Ondrea Levine - The Healing I Took Birth For: Practicing the Art of Compassion

Advance Praise for The Healing I Took Birth For

In this exceptional book, Ondrea uses the depth of her mind and heart to heal her body and finds, in her suffering, compassion.

Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now and Still Here

Ondrea Levine's book reveals her courageous willingness to face the inner linings of her heart and the fearful caverns of her ego-mind. The honesty and transparency of her self-exploration is filled with a sensitivity, grace, gentleness, and wisdom that represents the One. Ondrea paves the way for the reader to follow her in an amazing commitment to a uniquely beautiful journey of the heart. This book is truly a love story of how two extraordinary people become one heart as they face the challenges of illness, pain, and deathnot seeing them as enemies, but as an exploration of their way to freedom.

Gerald. G. Jampolsky, M.D., founder of Attitudinal Healing; Diane V. Cirincione, Ph.D., CEO of Attitudinal Healing International

A beautiful story told in Ondrea's unmistakable voice. This is a deeply personal memoir, but it is also much more than thatit is enlightening and heart opening. Stephen and Ondrea are wonderful teachers with unusual insights and great gifts to bestow upon us.

Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness

I read this wise and loving journal avidly, with deep gratitude and delight. These intimate old Dharma friends share how broken hearts, nakedly encountering death and mortality, can catalyze open hearts and selfless service. Their grace-full co-meditations and very special brand of partner spirituality will edify and enrich us all.

Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within and Buddha Standard Time

Like any skilled translator of the timeless mystics, Stephen Levine captures the essence of his beloved's wild mind and luminous heart. Interweaving her own story with perennial teachings on mindfulness practice and devotional yogas, Ondrea Levine offers us passages of breathtaking beauty and uncompromising truth-telling, transcending convention and delivering a potent dose of dharma directly to the spiritual bloodstream. This book is an inoculation, a profound healing.

Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love

I have been a huge fan of Stephen and Ondrea Levine's work for many years. Their deep, healing and transformative teachings have had a profound impact on my life. They are authentic teachers of great wisdom and heart.

Marci Shimoff, New York Times best-selling author of Happy for No Reason

What a story! And how amazing it seemed as I followed the growth or maturation or... expansion of mind and spirit of someone already so obviously ready, 33 years ago, to hop aboard the same spiritual train where you were punching tickets.

Lee Quarnstrom, writer-practitioner-prankster

Rarely are we offered the privilege of sharing in the rigorously honest, humbly genuine, and deeply authentic inner pilgrimage of another human being. This is the story of how Ondrea was shaped by a symphony of forcesbroken open by people, events and winds that blew both harsh and gentle; punishing and uplifting; through darkness and light. Ondrea is a gift to us all. She shares remarkable clarity, insight and counsel for us to hold dear, to cherish, and to pass on to those souls brave enough to follow Love wherever it may take.

Wayne Muller, best-selling author of Sabbath and A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough

This book is an enheartening masterpiece. I have never felt my heart so close to the surface when reading a book. Ondrea Levine is living proof that grace is not something that pours down from the heavens; it is something that rises up from within us. Reading her story is a blessing not in disguise. This book is the perfect preparation for an enheartened life.

Jeff Brown, author of Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation

The steadfast union of Ondrea and Stephen that forged a path of healing for so many over the past decades now takes us on an unparalleled inner journey. Her story offers guidance for all those who have been wounded in life, and all those who strive to keep their hearts open. Life events alternating with poetic teachings catalyze both the mind and spirit. Wise, touching, tender and pure, her generosity and honesty will be a source of inspiration for all.

Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., originator of EMDR therapy, author of Getting Past Your Past

We have been patiently waiting for The Healing I Took Birth For. It is a deeply inspiring account of a life devoted to healing and compassionate service. This beautiful book is filled with grace, love, and humanity. Like a pearl diver, Ondrea dives deep in her own wounds to find the gift that can serve others.

Frank Ostaseski, founder of the Metta Institute

For decades, Ondrea and Stephen have offered themselves in selfless service to all beings who seek a way home within. Once again, they freely share the intimacies of their lives as dharmic teaching for us all. In telling her story, Ondrea validates and elucidates the path of transforming pain into peace. Ondrea's story is one of her awakening to the beauty of her True Nature. It is also a love story of how the two hearts of Ondrea and Stephen beat as One Heart.

Paula Whang-Ramos, M.Div., Ph.D., psychologist, minister at Center for Spiritual Enlightenment; Rich Ramos, R.N., M.S., Pediatric Oncology Nurse at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital

Absorbing these vital heart waves of one life. Congratulations on rotating the axis of the universe. Still quivering.

Gary Gach, Buddhist teacher, author, and translator

As a hospice physician who deals with illness and impending death, I have learned, from Ondrea, the difference between curing the body and healing the shared heart. Ondrea has touched the lives of so many people, and this book will extend her healing work from those who have experienced her compassionate presence to those who will get to know her through her open-hearted words. She is an inspiration to me and to countless others who have been graced by her teachings.

Fred Schwartz, M.D.

In The Healing I Took Birth For, Stephen not only autobiographically accounts Ondrea's life, her selfless service, bouts with illnesses, writings, workshops and more, but takes their teachings to a more intimate place than ever before. Through implementing the insights, wisdom, and knowledge shared in The Healing I Took Birth For, I can unequivocally say that I am a better human being because of it.

Chris Grosso, www.TheIndieSpiritualist.com

This revised edition first published in 2015 by Weiser Books, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

665 Third Street, Suite 400

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2012, 2015 by Ondrea Levine and Stephen Levine

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. A previous edition of this book was published in 2012 by Aperion Books, ISBN: 978-0982967881

ISBN: 978-1-57863-563-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover photograph Granadilla, watercolor on paper. Ehret, Georg Dionysius (1710-70) The Right Hon. Earl of Derby / Bridgeman Images

Interior by Frame25 Productions