A Year to Live Quotes

“fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Each day become more fully alive. Practice noting gently and nonjudgmentally throughout the day. Add mindfulness practice to soft-belly opening work: fifteen minutes soft-belly and twenty minutes watching the breath, noting the activities of the mind. 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.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“remember that what will die in a year’s time is not our essential being but our ability to interact physically with those we love and cherish. You”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“The body takes about seven years to replace all its cells. As we age original factory parts get harder to come by. We accept seconds and rebuilds. Some are even transplanted with recycled parts. We get less miles to the gallon, and eventually, after several towings, we must abandon the body by the side of the road. From there we must go the rest of the way alone with just our heart for guidance.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Note which states of mind accompany each moment of like and disliking. When we recall the statement, “Physician, heal thyself,” this is where the healing begins. It is particularly important to notice that this constant liking and disliking that leaves us exhausted at the end of the day. It is from this mechanical response / reaction that our actions and reactions arises.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“The mind is in a constant state of flux. No thought, no feeling, no sensation lasts for more than an instant before it is transformed into the next state, next thought, the next sensation. Note those moments... As they pass through, note such states as confidence, bewilderment, effort, trust, distrust, pleasure, discomfort, boredom, devotion, inquiry, pride, anger, desire, etc.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“...the "third eye"... "our sacred Cyclops"... our "good" eye, the only one that can see beyond our conditioned ways of seeing. It is, of course, a knowing eye, not a seeing one. It is the eye through which we look within to experience the universe unfolding. It is the single eye that concentrates duality into the One: the eye of insight, the locus of the point of remembrance on the ascent to death, as well as the point of forgetfulness on the descent into birth.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Nothing prepares us so completely for death as entering those aspects of our lives that remain unlived.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“How many states of mind in five minutes, in five hours, in five days, in five lifetimes? How often has our life passed unnoticed? How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die?”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“As we reflect on the life/death riddle we may be surprised at how many options it inspires. Rather than our freedom being curtailed by having just a year left, we uncover something quite unsuspected and satisfying. We discover how much more room we have for life and how many possibilities there are to be fully alive.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Few I have met have actually had a ‘last year.’ Most had only a ‘last’ month or two, a few weeks or days, or a few seconds. To have a whole year to examine one’s life consciously in the context of approaching death is almost unique in the human experience. And it gives a person the power to heal that which remains unloved and unloving. But why wait for a terminal diagnosis before opening to the potential grace and wonder of this living moment. No one can afford to put this work off any longer, because almost no one knows the day on which the last year begins.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“love is the only gift worth giving.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Preparing for death is one of the most profoundly healing acts of a lifetime. For”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“As Nisargadatta said, ’The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it.” Often”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“There have been so few moments when life was all it was cracked up to be. So much that might have been different had the heart not been obstructed by fear.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Having written extensively about the practice of mindfulness in A Gradual Awakening I suggest that you refine your practice with this book as well as Jack Kornfield’s excellent A Path with Heart. We”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“our birth before we die, becoming truly whole rather than just appearing to “have it together”—is more difficult.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“As we begin to see where we have been absent from life, increasing possibilities audition for our approval.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Because we never know whether our next breath may be our last, being prepared for the immediate unknown becomes as practical as applying for a passport while still uncertain of our destination or time of departure.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Pity arises from meeting pain with fear. Compassion comes when you meet it with love.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“For all of us there is an approach to the seemingly unapproachable. This is the life-affirming work of learning to stay present even under difficult circumstances, to embrace mental, physical, and spiritual pain using techniques suitable for each particular level of discomfort.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last