Showing posts with label Stephen and Ondrea Levine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen and Ondrea Levine. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

half life








We walk through half of our life
as if it were a fever dream

barely touching the ground

our eyes half open
our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are 
we watch the ghost of us drift 
from room to room
through friends and lovers
never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean
or meaning half we say
we dream ourselves
from birth to birth
seeking the true self.

Until the fever breaks
and the heart can not abide
a moment longer
as the rest of us awakens,
summoned from the dream,
not half caring for anything but love.




~ Stephen Levine
from Breaking the Drought
art by Robert Frank Hunter


Friday, February 12, 2021

already broken

 
 
 

 
 

Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master,
 "In this world where everything changes, 
where nothing remains the same,
 where loss and grief are inherent in our very coming into existence,
 how can there be any happiness?
 How can we find security when we see that
 we can't count on anything being the way we want it to be?"
 
 The teacher, looking compassionately at this fellow,
 held up a drinking glass which had been given to him earlier in the morning and said, 
"You see this goblet? 
For me, this glass is already broken.
 I enjoy it, I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably,
 sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns.
 If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. 
But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over
 or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, 
I say, 'Of course.' 
But when I understand this glass is already broken,
 every moment with it is precious.
 Every moment is just as it is and nothing need be otherwise."


When we recognize that, just as that glass, 
our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, 
then life becomes precious and we open to it just as it is, 
in the moment it is occurring.
 When we understand that all our loved ones are already dead -
 our children, our mates, our friends - how precious they become.
 How little fear can interpose, how little doubt can estrange us.
 When you live your life as though you're already dead, 
life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime,
 a universe unto itself.

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change,
 our heart opens, our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings.
 We watch all life in transit and what matters becomes instantly apparent:
 The transmission of love, the letting go of obstacles to understanding, 
the relinquishment of our grasping, our hiding from ourselves. 
Seeing the mercilessness of our self-strangulation,
 we begin to come gently into the light we share with all beings. 
Taking each teaching, each loss, each gain, each fear, each joy,
 as it arises and experiencing it fully, life becomes workable...

If our only spiritual practice were to live as though we were already dead, 
relating to all we meet, to all we do, as though it were our final moments in the world,
 what time would there be for old games or falsehoods or posturing? 
If we lived our life as though we were already dead, 
as though our children were already dead, 
how much time would there be for self-protection 
and the re-creation of ancient mirages?
 Only love would be appropriate, only the truth.





Stephen and Ondrea Levine
Excerpt: Who Dies?
with thanks to being silently drawn
 
 
 

Saturday, July 27, 2019

millennium blessing





There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.

And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.




~ Stephen Levine
from Breaking the Drought, Visions of Grace



Tuesday, May 25, 2010

"the mind" instead of "my mind"



.
.
Imagine if for the next twenty-four hours you had to wear a cap 
that amplified your thoughts so that everyone 
within a hundred yards of you could hear 
every thought that passed through your head. 
.
Imagine if the mind were broadcast so that 
all about you could overhear your thoughts and fantasies,
 your dreams and fears. 
.
How embarrassed or fearful would you be to go outside? 
.
How long would you let your fear of the mind continue to isolate you from the hearts of others?
.
 And though this experiment sounds like one which few might care to participate in, 
imagine how freeing it would be at last to have nothing to hide.
 And how miraculous it would be to see that all others' minds too 
were filled with the same confusion and fantasies,
 the same insecurity and doubt.
.
 How long would it take the judgmental mind to begin to release its grasp,
 to see through the illusion of separateness,
 to recognize with some humor the craziness of all beings' minds,
 the craziness of mind itself?
.
~ Stephen and Ondrea Levine
.
Who Dies?

 .
reblogged from: http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com/
.