The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

Rating: 9/10

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High-Level Thoughts

Way of the Superior Man, better than any other book I’ve found, made me more comfortable with the important distinctions between masculine and feminine behaviors and recognizing and working with those differences instead of pretending that men and women are perfect equals. Also, the distinction between rape and ravishment is helpful in helping men get over their cognitive dissonance with rough, aggressive, dominant sex.

Summary Notes

“Stop waiting. Feel everything. Love achingly. Give impeccably. Let go.”

“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.”

“Ongoing sexual passin requires “polarity”, a masculine pole, and a feminine pole, it doesn’t matter who takes on those roles, but the dynamic and the exchange of energy is necessary for true passion.”

“You must recognize and accept which pole you gravitate towards.”

“These concepts are for people who recognize men and women’s euqliaty, while alwso recognizing their varying masculine and feminie energies and how those energies play out in relationships and sex.”

“Most men make the error of thinking that one day it will be done. They think, “If I can work enough, then one day I could rest.” Or, “One day my woman will understand something and then she will stop complaining.” Or, “I’m only doing this now so that one day I can do what I really want with my life.” The masculine error is to think that eventually things will be different in some fundamental way. They won’t. It never ends. As long as life continues, the creative challenge is to tussle, play, and make love with the present moment while giving your unique gift.”

“It’s never going to be over, so stop waiting for the good stuff. As of now, spend a minimum of one hour a day doing whatever you are waiting to do until your finances are more secure, or until the children have grown and left home, or until you have finished your obligations and you feel free to do what you really want to do. Don’t wait any longer. Don’t believe in the myth of “one day when everything will be different.” Do what you love to do, what you are waiting to do, what you’ve been born to do, now.”

“The feminine always seems chaotic and complicated from the perspective of the masculine.”

“You can’t escape the tussle with the feminine. 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.”

“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.”

“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. Just this self-knowledge often relieves much pressure a man feels to prioritize his relationship when, in fact, it is not his highest priority.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Few men are willing to give their deepest genius, their true endowment, the poetry of their very being, with every thrust of sex and life. Most men are limpened with doubts and uncertainties. Or they hold back their true drive because of fear. So they diddle their woman and the world just enough to extract the pleasure and comfort they need to assuage their nagging sense of falsity and incompleteness.”

“The other way is to “fuck” both to smithereens, to ravish them with your love unsheathed, to give your true gifts despite the constant tussle of woman and world, to smelt your authentic gifts in this friction of opposition and surrender, to thrust love from the freedom of your deep being even as your body and mind die blissfully through a crucifixion of inevitable pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion, gain and loss. No gifts left ungiven. No limit to the depth of being. Only openness, freedom, and love as the legacy of your intercourse with woman and world.”

“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.”

“Good friends should not tolerate mediocrity in one another. If you are at your edge, your men friends should respect that, but not let you off the hook. They should honor your fears, and, in love, continue to goad you beyond them, without pushing you.”

“Choose men friends who themselves are living at their edge, facing their fears and living just beyond them. Men of this kind can love you without protecting you from the necessary confrontation with reality that your life involves.”

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

“Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure.”

“Whereas many women waste precious time swirling in emotional currents and eddies, many men waste their birth seeking the completion of tasks. Nose to the grindstone, day after day, year after year, and you become a robot of duty. Rather, raise your eyes, see to the horizon, and do your tasks in the spirit of sweeping out your house on a sunny day.”

“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…Praise motivates. Challenge doesn’t. Try it. Praise specific things you love about your woman 5 to 10 times a day. Find out what happens.”

“Instead of tolerating your woman’s moods of closure and complaint, open her moods with your skillful loving. It is your gift to give. Both of you will grow more by your giving than by your tolerating. 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.”

“The amazing thing is this: 90% of a woman’s emotional problems stem from feeling unloved. So don’t stand back and analyze her, like a doctor diagnosing a patient, or like a therapist questioning a client. Give her your love—the same love that is motivating your questioning—immediately and unmistakably. Walk over to her, look deeply into her eyes, hold her and stroke her, tell her how much you love her, smile, hum her favorite song and dance with her, and chances are, her emotional problem will evaporate. She may still have some situation to deal with, and you may be able to help her with that, but the emotional aspect will be converted to love.”

“[Getting to do anything they want] is exactly the opposite of most women’s idea of an ideal birthday present. Most women would get far more excited if you were to say, “You’ve got 30 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.”

“When was the last time you really ravished your woman? That is, when was the last time you really “took” her, savagely, lovingly, with no inhibition whatsoever? Or, has it been so long that you are fascinated and even turned on by rape scenes on TV or in the movies?”

“The difference between rape and ravishment is love.”

“One part of your woman is happy she made you come. She is happy you are relaxed and enjoying yourself. Another part of her is disappointed that you’ve allowed yourself to choose a temporary and pleasurable spasm over the endless ravishment of her and the world.”

On non-ejaculatory orgasm:

  • “The first step is undoing the habits you learned while masturbating as a teenager. Instead of tensing your muscles as you become sexually stimulated, learn to relax them. When you notice your face squinching up, relax it. When you notice your breath getting fast and shallow, slow it down and deepen it. When you notice your belly tight and your chest hard, open your belly and soften the area around your heart.”
  • “The next step is to redirect your attention. Learn to feel your partner more than your own sensations during sex. Rather than curling attention into yourself and feeling the pleasures moving in your own body, feel outward, into, and through your partner. Feel your partner more than you feel yourself. Feel her movement, her moans, and her internal energy.”

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