David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man” is one of the most inspiring books in recent history. It has a very simple message underneath all of the dressing, but god damn, that is some delicious dressing. Deida’s use of descriptive language is so outstanding it’s almost over-the-top sometimes. Nonetheless, it is a powerful book for men and all those who love men.
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“Spending at least an hour giving your fullest gift, whatever that is for today, will allow you to go to sleep tonight knowing that you couldn’t have lived your day with more courage, creativity, and giving.”
“Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you can to give it today. Every moment waited is a moment wasted, and each wasted moment degrades your clarity of purpose.”
“The best way to deal with woman and world is to “fuck” both to smithereens, to ravish them with your love unsheathed, to give your true gifts despite the constant tussle of woman and world, to smelt your authentic gifts in this friction of opposition and surrender, to thrust love from the freedom of your deep being even as your body and mind die blissfully through a crucifixion of inevitable pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion, gain and loss. No gifts left ungiven. No limit to the depth of being. Only openness, freedom, and love as the legacy of your intercourse with woman and world.”
“If you are going to tryst with woman and world at all, better to go all the way and ravish them from the depths of your true core, blooming them open with the wide gifts of your unrelenting heart. Otherwise, if you sheepishly penetrate them to gratify your own needs, your woman and the world will feel your lack of dedication, depth, and truth. Rather than yielding in love to your loving they will distract you, suck your energy, and draw you into endless complications, so that your life and relationship become an almost constant search for release from constraint.”
“When a man sees a beautiful woman it is natural for him to feel energy in his body, which he usually interprets as sexual desire. Rather than dispersing this energy in mental fantasy, a man should learn to circulate his heightened energy. He should:
breate fully, circulating the energy fully throughout the body
treat his heightened energy as a gift which could heal and rejuvenate his body, and, through his service, heal the world
“Through these means, his desire is converted into fullness of heart. His lust is converted into service. His desire is converted not by denying sexual attraction, but by enjoying it fully, circulating it through his body (without allowing it to stagnate as mental fantasy), and returning it to the world, from his heart.”
“A superior man circulates the energy of arousal throughout his body, taking particular care not to let it stagnate in swollen fantasies or appendages.”
“If you are a man, you have probably found yourself inspired at some time or another by a woman. Such inspiration is usually temporary, because most men don’t know how to cultivate their relationship to the feminine. They tend to be inspired, and then spurt it out, through spasms of thought and ejaculation. They then seek inspiration again, through more women, or through other feminine sources, such as alcohol, drugs, or nature.”
“But if you can learn to discipline your habits of building up and releasing mental and sexual tension, you can continually cultivate and magnify your inspiration. You can wean yourself from the addictive cycles of sexuality and intoxication. You can make use of the native force of sexual desire, for your woman and for other women, and convert your tendency toward fantasy and lust into the force of inspiration.”
“Feel lust. Feel what it really is, in its totality. Your lust reveals your real desire.”
“Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you’re doing. Two hours of absorption in a good football telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You can either participate in (life), dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering.”
“The other means, besides austerity, for rediscovering your masculine core is through challenge.”
Superficial:
- mountain climbing
- ropes courses
- competitive sports
- “boot camp”
Deep (directly giving your gift in ways that have been blocked by your fear):
- public speaking (make a commitment to do it once a week for 3 months)
- writing the novel you’ve always wanted to (money game – pay $100 for each week you don’t finish a chapter)
- approaching women
“Challenge yourself by going out in the middle of the woods, by yourself, with only survival necessities. Fast from food and don’t sleep for as long as possible. Open yourself and wait. Do not cover your suffering. Do not quit before you fall through the hole of your fear and emerge with a vision of your true mission, the unique form of your living sacrifice.”
“A useful, more common form of this is spending 10 minutes every day in solitude, with no distractions. No fidgeting, no channel surfing, nothing. Just be, exactly as you are, not trying to change anything. Stay with your suffering, until you fall through it and intuit the groundless source of your life.”
“Fearlessness, or the capacity to transcend the fear of death for the sake of love, is a quintessential form of the ultimate masculine gift.”
“Dedicate yourself to incarnating love on this earth and do so as a free man, bound neither by outer convention nor inner cowardice.”
“Use aids to support your relaxation into, and creation from, your core source. Read books that remind you of who you are, in truth. Spend time with people who inspire you and reflect the source to you.”
“If you go with someone’s suggestion even when deep in your heart you feel that another decision is more wise, you are, in effect, saying, ‘I don’t trust my own wisdom.’“
Decision-making mindset: “My deepest wisdom is leading me to this decision. If I am wrong, I will learn from it, and my wisdom will have deepened. I’m willing to be wrong, and grow from it. I trust this process of acting from my deepest wisdom.”
“Most men hold back their true drive because of doubts, uncertainties, and fear so they diddle their woman and the world just enough to extract the pleasure and comfort they need to assuage their nagging sense of falsity and incompleteness.”
“Once you are willing to discover and embrace your truth, lean through your fears, and give everything you’ve got, you can press yourself into the world with such enduring life that the world opens and receives your deepest gifts.”
“The core of life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours.”
“The superior man is not seeking fulfillment through work and woman, because he is already full. For him, work and intimacy are opporitunities to give his gifts, and be vanished in the bliss of giving.”
“The test of your fullness in every moment is your capacity to die in true and loving surrender, knowing you’ve done everything you could do while alive to give your gift and know the truth of being.”
“Have you devoted yourself to finding out the deepest truth of your own existence? If, in this very moment, your tasks are not supporting your life in this way, you must drop them or change them so that they do. Otherwise, you are wasting your life.”
“Of course she knows how much success means to you. This is precisely why she will negate it. Not because she wants to hurt you. But because she wants to feel Shiva. She wants to feel your strength. She wants to feel that your happiness is not dependent on her response, nor on you achieving some little success. She wants to feel you are a superior man.”
Trust is based on character (integrity, motive, intent) and competence (capability, skills, track record).
