The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire - by David Deida

If you want real passion, you need a ravisher and a ravishee; otherwise, you just have two buddies who decide to rub genitals in bed.

Stop Hoping for a Completion of Anything in Life

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.

Your Purpose Must Come Before Your Relationship

The next time you notice yourself "giving in" to your woman, postponing your mission and denying your true purpose in order to spend time with her, stop. Tell your woman that you love her, but you cannot deny your heart's purpose. Tell her that you will spend 30 minutes (or some specific time) with her in absolute attention and total presence, but then you must return to carry on your mission.

Lean Just Beyond Your Edge

In any given moment, a man's growth is optimized if he leans just beyond his edge, his capacity, his fear. Your fear is the sharpest definition of your self. You should know it. You should feel it virtually constantly. Fear needs to become your friend, so that you are no longer uncomfortable with it.

Enjoy Your Friends' Criticism

About once a week, you should sit down with your closest men friends and discuss what you are doing in your life and what you are afraid of doing. The conversation should be short and simple. You should state where you are at. Then, your friends should give you a behavioral experiment, something you can do that will reveal something to you, or grant more freedom in your life.

If You Don't Know Your Purpose, Discover It, Now

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 weakened, impotent existence.

Be Willing To Change Everything in Your Life

A man must be prepared to give 100% to his purpose, fulfill his karma or dissolve it, and then let go of that specific form of living. He must be capable of not knowing what to do with his life, entering a period of unknowingness and waiting for a vision or a new form of purpose to emerge. These cycles of strong specific action followed by periods of not knowing what the hell is going on are natural for a man who is shedding layers of karma in his relaxation into truth.

Don't Get Lost in Tasks and Duties

Whatever the specifics of a man's purpose, he must always refresh the transcendental element of his life through regular meditation and retreat. The test of your fullness in every moment is your capacity to die in free 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 loved fully? Or, do you have unexpressed feelings that would taint your last moment with regret? Do you consistently relax into the awe of immense mystery? Or, are you so absorbed in your work and projects that you no longer feel the miracle of existence, each moment emerging from and dissolving into the great unknowable? Has your task addiction built blinders that limit the vastness of your vision, even now? To help you remember the triviality of your daily tasks, interrupt your schedule with refreshers. These refreshers should cut to your core and strip the fat off the moment. Consider your own death. Behold an image of the most enlightened being you know. Contemplate the mystery of existence. Relax into the deepest and most profound loving of which you are capable. In your own way, remember the infinite, and then return to the task at hand. This way, you will never lose perspective and begin to think that life is a matter of tasks. You are not a drone. You are the unbounded mystery of love. Be so, without forgetting your tasks.

You Are Always Searching for Freedom

The essential masculine ecstasy is in the moment of release from constraint. This could occur when facing death and living through it, succeeding in (and thus being released from) your purpose, and in competition (which is ritual threat of death). The masculine is always seeking release from constraint into freedom. The feminine often doesn't understand these masculine ways and needs.

Restore Your Purpose in Solitude and with Other Men

A man rediscovers and fine tunes his purpose in solitude, in challenging situations, and in the company of other men who won't settle for his bullshit. The two ways to bring you right to your masculine edge of power are austerity and challenge.

DEALING WITH WOMEN

Women Are Not Liars

"Keeping your word" is a masculine trait, in men or women. A person with a feminine essence may not keep her word, yet it is not exactly "lying." In the feminine reality, words and facts take a second place to emotions and the shifting moods of relationship. The masculine means what it says. A man's word is his honor. The feminine says what it feels. A woman's word is her true expression in the moment. The basic rule is this: Don't believe the literal content of what your woman says unless love is flowing deeply and fully in the moment when she says it. And even then, know that she is probably talking about her current feelings, not necessarily about the subject of whatever she is talking about. Never base your plans on what a woman says she wants to do, unless she is in the full flow of love when she says it. And then, expect her to change her mind at any moment when her feelings change.

