Sex

"Sex, like money or meditation, is best used to realize and express your natural openness, rather than to build a false home of childish security."  David Deida

Devotion

"Devotion to divine love doesn't eliminate the pleasures and pains of relationships.  You simply no longer depend on relationships to give you what you already are; blissful fullness surrendered as radiant love."  David Deida

Sex

"Sex, like money or meditation, is best used to realize and express your natural openness, rather than to build a false home of childish security."  David Deida

Openness

"All of your experiences are temporary and unique waves in this ocean of openness.   The raggedness of your sadness, the perkiness of your lover's nipple, the smell of coffee - all experiences wash through this openness coming and going, tragic and ecstatic, remembered or forgotten, and yet the openness remains, always and only, a home from which you cannot leave because it is your very nature." David Deida

Growth

"True growth involves the capacity to feel into, as, and through your emotions, exactly as they are, without trying to make them go away or pretend they don't exist.   When hurt, you grow in love by keeping your wounded heart open.  When threatened by intense pain or impending pressure, you grow in freedom by breathing the sensation fully rather than clamping down and holding your breath." 

Women's Relationship to the Masculine

3 Stages of Women's Relationship to the Masculine

1. Feel that this force is something outside of you, something more powerful than you.  You look to another as your savior.   You may find yourself depending on his guidance, support, knowledge, afraid to lose it, worried he might leave....you may find yourself playing the helpless victim to his ways, either grateful for his wisdom or tolerating his abuse - or both.
2. You "come into your own".  You discover and cultivate your own masculine directionality and consciousness.  You learn to make your own decisions, independent of a man or other outside influence.  You refuse to be a victim - but you also miss the pleasure of opening to a man's loving presence.  You become more autonomous but as a side effect of guarding yourself, you may feel less fulfilled sexually or emotionally.
3. You know that you don't depend on a man, that you can make your own decisions and guide your own life, and yet you are tired of keeping up your guard; you want to relax into your feminine body and emotions.   You want to stop protecting your heart.  You want to swoon in utter bliss of surrender, spiritually, emotionally and sexually.  You want to maintain the freedoms and capacities you've developed but you long to be entered and opened by massive masculine love.  You want to be ravished, swept off your feet by a trustable man, sexually and emotionally as a consort, an equal partner - not as a victim.  Eventually you realize that you can be ravished by the masculine force, bloomed physically and emotionally by a tangible invasion of love, whether or not you are with a man."        David Deida

The Masculine

"Because the masculine is oriented toward freedom of consciousness (rather than flow of love), it chooses purpose over relationship.   The masculine seeks freedom through accomplishing a mission.   Ultimately, this is the blissful freedom of open consciousness.   If you are a man with a masculine essence, then freedom - expressed through your devotion to your purpose - is your ultimate concern.   Your intimate relationship comes second.   Your woman may be the most important person in your life.  You may truly love her.  But if you deny your deepest purpose to spend time with her, your resentment will grow, despite your love."  David Deida

Love

"The fullness you seek as a woman is only approximated by filling your body with sweets, children and a good man.  Unless you also practice opening directly as love, you will oblige sweets, children and your man to give you something they cannot give you.   Even shopping cannot fill your heart's emptiness- at least not for very long!   Don't submit merely to your man's love or your children's love or the love you feel when you eat your favorite food.   To find true and lasting fulfillment, submit to the eternal love of which these are only approximates that come and go.   No matter how hurt your heart feels, no matter how adored you feel by your man, surrender open.   Open your heart, relax your body, breathe down to your toes.   Practice living as bright love, radiating love, breathing love, until romance and rejection are just ornaments you wear to suit your mood."   David Deida

Practice of Love

"The real practice of love goes beyond satisfaction and dissatisfaction.  Pleasure can be just as limiting as pain if you choose to luxuriate in the slop of your senses without also opening your heart beyond your personal emotional needs."   David Deida

Devotion

"Devotion is not to your partner as a separate person, but to the love that we opened ourselves to through the practice of our relationship.   Shift your attention from the hope of a future together to the present depth of love that is always the truth of our very being, intuited in our deep heart."  David Deida

Love

"Whatever the emotion - feel through it, breathe through it, relax through it, into the love that lies behind it.   And then, actively surrender to that love.   Open as that love.  Magnify love by loving."  David Deida

Love

"The desire to give and receive love underlies every emotional action and reaction, including hurt and anger, in yourself and in your partner."  David Deida

Surrender

"Surrender = letting go of your resistance to the total openness of who you are.   It means to open with no boundaries, emotional or physical, so you ease wide beyond any limiting sense of self you might have.   It means to love without limits.   It means to relax your guard so your lover can feel your core- authentic, unhidden, and undefended.  You practice to remain open and full, like the ocean.   Surrender is the doorway to the deepest possible sex."  David Deida

Sex

"Sex is fresh, alive and open-ended; An art form, a prayer, a way of contemplating and communing with infinite love, naked, unafraid, raw.   Sex is a means for expressing this mystery of love through the music of your body."  David Deida

Joy

"Our deepest nature, our true spirit, is full of love and boundless freedom.   When we lose touch with our fullness we begin to yearn  for that which seems missing.  Yet our life often feels dissatisfying because we are searching for a joy that can only emerge by being who we are, fully and deeply."   David Deida

Spirit

"I have it on good authority that Spirit does not belong to any particular church, but resides in the deepest part of your very own heart every time you love."   David Deida