Excepts from 'A Year To Live' by Stephen Levine
... To have the whole year to examine one's life ... is most unique in the human experience. And it gives the person the power to heal which remains unloved and unloving...
... Pity arises from meeting pain with fear. Compassion comes when you meet it with love... When we begin to respond to discomfort instead of reacting to it, an enormous change occurs. We begin to experience it not as just "our" pain but as "the" pain...
... It is said that we must love ourselves before we can love anyone else, and this is true. But the opposite is equally true. We must love others before we can love ourselves. Seeing the universality of our shared condition offers a broader path of healing on which to continue...
... Open yourself to discomfort. Meet it with mercy, not fear. Recognise that when our pain most calls for our embrace, we are often the least present. Soften, enter, and explore, and make continue softening to make room for your life...
... Take each breath as though it might be your last. Watch your life pass before your eyes. Did you notice something left undone? Do it the next clear day. Practice living...
... You have to remember only one life, one death - this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we can catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment!
... 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...
... Once again the teaching is clear, prepare now for death so as to intensify and fulfil your life. Don't imagine your endorphins are going to do it for you 'when the time comes'. When the time actually comes, what is found then will be what is found now...
... Last words are as spontaneous as the life that produces them. If we speak now with care and consideration, if we use our words now to express our heart, that is the voice that will speak for us as our awareness gathers to depart...
... We die the way we live...
... Do not fear fear, soften that compulsive resistance. Fear of fear is ignorance of fear...
... What we describe as "our life" is not the sum total of what has passed through our hands but what has passed through our minds. Our life isn't a recollection of people and places, it is the continuum of the ever-changing feeling they engender...
... Even our past has a life of its own. It isn't only what you've touched, it's what you have felt of what you've touched...
... We need not die defeated by death, feeling a failure, disappointed, constipated with remorse. It is possible to die at peace, mostly without pain, still learning, filled with gratitude...
... Dying is the domain of the body. Death is the domain of the heart. Keep dying in its place - the body. Don't let it affect death. Dying is to death as birth is to life. Each is preceded by what seemed the only possible reality, and each is followed by the next remarkable scenario...
... Dying, like birth, is begun by the body and completed by the heart...
... Pity arises from meeting pain with fear. Compassion comes when you meet it with love... When we begin to respond to discomfort instead of reacting to it, an enormous change occurs. We begin to experience it not as just "our" pain but as "the" pain...
... It is said that we must love ourselves before we can love anyone else, and this is true. But the opposite is equally true. We must love others before we can love ourselves. Seeing the universality of our shared condition offers a broader path of healing on which to continue...
... Open yourself to discomfort. Meet it with mercy, not fear. Recognise that when our pain most calls for our embrace, we are often the least present. Soften, enter, and explore, and make continue softening to make room for your life...
... Take each breath as though it might be your last. Watch your life pass before your eyes. Did you notice something left undone? Do it the next clear day. Practice living...
... You have to remember only one life, one death - this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we can catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment!
... 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...
... Once again the teaching is clear, prepare now for death so as to intensify and fulfil your life. Don't imagine your endorphins are going to do it for you 'when the time comes'. When the time actually comes, what is found then will be what is found now...
... Last words are as spontaneous as the life that produces them. If we speak now with care and consideration, if we use our words now to express our heart, that is the voice that will speak for us as our awareness gathers to depart...
... We die the way we live...
... Do not fear fear, soften that compulsive resistance. Fear of fear is ignorance of fear...
... What we describe as "our life" is not the sum total of what has passed through our hands but what has passed through our minds. Our life isn't a recollection of people and places, it is the continuum of the ever-changing feeling they engender...
... Even our past has a life of its own. It isn't only what you've touched, it's what you have felt of what you've touched...
... We need not die defeated by death, feeling a failure, disappointed, constipated with remorse. It is possible to die at peace, mostly without pain, still learning, filled with gratitude...
... Dying is the domain of the body. Death is the domain of the heart. Keep dying in its place - the body. Don't let it affect death. Dying is to death as birth is to life. Each is preceded by what seemed the only possible reality, and each is followed by the next remarkable scenario...
... Dying, like birth, is begun by the body and completed by the heart...
posted by KAT at
Friday, November 04, 2005
