Stephen Levine Quotes

“Death is perfectly safe.”

“Don’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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Healing comes when we meet our wounded places with compassion.”

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

“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.”

“How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die?”

“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.”

“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definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay.”

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

“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?”

“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.”

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

“Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Relate to the fear, not just from it.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”