Category: relationships. Date read: November 19, 2016. My rating: 3/5. Buy on Amazon.
About the balance (or polarity) between men and women. Everyone knows that men and women are different but this book explains it—in a repetitive way so that you really understand—how much different we are and what we can do about it.
Stop waiting for the good stuff to come, look for it yourself. Spend at least 1 hour a day doing whatever you're currently waiting to do.
Listen to others and then make a decision based on your new perspective. It's your responsibility to make your own decision. Never betray yourself and your values to please anyone.
Don't seek fulfillment, neither through work nor women, you're already full.
Your Edge
A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. — David Deida
Always try to live on your real edge. It'll help you be fully present, valuable, and trusted by other men. Constantly try to lean slightly beyond the edge. While living on your edge, your purpose will slowly begin to appear.
Admit your fears, resistance, and edge of practice. People will trust you more if you know your fears than if you don't know them.
Once a week sit down with your closest men friends and discuss what your doing and what you're afraid of. Your friends should suggest a behavioral experiment, something you can do to reveal something of you, or to grant more freedom in your life. Your friends should challenge your mediocrity but respect your edge.
Choose close men friends that are also living at their edge, facing their fears.
Learn to receive masculine energy by receiving direct criticism from another man.
Be open and willing to be wrong. It's from being wrong that you'll grow.
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. — David Deida
Search for your life purpose, otherwise you'll be reacting to events rather than creating events.
Don't rush into this process. Make decisions, keep on going forward, but be open to a vision for what's next.
Spend time with your woman when that's what you want to do above anything else. Be completely focused on her. But then go back to working towards your purpose.
Admit to yourself that between a perfect intimate relationship and achieving you highest purpose, you would choose your purpose.
You will always be presented with more challenges, either by the world or by your woman. Don't think they will someday stop.
Fully live your purpose to the point it becomes empty and boring. Then discard it and begin your search for your new purpose. Discarding a purpose is not a sign of failure, but of growth.
Don't get absorbed into the small and endless daily tasks, otherwise you'll forget your purpose. Plowing through obstacles and getting the job done is one of men's biggest strengths and weaknesses.
You can take care of the house and children, but remember that that's not your truly purpose.
Your Life
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. — David Deida
Your highest priority is your purpose, not your intimacy.
Find and work in your purpose, but don't get absorbed so that you no longer have time to enjoy your existence.
Don't be lazy. Don't forget your responsibilities. Sometimes you need recreation, just don't confuse recreation with avoiding responsibilities.
Know where you're going and how you're getting there. This includes your financial and spiritual goals.
The two The two ways to bring you right to your masculine edge of power are austerity and challenge.
Your Intimate Relationships
Men and women have different missions. The priority of men is the search for freedom, while the priority of women is the search for love.
Regardless of sexual orientation, you have to understand if you have a more masculine, feminine, or balanced essence.
The politically correct way in which you treat your friends and colleagues doesn't work for couples. Attraction disappears if you treat your woman as "the same" in moments of intimacy.
Intensify the masculine and feminine differences to increase sexual passion.
As friends, you want to treat each other fairly and give each other space and independence. As lovers, you and your woman are more than just friends. You are playing the full dynamic of masculine and feminine polarity. — David Deida
Women are more intense emotionally. Embrace her, or wrestle with her, or scream, but don't try to stop it. Don't think that these emotional outbursts will someday stop. Learn to find humor in these emotional outbursts.
Your excellent track record doesn't matter. Women respond to the moment of energy. When she's upset immediately assume happiness.
Realize that the relative chaos and emotional weather storms are aspects of the same energy that turns you on. Learn to stand free and strong no matter what emotion she displays. Equally embrace her light and dark sides.
Her complaint is the beginning of her pleasure. — David Deida
When you listen to your woman, understand that the words and facts are not as important as what she's feeling. Listen to her trying to understand her feeling through the things she's saying, not just what she's saying.
Don't try to ignore the aspects about your woman that irritates you. Don't minimize the appreciation of your woman's feminine energy.
It is precisely those ways in which a woman is least like a man that most attract you sexually. — David Deida
Learn to appreciate your woman's testing. She does it to feel his strength, integrity, and openness. Every moment with her is either a test or a celebration.
Don't let your womans requests have priority over your truth, your direction, your happiness. Sometimes a woman will ask for something only to see if you're weak enough to do it. She won't be disappointed if she feels you're strong, clear, and true to your heart.
You must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor. — David Deida
Your happiness shouldn't depend on your success or depend on your woman's response. You should be happy by and for yourself, so then you can share it with her. She'll be able to relax being with you if she knows that you don't depend on her praise for your happiness.
Remain full and strong, humorous and happy, unperturbed by her testing. You don't need her validation for you to be loving.
A man should never think his woman's testing is going to end and his life will get easier. David Deida
If you're living on your edge, then you'll want your woman to test you even if you may not like it.
Praise your woman. Praise the qualities you want to grow. The masculine grows by testing and challenges, but the feminine grows by praise. Praise her 5 to 10 times a day and find out what happens.
Don't just tolerate her moods, but help her open up with your skillful loving. Sometimes it may be talking, but other times it can be humor or physically expressed love. If you've tried everything you can think of, then simply relax and let it go.
If you woman is in a bad mood, assume she's not feeling loved. Don't try to find the cause of her bad mood to fix it, don't analyze her. Love her, support her. After you've helped dissolve the bad mood and when she's happier, then maybe you can talk about it.
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. — David Deida
Try to penetrate her mood with imperturbable love. If the still refuses to love more fully in love, let her go. Your woman will value when you stand full and present in the midst of an emotional storm.
Keep your breath full. Keep your body strong. Keep your attention present. No matter what your woman says or does, give her love. — David Deida
It's a masculine ability to see all options before making a decision. Help your woman with your masculine ability. Expecting her to make her own decisions is forcing her to magnify her masculine side.
Help her by giving her your perspective and your choices, but make sure to let her know that you'll love her regardless of the choice she makes. Encourage her to trust her feelings.
Don't feel uncomfortable with your attraction to women. You may feel it many times a day. Enjoy it, it's natural. Negating it is negating your sexual essence.
Sexual attraction is not the same as having sex. Don't stare, don't even interact with her. But if you feel it, allow it to flow through your body.
Don't seek everything in a woman because you'll get nothing. Don't turn your relationship into an utilitarian one.