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.
Stephen LevineNothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent.
Stephen LevineWhen your fear touches someoneโs pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someoneโs pain, it become compassion.
Stephen LevineWhy do so many of us not give ourselves permission to be alive until we are absolutely assured that we will die? ...If we are not in [this present millisecond of life and conscious experience], we are not alive; we are merely thinking our lives. Yet we have seen so many die, looking back over their shoulders at their lives, shaking their heads and muttering in bewilderment, "What was that all about?"
Stephen Levine