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 3THE WAY OF THE SUPERIOR MAN 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.
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.
A man must love his father and yet be free of his father's expectations and criticisms in order to be a free man
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.
A fearful man who still leans into his fear, living at his edge and putting his gift out from there, is more trustworthy and more inspirational than a fearful man who hangs back in the comfort zone, unwilling to even experience his fear on a day to day level.
Make your life an ongoing process of being who you are, at your deepest, most easeful levels of being.
Read books that remind you of who you are, in truth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Own your fear, and lean just beyond it. In every aspect of your life.
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
There are two ways to deal with woman and world without compromising your true gifts or dribbling away the force of your deep being. One way is to renounce sexual intimacy and worldliness, totally dedicating yourself without distraction or compromise to the path you choose to pursue, free of the seemingly constant demands of woman and world. 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.
If you are going to tryst with woman and world at all, better to go all the way and ravish them from the depths of your true core, blooming them open with the wide gifts of your unrelenting heart. Otherwise, if you sheepishly penetrate them to gratify your own needs, your woman and the world will feel your lack of dedication, depth, and truth. Rather than yielding in love to your loving, they will distract you, suck your energy, and draw you into endless complications, so that your life and relationship become an almost constant search for release from constraint.
You can be a renunciate and live alone, apart from woman and world. But if you choose a life of sexual and worldly intercourse, you will feel trapped by woman and world unless you are free in the midst of "true fuck," yielding yourself into the giving, holding nothing back, dissolving all time in the open of love. Through thick and thin, this is the way of the superior man.
A man's capacity to receive another man's direct criticism is a measure of his capacity to receive masculine energy. If he doesn't have a good relationship to masculine energy (e.g., his father), then he will act like a woman and be hurt or defensive rather than make use of other men's criticism.
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.
A man must he prepared to give 100% to his purpose, fulfill his karma or dissolve it, and then let go of that specific form of living. He must be capable of not knowing what to do with his life, entering a period of unknowingness and waiting for a vision or a new form of purpose to emerge. These cycles of strong specific action followed by periods of not knowing what the hell is going on are natural for a man who is shedding layers of karma in his relaxation into truth.
Take care of the children and the house as much as you want. Just remember that if you give up your true purpose to do so for too long, you are not really helping anyone.
It is not the amount of time but the quality of the interaction that most influences a child's growth.
Don't cheat your family of your fullest core, and don't use them as an excuse to avoid the work it will take to manifest your highest vision. 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. Then, when you are with your family, you are with them totally, since there is no chronically unfinished business in your life to distract you, and no inner ambiguity about where you want to be or what you really want to be doing.
Whatever the specifics of a man's purpose, he must always refresh the transcendental element of his life through regular meditation and retreat. A man should never get lost in the details of his life and forget that, ultimately and in truth, life amounts to nothing other than what is the deepest truth of this present moment. Tasks don't get a man anywhere more conscious or free than he is capable of being in this present moment.
A woman often seems to test her man's capacity to remain unperturbed in his truth and purpose. She tests him to feel his freedom and depth of love, to know that he is trustable. Her tests may come in the form of complaining, challenging him, changing her mind, doubting him, distracting him, or even undermining his purpose in a subtle or not so subtle way. A man should never think his woman's testing is going to end and his life will get easier. Rather, he should appreciate that she does these things to feel his strength, integrity, and openness. Her desire is for his deepest truth and love. As he grows, so will her testing.
When you listen to your woman, listen to her as you would the ocean, or the wind in the leaves. The sounds you hear from her are sounds of the motion of her feeling-energy
Never base your plans on what a woman says she wants to do, unless she is in the full flow of love when she says it.
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.
If you ever find yourself asking your woman questions abouther mood while she is still in it, you are already on the wrong road. First, give her love through your eyes, touch, movement,and tone of voice. Then and only then, after the connection of love has been made, find out what remains to be talked about
One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy is precisely not to have to always figure it out for her man and guide him.She wants to be able to trust him in his direction. There are some times when she does want to figure it out for you, but far more often she feels your gift when you offer her a direction in your intimacy without her having to ask you for it or tell you what she wants.
Women do not become free by analyzing themselves. They become free by surrendering into love
If you are looking for a woman business partner, you probably want certain qualities in her, such as financial acumen, dependability, and the capacity to persist in the face of difficulties in order to achieve a goal. If you are looking for a woman friend,you probably want honesty, compassion, humor, and respect. If you are looking for a consort, you probably want a woman who freely embodies and expresses feminine energy and love.The more you seek a woman who gives you everything, the less you get of anything. Business skills are for the most part masculine skills. Friendship, in itself, is a neutral, nonsexual matter. And sexual passion requires a clear polarity between your masculine core and your woman's feminine energy. When you don't prioritize the purpose of your relationship, these different energies often cancel each other out, and you are left with a sexually neutralized alliance
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.
How many women you have sex with is your business.Before you consider more than one, however, it is best to prove your capacity with one. If you can't handle one—if deep communion, rejuvenating passion, and spiritual happiness are not the main features of your present intimacy—then you have not passed the test, and it is best to discipline your desire for other partners, since nobody is likely to be served.
