David Deida Quotes & Sayings

Stop waiting. Feel everything. Love achingly. Give impeccably. Let go. — David Deida

Your suffering is shaped exactly by your refusal to open. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

Thank God for such women, who make no apologies for their oceanic depth and riptides of emotion. — David Deida

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

Successfully completing a lesser purpose doesn't feel good very good for very long, because it is simply preparation for advancing toward a greater embodiment of your deeper purpose. — David Deida

You must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor — David Deida

Everything you do right now ripples outward and affects everyone. Your posture can shine your heart or transmit anxiety. Your breath can radiate love or muddy the room in depression. Your glance can awaken joy. Your words can inspire freedom. Your every act can open hearts and minds. — David Deida

Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something - more money, security, affection - or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting. — David Deida

Masculine anger is always because you are feeling constrained, trapped by life. Feminine anger is always because you are feeling unloved. — David Deida

As long as life continues, the creative challenge is to tussle, play, and make love with the present moment while giving your unique gift. — David Deida

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. 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 — David Deida

If you don't know your purpose, discover it, now.
The core of your life is 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. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours. — David Deida

The only way to live free, the only way to live your life as an offering of love, is to feel everything fully and live open. — David Deida

The positive and negative poles of a battery create an electrical flow. The masculine and feminine poles between people create a flow of sexual energy in motion. — David Deida

Practicing love often means feeling through fear: intentionally opening yourself when you would rather close down, giving yourself when you would rather hide. Love means recognizing yourself as the open fullness of this moment regardless of its contents
trenchant thoughts, enchanting pleasures, heavy emotions, or gnawing pains
and surrendering all hold on the familiar act you call 'me'. — David Deida

By healing our internal divisions and fully accepting ourselves as we are, we learn to accept and empower our sexual core, and we learn to honor our unique expression of Masculine and Feminine gifts. We fully incarnate in our bodies, at home and at ease in a man's body or a woman's body. And we learn to love with complete abandon, as free men and women, without rules or roles or guarded hearts. — David Deida

You are only punishing yourself when you want to be in a relationship with a woman more than she wants to be a in a relationship with you. — David Deida

Men are terrified of a woman's depth of love and the energy that moves as a woman's sexuality and emotions. And, at the same time, men want nothing more in this life than to merge completely with a woman's devotional love and wild energy. Only as a man outgrows his fear can he handle a woman's tremendous love-energy without running. And only such a man is worthy of your devotional offering in a committed intimacy. — David Deida

Your lust reveals your real desire to unite with the feminine, to penetrate as deeply as possible, to receive her delicious light as radiant food for your masculine soul, and to give her your entirety, losing yourself in the giving, so that you are both liberated beyond your selves in the explosion of your gifts. — David Deida

Whereas women are most turned on by a man's depth of presence,
men are most turned on by a woman's radiance and energy:
how she moves, moans, smiles, and opens in love. — David Deida

The energy that moves life is the force of the Feminine. She is unstoppable. She is the source of all life, the mover of blood, the breather of breath, the flow of the river's water. The Feminine is life. We can feel Her moving and living in any moment we are open to Her, or as Her. — David Deida

Knowing the Truth is Fairly Useless. Feeling it is Profound. Living it Makes All the Difference. — David Deida

Your heart knows the truth of openness and suffers the tense lie of your closure. — David Deida

If your purpose is to liberate yourself and others into love and freedom, then you should do whatever magnifies the love and freedom in your life and in the lives of whom your actions affect. — David Deida

You'll never get what you really want. All you can do is give what you really want! — David Deida

Very few of us trust our immediate connection with nature, or the intuitive intelligence of our body. All too easily, we align ourselves with the logical world of Masculine intelligence. As a culture, we have become so Masculine that we are much more comfortable with analytical problem-solving than with ecstatic dancing! — David Deida

We eventually learn that emotional closure is our own action. We can be responsible for it. In any moment, we can choose to open or to close. — David Deida

