface where it can be healed.

A drop of pond water under the microscope just like in science class but now your are the pond & the microscope is mindfulness