Stephen Levine, teacher, visionary and healer, died, with family around him, in his home in New Mexico, U.S.A, on 17th January, 2016.
My first audio dharma teaching from any teacher was a set of duplicated cassette tapes, forty years ago, with Stephen Levine giving a workshop. There was no digital, then. It was Stephen’s voice on tapes, supporting people who had lost loved ones; people who were living with a terminal diagnoses; people who were participating in those workshops to support others who had such a diagnoses; and many others whose hearts were breaking.
His teachings penetrated my armour. He brought me to tears; brought me home to my own battered heart. There was no doubt in my mind about his compassion and his courage. His solicitous voice is still in my memory.
In those workshops he was supporting people to stay for their pain – physical, mental, emotional – to stay for what is. He encouraged us all to have faith in the more that we are, to have faith in what holds us, even as we hold others in the human pains of sickness, mental affliction, old age and death.
I was one of those desperately in need of healing, then, too; and Stephen’s voice on those tapes encouraged me, too, though I was oceans away from where he lived and taught. Even the silent presence of his wife Ondrea in those workshops was a great support.
Of course, over the years thereafter I used his meditations (published in several books) for my own contemplation, and to guide others in theirs. Also, I credit the wisdom which I manage to bring to my marriage to the fact that I read his Embracing the Beloved. I believe it contributed to finally being able to ‘stay’ and learn the lessons which marriage can teach; particularly, to embrace the dissolution of narcissism.
Decades later I still regularly “soften the belly.” There’s hardly a month go by, without I encourage another with Stephen’s phrase, “a soft belly.” I still touch “a heart big enough to hold it all,” in the ways he taught. Deep bows to someone whom I never met personally, but I must count as important among my teachers. Deep bows, too, to his beloved partner in the work Ondrea.
Then, in 1999, I began using his book A Year to Live. The book gave guidelines for a year-long practice of bringing death into our lives – a facing up to the fact; a taking it to heart; and, a getting ready for the inevitable.
I did my first ‘Year to Live’ throughout 1999. I ‘died’ as the year 2000 rang in. Allowing for a ‘’year off’ here and there (as if one could have a year off from death!) I’ve practiced it for at least ten of the last sixteen years.
Thank you Stephen. May all the Stephen elements in the universe, and those elements in all of us, flourish in wisdom and love.
This project is an edited version of a year’s reflections inspired by the practice of A Year to Live, and inspired by the Buddha’s teaching of ‘the deathless.’