Explore Quotes by Stephen Levine

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Healing comes when we meet our wounded places with compassion.

Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.

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.

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.

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.

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Letting the last breath come. _x000D__x000D_Letting the last breath go. _x000D__x000D_Dissolving, dissolving into vast space, _x000D__x000D_the light body released from its heavier form. _x000D__x000D_A sense of connectedness with all that is, _x000D__x000D_all sense of separation dissolved _x000D__x000D_in the vastness of being. _x000D__x000D_Each breath melting into space _x000D__x000D_as though it were the last.