Stephen Levine (1937 to 2016) was an American poet and teacher of meditation who, with his wife Ondrea, spent decades working with people who were dying or grieving, and wrote some of the best-known modern books on conscious dying, among them A Year to Live (1997). He taught that we can practise dying whilst we are alive, by opening to what we fear and letting go, and that facing death changes how we live. Therapeutic Shamanism shares the conviction that preparing for death is part of living fully, and grounds it in shamanic practice.
Who was Stephen Levine? #
An American poet, editor and meditation teacher. He was born in Albany, New York, on 17 July 1937.1 In the 1960s he ran a small press in San Francisco and edited the countercultural San Francisco Oracle.2 His meditation practice was rooted mainly in Theravada Buddhism and vipassana, and he was a friend of Ram Dass, and like him a student of the Indian teacher Neem Karoli Baba.3
In the mid-1970s Levine studied with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist known for her work with the dying and on grief.3 In the late 1970s he and Ondrea Levine ran the Hanuman Foundation Dying Project, later based in New Mexico.4 He died at home in New Mexico on 17 January 2016, aged seventy-eight, after a long illness.1
What did he write? #
Poetry first, and later the books on dying, grief and healing for which he is remembered. They include A Gradual Awakening (1979), Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying (1982, with Ondrea Levine), Meetings at the Edge: Dialogues with the Grieving and the Dying, the Healing and the Healed (1984), Healing into Life and Death (1987), Embracing the Beloved (1995, with Ondrea Levine), A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last (1997), Turning Toward the Mystery (2002) and Unattended Sorrow (2005).5
What did he teach about dying? #
That dying can be met consciously, and that the way to prepare for it is to practise now. The title Who Dies? poses the question his work keeps returning to, of what in us actually dies. Levine taught that much of our fear is of the idea of death, of the unknown, more than of death itself, and that we can work with that fear by softening around pain and discomfort instead of bracing against it, and by letting go of what we cling to.6
He also saw dying as a possible healing, a letting go of separation, and wrote of grief as part of daily life, a mourning for all that we leave behind as life moves on.6
What is A Year to Live? #
A book, and an experiment. Levine set out to live for a year as if it were his last, and A Year to Live describes that year and offers others the same practice.7 The idea is to live more consciously and fully by treating death as near.
How does Levine’s work relate to Therapeutic Shamanism? #
They meet in the idea that preparing for death is part of living well. In Therapeutic Shamanism, preparing for death is one of the good reasons for practising shamanism, and facing death squarely “helps us to make the most of our precious time here and not waste it.”8 Both also see dying as a letting go of the familiar self, and both treat awareness as the key. In this approach, which part of us we go with at death depends on where we have habitually put our awareness, and practices such as meditation and psychotherapy help us step back from our middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer stories.9
The ground they stand on is different. Levine’s practice comes mainly from Buddhist meditation. Therapeutic Shamanism’s comes from the shamanic journey, above all the transformation practicesTransformation practices. The family of journey-practices in which the self is deliberately taken apart, reduced to something formless, and reformed: burials, burnings, dismemberments, sky burials, dissolvings, cocoonings, poisonings, shapeshifting. A mini death-and-rebirth: cleansing, loosening of identity, and preparation for the greatest transformation of all. Read the full answer, “a mini ‘death’ and rebirth” repeated over and over, and from a map of the self in which Soul belongs to the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and Spirit to the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer.8 See Why do shamans say shamanism is preparation for death, and how does how we live shape how we die?