You are that which you seek, but you have left your own deepness and are looking elsewhere. The stress of not finding it creates its own need to be released. And so the cycle continues. You are chasing your own tail, and much of the time that tail looks suspiciously like a woman. — David Deida

Every moment waited is a moment wasted.... — David Deida

You should do whatever feels right in your deepest heart. Feel deep as consciousness, open as water, now, and feel how to live with a wide-open heart. Feel how to live as love without bondage. — David Deida

But if we are truly happy inside, then age brings with it a maturity, a depth, and a power that only magnifies our radiance. — David Deida

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 his full, undivided presence. — David Deida

Whenever you are feeling isolated and weary, feel the present moment as if it were a woman. Feel like you are embracing a woman, physically. Feel the front of your body as if it were pressed against the front of a woman's naked body, being filled with the delight of her feminine softness and liveliness. Feel her breasts and belly against you. Breathe deeply as if you were inhaling her intoxicating fragrance. And, while inhaling, receive deeply into your body not just her scent, but the very essence of feminine deliciousness, as if it were nourishing food for your masculine soul. — David Deida

Your woman knows your weaknesses better than anybody. She knows where you will falter and give up. She knows the degree of mediocrity you will settle for. And, she knows your true capacity as a full man, a man of free consciousness and love. Her gift, if she is a good woman, is to test you with her darkest moods, over and over and over, until your consciousness is unperturbed by feminine challenge, and you are able to pervade her with your love, just as you are here to pervade the world. In response to your fearless consciousness, she will drench your world in love and light. — David Deida

How do you react with your body, breath, and eyes? Notice if you react to a person or situation that hurts you by withdrawing, hiding, or closing in on yourself. Notice if there are times when you find it difficult to look into someone's eyes, or times your chest and solar plexus become tense and contracted. These are signs of an unskillful reaction to hurt. — David Deida

Just remember that self-discipline is not self-suppression. Suppression is when you resist and fight against your desires, keeping them as buried and unexpressed as possible. Self-discipline is when your highest desires rule your lesser desires, not through resistance, but through loving action grounded in understanding and compassion. — David Deida

Masculine and feminine aspects exist in all beings. — David Deida

By learning to open your heart and body while embracing and trusting all energies, from rough ravishment to sublime gentleness, you can open to be lived by the mystery that lives the entire universe. — David Deida

Spiritual practice is the capacity to offer your love even when you feel hurt, closed down, tense, angry, misunderstood, or hated. — David Deida

We must see that we are afraid of the thing we most desire,
and so we live a mediocre life,
never bringing to consummation
the primary impulse of our heart. — David Deida

A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn't aware of his fear. — David Deida

Your close men friends should be willing to challenge your mediocrity by suggesting a concrete action you can perform that will pop you out of your rut, one way or the other. And you must be willing to offer them your brutal honesty, in the same way, if you are all to grow. — David Deida

Instant enlightenment is to give all your happiness away to others. — David Deida

Nobody will press your buttons
or reflect your asshole to you better than your woman. She will point
out your weaknesses better than a boot camp drill sergeant. — David Deida

Yes, you can get a man to do just about anything, and you know it. So, what are you going to attract him into doing? Buying you a nice house? Giving you the space to guide your own life? Or, offering his deepest gifts to you and all beings while opening his heart to God?
Are you a selfish witch, a self-sufficient witch, or a witch for the sake of drawing your man and all beings open as a gift for all? — David Deida

Chronic dissatisfaction is how you sense that you are living a lie. — David Deida

A man with a weak Masculine is especially prone to despise and fear these qualities and may attempt to suppress the more destructive elements of the Feminine force in his partner. — David Deida

It is honorable for a man to admit his fears, resistance, and edge of practice. It is simply true that each man has his limit, his capacity for growth, and his destiny. But it is dishonorable for him to lie to himself or others about his real place. He shouldn't pretend he is more enlightened than he is - nor should he stop short of his actual edge. The more a man is playing his real edge, the more valuable he is as good company for other men, the more he can be trusted to be authentic and fully present. Where a man's edge is located is less important than whether he is actually living his edge in truth, rather than being lazy or deluded. — David Deida