A major part of mastering sexuality is learning to sustain greater and greater degrees of pleasure and desire in the body, without needing to rid yourself of the force because you can't handle it.
If a man wants a woman who doesn't want him, he cannot win. His neediness will undermine any possible relationship, and his woman will never be able to trust him. A man must determine whether a woman really wants him but is playing hard to get, or whether she really doesn't want him. If she doesn't want him, he should immediately cease pursuing her and deal with his pain by himself
You are only punishing yourself when you want to be in a relationship with a woman more than she wants to be in a relationship with you.
Sometimes a woman will make a request of her man in plain English,not to get him to do something, but to see if he is so weak that he will do it. In other words, she is testing his capacity to do what is right, notwhat she is asking for.
Always act to maintain your fullest consciousness. Always apply your sword of discrimination to your woman's requests, never taking them at face value, but always checking with your deepest wisdom and following the road of your highest truth, even if it seems to mean disappointing your woman.She won't be disappointed if she feels you are strong and clear in the true direction of your heart. And if she is disappointed by your deepest truth, you shouldn't be with her.
The thing your woman is complaining about is rarely the thing she is complaining about. It is a mistake to believe the content of what she is saying, and then respond to her complaints,point by point. When she complains about financial issues, she is usually feeling a lack in your masculine capacity to direct your life with clarity, purpose, integrity, and wisdom. The money itself is secondary. If you were poor but totally conscious, happy, full of integrity, fearless, humorous, loving and giving your fullest gift to the world and to your woman, she wouldn't complain about lack of money
You must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor. She usually is speaking in a very tangential, but revelatory, style. She is revealing your unconscious habits that prevent your fullest awakening in consciousness.
A woman sometimes seems to want to be the most important thing in her man's life. However, if she is the most important thing, then she feels her man has made her the number one priority and is not fully dedicated or directed to divine growth and service. She will feel her man's dependence on her for his happiness, and this will make her feel smothered by his neediness and clinging. A woman really wants her man to be totally dedicated to his highest purpose—and also to love her fully. Although she would never admit it, she wants to feel that her man would be willing to sacrifice their relationship for the sake of his highest purpose.
A man's track record means nothing to the feminine. A man could be perfect for ten years, but if he's an asshole for 30 seconds his woman acts like he's always been one. The feminine responds to the moment of energy, forgetting her man's history of past behavior. A man's past be havior is irrelevant to his woman's feeling in the moment. But men base much on another man's history of behavior, so they think their own track record should count for something. But to a woman, it doesn't. Remember, history is irrelevant to the feminine, so your mistake is as easily forgotten as your successes.As soon as you see she's upset, immediately assume happiness. Shock her with your love. Make her smile and laugh with your humor.Lick her neck, or lift her off the ground and pretend you're King Kong. Surprise her in some loving way, and the emotional slate will be wiped clean. Restore love and happiness in the present moment, don't justify your little mistake by referring to your long line of successes
How can you be more responsible? Not necessarily by doing more work. You become more responsible by knowing your deepest purpose, and then arranging your finances and spiritual life from that knowingness.
If you have ever tried to increase your income, or magnify your spiritual clarity, you know that the world will test you. Only through your persistence, fearlessness, and loving service does the world yield to your efforts.
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.
It is not time that kills delight, but familiarity, neutralization, and lack of purpose.
It only takes a moment of meeting a real challenge to bring a man back to full purpose, an emergency or a threat that demands his best. And it only takes a moment of praise and deep appreciation to re-evoke a woman's radiance.
Whenever you notice that you are mulling over your own problems, knotting energy into your body as tension, take that energy and create a gift for others.
The quality of your intent and the consistency and depth of your application determine the results of your direction in gifting—as well as your capacity to guide your woman's life into greater happiness and bodily surrender into love.
For men who have lost their sense of purpose, who don't know what their life is about, or who have trouble aligning their life with their truth, singing and dancing aren't the remedy. The cure for lack of purpose is to be challenged to live at your edge, since you have lost the capacity to live there by yourself.
Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth.
If you don't know your own direction in life, you certainly will stand on shaky ground offering your woman direction. So the first step is to align your own life so that, at least in this present moment, you are living at your edge, fully aligned with your sense of purpose.
The direction of growth of a relationship is primarily the man's responsibility. The energy of an intimacy—pleasure,sexual flow, and vitality—is primarily the woman's responsibility. A simplified way of saying this is that the man is responsible for the woman's depth of love, or openness of mood, and the woman is responsible for the man's "erection" or energy in the body.
The next stage of intimacy after personal independence has been attained is the mutual flow of gifting, or serving each other in love
Your masculine gift is to know where you are, where you want to be, and what you need to do to get there. If you don't know one of these, then you need to discover it by any means necessary.This vision is, essentially, the basic gift you have to offer your woman, as well as the world. If you have no higher vision than the day-to-day grind of housework, job, childcare, TV, and vacations, you are failing your birthright.
You must practice, daily, the art of feeling through your fear, feeling to your edge, and then living just beyond your edge, neither slinking into private consolation nor pushing so hard you disconnect from your source.
