Stephen Levine is a poet and teacher of guided meditation healing techniques. He and his wife and spiritual partner, Ondrea, have counseled the dying and their loved ones for more than 30 years. Stephen Levine's bestselling books Healing into Life and Death:A Gradual Awakening; and A Year to Live are considered classics in the field of conscious living and dying. He is also the coauthor, with Ondrea, of the acclaimed To Love and Be Loved; and Who Dies?

The Levine's work is said to stretch from the most painful experiences of the human spectrum to the furthest point on the human horizon, from hell to heaven, from pain to ease, from our ongoing sense of loss to the legacy of our unending interconnectedness. Their experiential Conscious Living / Conscious Dying workshops are a meditative investigation of what it means to be fully alive, cultivating the qualities which heal the mind and heart, exploring the nature of what it is that dies. (excerpt from SoundsTrue.com)

Stephen Levine talks about the process of developing his poetry and the story behind it.

Part 1

Here is an excerpt from Stephen Levine's poetry book Breaking the Drought: Visions of Grace:

Not enemies

"We are not enemies
though parents told us so

We are not enemies
though they taught us so at school

We are not enemies
just because the pulpit insists

We are not enemies
though strangers toss epithets

We are not enemies
though even love goes sour

We are not enemies
just because we can't contain our pain

We are not enemies
though we meet short of our sameness,
the best of each of us lives in the other.

If we can forgive ourselves
we can forgive anyone."