When fear dissolves, you no longer separate yourself from this single flow of immense force. Love is continuity with infinite life force, a Oneness of being with no separation. Love is the key to opening to this flow of life force. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

The real practice of love goes beyond satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Wallowing in pleasure can be just as limiting as wallowing in pain if you don't open your heart beyond the satisfaction of your personal emotional needs. — David Deida

The masculine in each of us struggles for greater freedom
and tries to achieve it through financial, creative, or political challenges. — David Deida

I am going to speak some reckless words, and I want you to listen recklessly. — David Deida

The feminine in each of us longs for deeper love
and tries to find it in intimate relationship, family, or friends. — David Deida

You are either withholding your love in fear or giving your deepest gifts. — David Deida

We're here to learn how to worship consciousness and radiance, evoke it in each other, and tolerate nothing less than our deepest love. — David Deida

Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering. — David Deida

Violence is always an effort toward greater freedom or love. Openness is freedom and love. Even the most violent or self-destructive emotions are rooted in the heart's need for openness, to be free, to give and receive love. — David Deida

Ongoing passion and growth in intimacy requires us to let go of our ideas of what we
"should" be doing and instead trust the wisdom inherent in our unguarded heart and uninhibited body. — David Deida

When you feel sexual lust or desire for any woman, breathe deeply and allow the feeling of desire to magnify. And allow it to magnify more. Don't let the energy become lodged in your head or genitals, but circulate it throughout your body. Using your breath as the instrument of circulation, bathe every cell in the stimulated energy. Inhale it into your heart, and then feel outward from your heart, feeling the world as if it were your lover. With an exhale, move into the world and penetrate it, skillfully and spontaneously, opening it into love. — David Deida

As you open yourself to living at your edge, your deepest purpose will slowly begin to make itself known. In the meantime, you will experience layer after layer of purposes, each one getting closer and closer to the fullness of your deepest purpose. It is as if your deepest purpose is at the center of your being, and it is surrounded by layers of concentric circles, each circle being a lesser purpose. Your life consists of penetrating each circle, from the outside toward the center. — David Deida

Make your own decision, based on your deepest intuitive wisdom and knowledge. You may make the right decision or the wrong one, but whatever happens, it is your best shot, and you will strengthen your capacity for future action. — David Deida

Sex and money: the sources of most of our desire and disappointment, our hope and fear. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

If you are waiting for anything in order to live and love without holding back, then you suffer. — David Deida

The word "surrender" is often interpreted as giving up, as weakness, as admitting defeat. Although this is one way to use the word, we will use it in a different way. Surrendering means letting go of your resistance to the total openness of who you are. It means giving up the tension of the little vortex you believe yourself to be and realizing the deep power of the ocean you truly are. It means to open with no boundaries, emotional or physical, so you ease wide beyond any limiting sense of self you might have. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy is precisely not to have to always figure it out for her man and guide him. — David Deida

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 weakend, impotent existence, perhaps even becoming even sexually impotent or prone to mechanical and disinterested sex. — David Deida

[To the masculine lover] Without a deep sense of purpose to direct your daily life, you will be directed by externals-financial need, your children's needs, your lover's needs-and you will begin to blame them for your lack of fulfillment. You will feel trapped in obligations, and your resentments will show. You will hold back in your relationships with your lover and family, not really wanting to be there, unsure what else to do, mired in ambiguity, guilt, and anger. Your actions will lack integrity and follow-through. Your feminine lover won't be able to trust you in everyday life or open to you sexually. [Pg 121] — David Deida

The Feminine force of life is often too wise for the Masculine's need to know: The mysterious energy of the evolving cosmos is always superior to our temporary scientific notions about it ... — David Deida

Anyone who separates being and doing is still enjoying separation. — David Deida

One misunderstandin g is that if you do the right thing, then life's storms will stop. If you do the right thing, the storms actually get bigger. This is because they know they can't blow you down like they used to, and now it's going to take a lot more energy to find out if you are conscious. — David Deida