Praise Her

The masculine grows by challenge, but the feminine grows by praise. It is a difficult practice for most men to learn, but you must learn to praise the very qualities you feel are not yet praiseworthy in order for them to become so. In other words, praise the tiny quality that you want to grow. Praise works. Information doesn't. Praise motivates. Challenge doesn't.

Tolerating Her Leads to Resenting Her

A man gets resentful and frustrated with his woman when he is too afraid, weak, or unskilled to penetrate her moods and tests into love. He wishes she were easier to deal with. But it is not entirely her fault that she is bitchy and complaining. It is also a reflection of her lack of being penetrated by love. When a man resigns, and simply tolerates his woman's self-destructive moods, it is a sign of his weakness. His attitude has become one of wanting to escape women and the world, rather than wanting to serve women and the world into love. A superior man sees his woman's moods not as a curse, but as a challenge and an amusement. There are many ways to creatively deal with her moods and help her to open. Tickle her. Take off your clothes and dance the watusi. Sing opera for her. Make animal sounds. Shout at her louder than you ever have and then kiss her passionately. Press your belly into her until she melts. Lift her off the ground and spin her around. Occasionally, talking with her helps, but not as often as humor and physically expressed love.

Don't Analyze Your Woman

The feminine's moods and opinions are like weather patterns. They are constantly changing, severe and gentle, and they have no single source. No analysis will work. There is no linear chain of cause and effect that can lead to the kernel of the "problem." There is no problem, only a storm, a breeze, a sudden change in weather. The next time your woman is in a bad mood, try this: Assume she is not feeling loved. Simply assume it, even if it seems that it can't be that simple, that there must be some underlying reason for her upsetness, a reason that you could fix. Assume she is more like a flower that needs watering than an engine that needs a carburetor adjustment. Don't assume anything is wrong at all. Assume that she wants love from you, in a deep, strong, steady, and sensitive way.

Don't Suggest That a Woman Fix Her Own Emotional Problem

One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy is precisely not to have to always figure it out for her man and guide him. She wants to be able to trust him in his direction. There are some times when she does want to figure it out for you, but far more often she feels your gift when you offer her a direction in your intimacy without her having to ask you for it or tell you what she wants.

Don't Force the Feminine to Make Decisions

A man abandons responsibility by expecting that his woman will always make her own decisions and then be accountable for the results. This expectation is a withholding of his masculine gift. You need to play the masculine pole if you want your woman to play the feminine. Offering your perspective on decisions is one way to give your masculine gift. Even on the most trivial decisions, never say, "Do whatever you want."

Your Excellent Track Record Is Meaningless to Her

A man's track record means nothing to the feminine. A man could be perfect for ten years, but if he's an asshole for 30 seconds his woman acts like he's always been one. The feminine responds to the moment of energy, forgetting her man's history of past behavior. A man's past behavior is irrelevant to his woman's feeling in the moment. But men base much on another man's history of behavior, so they think their own track record should count for something. But to a woman, it doesn't. Instead of getting angry because she's so upset that you made one little mistake in a long series of successes, instantly shift the energy between you. Remember, history is irrelevant to the feminine, so your mistake is as easily forgotten as your successes. As soon as you see she's upset, immediately assume happiness. Shock her with your love. Make her smile and laugh with your humor. Lick her neck, or lift her off the ground and pretend you're King Kong. Surprise her in some loving way, and the emotional slate will be wiped clean. Your momentary failure will be effectively vanished, as irrelevant as the long line of your successes.

She Wants to Relax in the Demonstration of Your Direction

A woman must be able to trust you to take charge if she relaxes her own masculine edge. This is true financially, sexually, emotionally, and spiritually. The man doesn't have to actually do all the work, but he must be able to steer the course if his woman is going to relax into her feminine without fear.

The Feminine Is Abundant

There is never a shortage of women or feminine energy. If a man feels that there aren't enough women, or that life isn't giving him what he wants, he is simply negating his relationship to the feminine.