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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Deida
When it comes, it usually won’t be a detailed vision. You will probably have a sense of what direction to move in, but the practical steps might not make themselves clear.
But, eventually, you find that dozens of non-profit groups are telephoning you, asking for your advice. It feels as if the universe is supporting you in this direction.
Parenting children, as well as any responsible commitment in love, requires that you transcend your own personal preferences for the sake of the larger commitment, for the sake of service in love.
Your woman will begin to take charge more than she really wants, since you are clearly not capable of taking charge yourself, and someone has to do it.
The priority of the feminine, in men and women, is the flow of love in relationship.
The priority of the masculine, in men and women, is the mission which leads to freedom.
A short period of time with a father who is absolutely present, full in love, undivided inside, and sure of his mission in life, will affect your children much more positively than if they spend lots of time with a father who is ambiguous in his intent and has lost touch with his deepest purpose, no matter how much he loves his children.
Children learn most from their parents by osmosis. If their father is subtly weakened and compromised, this will flavor their experience of his love.
Your essential emotional tone—at ease in your deepest purpose or fearful in the ambiguity of your intent—becomes part of your children’s home.
It is not the amount of time but the quality of the interaction that most influences a child’s growth.
Children are exquisitely sensitive to emotional tone. If you are not full in your core, aligned with your deepest purpose and living a life of authentic commitment, your children will feel it.
If you choose to be a householder and raise children, you are responsible for serving them with as much authentic love as possible, which you can only give if your life is aligned with your deepest purpose.
You can give love to your family and engage your life’s work, if you discipline yourself to act on your deepest desires with priority.
Whatever the specifics of a man’s purpose, he must always refresh the transcendental element of his life through regular meditation and retreat.
Tasks don’t get a man anywhere more conscious or free than he is capable of being in this present moment.
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.
Tasks are important, but no amount of duties adds up to love, freedom, or full consciousness.
You must work, care for your family, and brush your teeth. But these are just the mechanics of life on Earth. They never come to the absolute truth of your being.
You are not a drone. You are the unbounded mystery of love. Be so, without forgetting your tasks.
Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.
The most erotic moment for a woman is feeling that you are Shiva, the divine masculine: unperturbable, totally loving, fully present, and all-pervading.
A good woman will love the childlike part of you, but she wants your life to be guided by your deepest truths, not your untended childhood wounds.
If you remain full and strong, humorous and happy, your truth unperturbed by her testing, then you pass the test.
You don’t need her validation in order for you to be loving. You simply are loving. The truth of you is love. Your fullness is independent of mommy. 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 even when his woman criticizes him, a man who can find the humor in forgetting to pick up the milk on a day he made a million dollars.
The most loving women are the women who will test you the most. She wants you to be your fullest, most magnificent self.
The “truth” of the feminine is whatever she is really feeling, in this present moment.
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.
When speaking to your woman, it is always better to call the glass half full than half empty.
The whole point of an intimacy is to serve each other in growth and love, hopefully in better ways than we can serve ourselves.
Intimacy is about growing more than you could by yourself, through the art of mutual gifting.
You can only develop your skill in serving your woman into openness.
It is a very rare occasion when your analysis of her mood relieves her of it. Most often, your analysis and attempts to fix her will just piss her off more.
Assume she is more like a flower that needs watering than an engine that needs a carburetor adjustment.
Because what she really wants is a man who can figure it out for himself. She wants a man who loves her, and escorts her with his loving, without having to ask her what she wants all the time.
One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy is precisely not to have to always figure it out for her man and guide him.
“You’ve got thirty minutes to pack your bags. Don’t ask me where we’re going, but we’ll be gone for the weekend. Everything is taken care of. Just pack your bags, and leave the rest to me. I’m going to give you the best birthday you’ve ever had.”
One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy (though not in business or simple friendship) is to be able to relax and surrender, knowing that her man is taking care of everything.
Like the ocean, the native state of the feminine is to flow with great power and no single direction.
Like a ship cutting through a vast ocean, the masculine decides on a course and navigates the direction: the feminine energy itself is undirected but immense, like the wind and deep currents of the ocean, ever changing, beautiful, destructive, and the source of life.
A happy woman is a woman relaxed in her body and heart: powerful, unpredictable, deep, potentially wild and destructive, or calm and serene, but always full of life, surrendered to and moved by the great force of her oceanic heart.
The best way you can serve your woman is by helping her to surrender, to trust the force of love, so that she can open her heart, be the love that she is, and give this love which naturally overflows from her happiness.
Love has its own intelligence. Honor love’s intelligence by realizing that analysis is not usually necessary to serve your woman’s openness. Love your woman with your whole body, perhaps pressing her against the wall with your belly and chest, pressing your love into her, breathing with her so that she relaxes her tension and surrenders to the love in her heart, and let her relaxation and surrender liberate the wisdom inherent in her loving. You have much to gain from the depths of her feminine gifts.
STAY WITH HER INTENSITY—TO A POINT
When a woman gets emotionally intense, a mediocre man wants to calm her down and discuss it, or leave and come back later when she is “sane.” A superior man penetrates her mood with imperturbable love and unwavering consciousness. If she still refuses to live more fully in love, after a time, he lets her go.
One of the deepest feminine pleasures is when a man stands full, present, and unreactive in the midst of his woman’s emotional storms.
You can, however, train yourself to master the world—financially, creatively, spiritually—by learning how to be free and loving in the chaos of your woman’s emotions.
Like wrestling a steer or surfing ocean waves, mastery involves blending with your woman’s powerful energy and feeling the rise and fall of the moment, without lapsing in presence for a second.
As lovers, you and your woman are more than just friends. You are playing the full dynamic of masculine and feminine polarity. Wouldn’t you like your woman to be a goddess and offer you her feminine gifts? To evoke them, you must offer her your masculine gifts. One of your most valuable gifts is the ability to see all the options and make a decision based on this view of all the potential outcomes.
Masculine men are attracted to forms of feminine energy: radiant women, beer, music, nature, etc. If a man tries to hide his attraction, it reveals some degree of shame with respect to his own sexual core.
If you are like most men, you probably hide the amount of sexual attraction you feel toward women every day. At work, on the street, and in the grocery store, you see women that turn you on.