Love is beauty, consciousness is trust. One of the deepest feminine pleasures is when a man stands full, present, and unreactive in the midst of his woman's emotional storms. When he stays present with her, and loves her through the layers of wildness and closure, then she feels his trustability, and she can relax. — David Deida

You can open to God through sex. By learning to open your heart and body while embracing and trusting all energies from rough ravishment to sublime gentleness, you can open to be lived by the mystery that lives the entire universe. You can open to be lived by love with no limits, so you are alive as love, offering the deepest gifts of your heart spontaneously and without hesitation, in every moment, at work, with your family and friends, as well as in bed with your lover. — David Deida

Each moment can become a full expression of your core desire. — David Deida

Praise is literal food for feminine qualities. If you want your woman to grow in her radiance health, happiness, love, beauty, power and depth, praise these qualities. Praise them daily. A number of times. — David Deida

Infinite Love is who we really are and who we refuse to be. This refusal is our most essential tension. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

Whatever is your present experience, you can recognize the spaciousness that allows it to be. You are this spaciousness, this awareness, this love. Deeper love and more spacious awareness is the best lesson you can get from any experience. — David Deida

The most loving women are the women who will test you the most. She wants you to be your fullest, most magnificent self. She won't settle for anything less. She knows it is true of you. She knows in your deepest heart you are free, you are Shiva. Anything less than that she will torment. And, as you know, she's quite good at it. — David Deida

Trust, love, what we call sexy, who we trust in a business situation, are all based on how open we are. Openness is bodily openness, muscular relaxation, heart openness as opposed to hiding behind some emotional wall, and spiritual openness, which is actually feeling so fully into the moment that there's no separation between you and the entire moment. — David Deida

You can ravish your woman so deeply that her surrender breaks your heart into light. — David Deida

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 ... — David Deida

Your only real choices are to open fully and receive their gifts or crucify them and be relieved of their force ... But you must be willing to feel your heart's terrors and wounds or else you will close and protect yourself, striking back at the source of openness you most yearn to become ... — David Deida

As a body in a world, here is our choice: we can be more loving or less loving. That's it. We can relax as the entire moment's show of love's swirl, feeling open as all
a vicious rainstorm, tweeting birds, our lover's lips, a sense of worthlessness
or we can close to some aspect of experience, pulling away as if we were separate. — David Deida

Only when the front of your body is relaxed and opened, your breath full and deep, and your gaze unguarded and directly connected with another person's eyes, can your fullest intelligence manifest spontaneously in the situation. — David Deida

A life lived well embraces death by feeling open, from heart to all, in every moment. Wide open, you can offer without holding back, you can receive without pushing away. — David Deida

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

In an effort to create safety and self-reliance in your life and relationships, you may have built walls around your heart and accumulated tension in your body. Although sometimes these walls of protection are useful, they can, over time, act like shells of fear that block your true love. These shells can keep in the love you want to offer fully and keep out the love that your heart yearns to receive. — David Deida

If knowing the truth is sufficient for you, then practice the art of philosophy. If only living the truth will suffice, then practice the art of love through your mind, your emotions, and your body. — David Deida

Chocolate or a good man can instigate your heart's surrender, but full-bodied pleasure and overflowing love - opening until you are exposed fully to God as love's bliss - is the only way to live true to your deepest desire, with or without a trustable lover or a tasty dessert. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

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. — David Deida

Limited money and family obligations have never stopped a man who really wanted to do something, although they provide excuses for a man who is not really up to the creative challenge in the first place. Find out today whether you are willing to do what it takes. — David Deida

When you are in love with a man or a woman, the love you feel does not come from him or her; it is the love flowing from you own heart that you feel. Your partner is simply giving you an excuse to love. Love is always found flowing in your heart, not in your family, lover, career or art. — David Deida

Stop hoping for a completion of anything in life ... Do what you love to do, what you are waiting to do, what you've been born to do, now. — David Deida