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

by David Deida

In our new world, a man’s presence—his depth of awareness—is his most valuable asset.

A man’s worth can be found in his depth of being. A shallow man, easily perturbed and swayed, is worth less to his woman and his world than a man whose presence is deeply sourced.

The Way of the Superior Man is the way of deep gaze, breath, and purpose. It cannot be faked.

Fear is lack of trust in now. Fear is saying “no” to some aspect of the present moment.

Identified with money or accomplishments, a man feels weak when he compares himself to others who have more. But when he knows himself to be self-radiant awareness, conscious and lit up, awakening as man, he blooms in perfect harmony with the immense energy of reality. The infinite force of now is his power and his presence.

Your woman and your world long for the authentic power of your awakened heart offered through your whole body.

as evolving human beings, we can learn that mastery is an important phase to accomplish and pass through in this school of life where we are learning to love more artfully.

We are designed to outgrow everything—including our desire to experience and improve the realms of money, sex, and intimacy.

too, I’m told, but first things first. Live completely. Know your deepest purpose. Give the gift you were born to give. Enjoy sex as a cosmic portal into love’s wonders. Serve your friends so they may grow. And, through the inevitable cycles of breathtaking success and gut-wrenching despair, when you have mastered and outgrown the challenges of women, work, and sexual desire, be willing to forget you were ever born.

Stop waiting. Feel everything. Love achingly. Give impeccably. Let go. Repeat with whatever remains, as long as you are moved to do so. This way dissolves wide open.

Intimate Communion.*

Sexual attraction is based on sexual polarity, which is the force of passion that arcs between masculine and feminine poles. All natural forces flow between two poles.

For sexual polarity, you need an energetic polarity, an attractive difference between masculine and feminine. You don’t need this difference for love, but you do need it for ongoing sexual passion.

Your sexual essence is your sexual core. If you have a more masculine sexual essence, you would, of course, enjoy staying home and playing with the kids, but deep down, you are driven by a sense of mission. You may not know your mission, but unless you discover this deep purpose and live it fully, your life will feel empty at its core, even if your intimate relationship and family life are full of love.

Regardless of gender or sexual orientation, if you want to experience deep spiritual and sexual fulfillment, you must know your natural sexual essence—masculine, feminine, or balanced—and live true to it.

When these polarities are lessened due to family and work obligations, sexual attraction is diminished, along with spiritual depth and physical health.

A person who denies their own essence and hides their true desires is divided and unable to relax into the full openness of love.

Heart and spine must be united in a single man, and then gone beyond in the fullest expression of love and consciousness possible,

Spend at least one hour a day doing whatever you simply love to do—what you deeply feel you need to do, in your heart—in spite of the daily duties that seem to constrain you. However, be forewarned: you may discover that you don’t, or can’t, do it; that in fact, your fantasy of your future life is simply a fantasy.

As a first step, 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.

Learn to find humor in the unending emotional drama the feminine seems to enjoy so much. The love that you magnify may realign her behavior, but your effort to fix her and your frustration never will.

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.

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.

situation. To act as a superior man, a samurai of relationship, you must feel the entire situation with your whole body. A closed body is unable to sense subtle cues and signals, and therefore unable to act with mastery in the situation.

For the next three days, do at least one activity a day that you have avoided or suppressed because of the influence of your father.

Your edge is where you stop short, or where you compromise your fullest gift, and, instead, cater to your fears.

Some men fear the feeling of fear and therefore don’t even approach their edge.

Say something like, “I know I could be earning more money, but I am too lazy to put in the extra hours it would take. I know that I could give more of my true gift, but I am afraid that I may not succeed, and then I will be a penniless failure.

Honor your edge. Honor your choices. Be honest with yourself about them. Be honest with your friends about them.

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

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

Eternity must be a man’s home, moment by moment. Without it, he is lost, always striving, grasping at puffs of smoke. A man must do anything necessary to glimpse, and then stabilize, this ever-fresh realization, and organize his life around it.

Make your life an ongoing process of being who you are, at your deepest, most easeful levels of being.

Where is your attention right now? Can you feel its source? Even for a moment, can you feel that which makes attention conscious and aware? Can you feel the deepest nature of attention?

This source is never changing and always present. It is the constant, silent tone behind and pervading the music of life. Feel into this source as deeply as possible, and then re-approach your work, intimacy, family, and creative efforts. When you make money, make money from this source. Find out what happens to the details of your life when you live more consistently from this source.

If a woman suggests something that changes a man’s perspective, then he should make a new decision based on his new perspective. But he should never betray his own deepest knowledge and intuition in order to please his woman or “go along” with her. Both she and he will be weakened by such an action. They will grow to resent each other, and the crust of accumulated inauthenticity will burden their love, as well as their capacity for free action.

If you choose to go with your woman’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.”

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 her full, undivided presence.

Admit to yourself that if you had to choose one or the other, the perfect intimate relationship or achieving your highest purpose in life, you would choose to succeed at your purpose.

Your mission is your priority. Unless you know your mission and have aligned your life to it, your core will feel empty. Your presence in the world will be weakened, as will your presence with your intimate partner.

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.

Your woman will be more fulfilled with thirty minutes a day of undivided attention and ravishing love than she will with a few hours of your weak and divided presence when your heart really isn’t into it.

Time you spend with your woman should be time you really want to be with her more than anything else. If you’d rather be doing something else, she’ll feel it. Both of you will be dissatisfied.

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.

Once you are honest with yourself about your real edge, it is best to lean just beyond it.

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. Rather, primary fear shows you that you are at your edge.

Fear of fear may lead you to hang back, living a lesser life than you are capable. Fear of fear may lead you to push ahead, living a false life, off-center, tense and missing the moment. But the capacity to feel this moment, including your fear, without trying to escape it, creates a state of alive and humble spontaneity.

By leaning just beyond your fear, you challenge your limits compassionately, without trying to escape the feeling of fear itself. You step beyond the solid ground of security with an open heart. You stand in the space of unknowingness, raw and awake.

Own your fear, and lean just beyond it. In every aspect of your life. Starting now.

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.