David Deida - The way of the superior man (1997)

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The masculine grows by challenge, but the feminine grows by praise. A man must be unabashed and expressed in his appreciation for his woman. Praise her freely.

David Deida
Thank God for such women, who make no apologies for their oceanic depth and riptides of emotion.

David Deida
Make your own decision, based on your deepest intuitive wisdom and knowledge. You may make the right decision or the wrong one, but whatever happens, it is your best shot, and you will strengthen your capacity for future action.

David Deida
Without a conscious life-purpose a man is totally lost, drifting, adapting to events rather than creating events. Without knowing his life-purpose a man lives a weakend, impotent existence, perhaps even becoming even sexually impotent or prone to mechanical and disinterested sex.

David Deida
Stop waiting. Feel everything. Love achingly. Give impeccably. Let go.

David Deida
The superior man is not seeking fulfillment through work and woman, because he is already full. For him, work and intimacy are opportunities to give his gifts, and to be vanished in the bliss of giving.

David Deida
Your close men friends should be willing to challenge your mediocrity by suggesting a concrete action you can perform that will pop you out of your rut, one way or the other. And you must be willing to offer them your brutal honesty, in the same way, if you are all to grow.

David Deida
Spend at least an hour today giving your fullest gift, whatever that is for today, so that when you go to sleep at night you know you couldn't have lived your day with more courage, creativity, and giving.

David Deida
In any given moment, a man's growth is optimized if he leans just beyond his edge, his capacity, his fear. He should not be too lazy, happily stagnating in the zone of security and comfort. Nor should he push far beyond his edge, stressing himself unnecessarily, unable to metabolize his experience. He should lean just slightly beyond the edge of fear and discomfort. Constantly. In everything he does.

David Deida
You have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openess which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.

David Deida
You are not only a man, you are a superior man: a man who does his best to live as love in the world and in his intimacy, a man whose heart remains open and whose truth remains strong...

David Deida
Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer his full, undivided presence.

David Deida
The way a man penetrates the world should be the same way he penetrates his woman: not merely for personal gain or pleasure, but to magnify love, openness, and depth.

David Deida
Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man's true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place.

David Deida
If your purpose is to liberate yourself and others into love and freedom, then you should do whatever magnifies the love and freedom in your life and in the lives of whom your actions affect.

David Deida
Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease, or women. 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.

David Deida
Praise is literal food for feminine qualities. If you want your woman to grow in her radiance health, happiness, love, beauty, power and depth, praise these qualities. Praise them daily. A number of times.

David Deida
Live with your lips pressed against your fears, kissing your fears, neither pulling back nor aggressively violating them.

David Deida
A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn't aware of his fear.

David Deida
You can ravish your woman so deeply that her surrender breaks your heart into light.

David Deida