A Year to Live

By: Stephen Levine

Narrated by: Stephen Levine

Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

If you only had a year to live, what would you do? In his work with the dying, author Stephen Levine observed the radical changes people can make in the face of death - how they heal relationships, open up to love, act on plans put off for years, even quit dead-end jobs. Levine challenged himself to live an entire year as if it were his last - and in this revealing narrative he shares what he learned. Through a series of month-by-month practices anyone can do, and including special meditations and exercises, A Year to Live teaches a way to live every day of your life with vivid fullness.

©1997 Stephen Levine (P)1997 Stephen Levine

Love the Concept

I feel like I understand now...the meaning of this lifetime is simply to prepare to die. It begins when it ends.

Packed full of the wisdom that comes from being present with much death.

I have not been with many dying people. The ones that have been with, didn’t go well, they were filled with terror in their eyes and a feeling of annihilation. Seeing that has left me with a deep fear of those last moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years.

Levine claims that it is our life that we fear as much as it is our death. That in the lack of grieving our hearts harden and we are cut off from life and we project that what comes after bears that same feeling towards us.

I am surprised I had not heard of Levine sooner.

Quiet Listen

This a meditation on life. I found it most rewarding to listen while resting. I look forward to listening again as it it rich and I am certain I will more each time.

Loved the content...not the narrative

I very much enjoyed this book. I listened to it as I turned 60 years old and got a lot out of the content of dying and living life in a different way

However...I truly wish someone else had read the book. I’m sorry, Mr Levine, but your creepy, Grim Reaper voice was not enjoyable at all. Please have someone else read your books from now on!!

Authors should almost never...

Record their own books! He read the entire book as if he was reading poetry and unfortunately it was very distracting!!!!!! I didn’t get much direction from listening because of the delivery from the author but I couldn’t listen again for anything! Too bad....

A must read for anyone who will die

We will all die. The sooner we embrace that fact, the sooner we will live our lives more fully. This book will gently prepare you for that process.

Poetic

Essentially, this book reads as a multi-part poem. Depending on your sensibility, this could be a positive or a negative. It's less of a how-to and more of a work of contemplative art. Whether you enjoy Stephen Levine's writing style, the book will for sure get you thinking about how you approach your life, how you define success, and your relationship to the concept of control.

It’s all Grace

Stephen and Ondrea Levine are magical. Everything they write is full of wisdom, insight, mercy, and soft sweet love. By investigating death, we come alive!

Thought provoking and useful

Stephen Levine has been a leading voice in the hospice movement and draws on his wealth of experience with death and dying to share his insights in this book. In a culture that shuns talk and exploration into death and how it relates to life, it was refreshing to hear this man speaking sincerely and passionately about how contemplation of death can bring more meaning and focus to life. At first the idea of "pretending" to have only one year to live seemed silly and not much use, but he has a way of explaining his thoughts and giving exercises which have helped to open new areas in my life.
Though his reading at first seems slow and deep, it had a way of drawing me in and opening me to his ideas.
I recommend this book to anyone who feels like their spiritual life could use a jump start. This is a good practice.

Learn to die before you know how to live.

This is a great study in beginning a year-long practice of what death can be and how death quickly revitalizes what is important to life.

A great listen. But something that needs to be practiced, not just heard.