A Year to Live - by Stephen Levine (Paperback)

About the Book

This book provides a year-long program of practical strategies and guided meditations to help with the work of entering into a new relationship with both life and death.

Book Synopsis

"Stephen Levine has worked creatively to help thousands of people approach their own deaths with equanimity, truth, and an open heart. I can think of no one better qualified to help us enrich our lives through embracing the mystery of death."--Ram Dass

"A Year to Live is a poetic and deeply passionate exploration into what creates human suffering. It is also a lyrical and generous-spirited guide to life."--San Francisco Examiner

In A Year to Live, Stephen Levine, author of the perennial bestseller Who Dies?, teaches us how to live each moment, each hour, each day mindfully--as if it were all that was left. On his deathbed, Socrates exhorted his followers to practice dying as the highest form of wisdom. Levine decided to live this way himself for a whole year, and now he shares with us how such immediacy radically changes our view of the world and forces us to examine our priorities.

Most of us go to extraordinary lengths to ignore, laugh off, or deny our grief over the fact that we are going to die, but preparing for death is one of the most rational and rewarding acts of a lifetime. It is an exercise that gives us the opportunity to deal with unfinished business and enter into a new and vibrant relationship with life. Levine provides us with a year-long program of intensely practical strategies and powerful guided meditations to help with this work, so that whenever the ultimate moment does arrive for each of us, we will not feel that it has come too soon.

Review Quotes

"Stephen's work restores the heart and clears the mind--it offers an opening which even death cannot close."--Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Stephen cradles your heart with tenderness and places the lamp of truth in your hand. A wise and beautiful gift to all who would live well."--Jack Kornfield

"For each of us, Stephen Levine's book, with its subtle beauty and honesty, offers wise and grounded lessons. For our society, obsessed with a wide-ranging struggle against mortality, this remarkable book steers us toward an earthiness and humility necessary for a full life. Few books are worthy to be lifelong companions--this is one of them."--Thomas Moore

"Stephen Levine offers us a profound guide for savoring life."--Daniel Goleman

"Stephen Levine has written what may be the ultimate how-to book."--NAPRA Review

About the Author

Stephen Levine (1937-2016) was an American poet and teacher of guided meditation and healing techniques. His bestselling books in the United States and Europe (including Healing into Life and Death and A Gradual Awakening) are considered groundbreaking in their field. He also collaborated with his wife and spiritual partner, Ondrea, on a number of influential works such as Who Dies? and Embracing the Beloved.