The Open Curriculum

The Self · Level 2

The Way of the Superior Man

David Deida · 1997

Thesis

A man with a masculine core finds fulfillment not in a finished life or a perfect relationship but in living his deepest purpose with an open heart, and he meets women, work and desire best by holding to that purpose while loving fully, because attraction depends on the polarity between masculine and feminine energies rather than on sameness.

The main ideas

Stop hoping for completion

David Deida, a writer and teacher on spirituality and sexuality, published The Way of the Superior Man in 1997; a 20th-anniversary edition followed in 2017. Its short chapters, in eight parts, are addressed to people with a masculine core, which in Deida's framework includes most men and some women.

The book opens with a chapter titled "Stop Hoping for a Completion of Anything in Life." Deida argues that men live as if fulfillment lies ahead: once the work is done, the money made or the relationship settled, they will relax. But the work is never done, and the hope keeps them from being present in what they are doing now.

The second chapter, "Live With an Open Heart Even If It Hurts," sets the counterpart: rather than protecting himself from loss and disappointment, a man should stay open, feeling fully even when it is painful.

The mechanism, as Deida describes it, is that waiting for completion postpones life indefinitely, while living openly in the present makes every task and relationship a place to give fully.

Implication: stop treating the present as preparation for a future in which you will finally be at ease. Act fully in what you are doing now.

Purpose first

Deida's central instruction is that a man's purpose, his deepest mission in life, must come before his relationship. A man who makes a woman or a relationship the center of his life loses his direction, and with it much of what attracted her. A man who knows and lives his purpose can then give himself fully in love without dissolving into it.

To find that purpose, he must free himself from others' expectations. In the chapter "Live As If Your Father Were Dead," Deida argues that a man should keep his love for his father but live free of his father's approval and criticism, as if they no longer had any hold on him. The same applies to family obligations generally: "Don't use your family as an excuse to be less than you can be."

The mechanism is that a man who takes his direction from others never discovers his own, and one who subordinates his purpose to his relationship eventually resents the relationship.

Implication: identify your purpose and give it priority, and examine which of your choices are driven by the expectations of parents, partners or family rather than by your own deepest aims.

Your real edge

The chapter "Know Your Real Edge and Don't Fake It" argues that growth happens at a man's real edge: the precise point where fear actually limits him. Most men either fake an edge, pretending to be further along than they are, or stay comfortably behind it. Deida asks for honesty about where the edge really is, and steady pressure against it, neither pretending nor retreating.

The companion chapter, "Always Hold to Your Deepest Realization," asks a man to act from the deepest truth he knows, even when he could get by on less, and not to change his course merely to please someone else.

The mechanism is that faking strength or depth produces brittleness, while working honestly at the real limit produces actual growth.

Implication: be precise about where fear limits you now, and press against that point rather than performing a confidence you do not yet have.

Sexual essence and polarity

Deida's framework distinguishes masculine and feminine sexual essences from biological sex. Most men, he claims, about 80 percent, have a more masculine essence; about 10 percent have a more feminine essence and about 10 percent are balanced. The same variety exists among women.

Sexual attraction, in his account, depends on polarity, which he describes as the force of passion that arcs between masculine and feminine poles. Where both partners hold the same energy, attraction fades, however well they get along.

The mechanism is that polarity works like a charge between opposite poles: the more fully each partner inhabits their own essence, the stronger the attraction between them.

Implication: if passion in a relationship has faded while friendship remains, consider whether both partners have drifted toward the same energy.

The three stages

Deida describes a model of development in three stages. In the first stage, men and women play fixed, traditional roles, each dependent on the other. In the second stage, partners seek independence and equality, a 50/50 relationship in which each balances their own masculine and feminine sides. Deida treats this as progress, but only an intermediate stage, because the move toward sameness tends to produce sexual neutrality.

In the third stage, partners choose polarity freely rather than having it imposed, and each gives their deepest gift; Deida calls this intimate communion. The model, which he set out earlier in Intimate Communion (1995), is a sequence of individual and relational growth, not of historical progress alone.

Implication: equality and independence need not be abandoned to recover passion. The aim is to choose polarity consciously, on top of the freedom the second stage won.

Dealing with women

The book's second part addresses how a masculine man relates to a feminine partner. In a chapter titled "Women Are Not Liars," Deida argues that a woman's words often express her emotional state rather than literal claims, so a man who argues with each statement as if it were a factual proposition misses what she is communicating.

He advises against suggesting that a woman fix her own emotional problem by analysis, and asks men instead to stay present with her intensity, to a point. He argues that women often test a man's strength and commitment, and that a man should meet these tests with love and steadiness rather than frustration.

The ideal is a man who unites heart and spine. Deida rejects both the macho jerk, all spine and no heart, and the sensitive and caring wimp, all heart and no spine.

Implication: when a partner is upset, attend to the feeling being expressed rather than the literal content of each sentence, and hold steady rather than either withdrawing or giving way.

Body practices

The later parts of the book turn to physical and sexual practice. Deida teaches breathing techniques and, in a chapter titled "Ejaculate Up the Spine," a practice drawn from Eastern traditions: during sex, a man bypasses ejaculation and circulates sexual energy up the spine and through the body, aiming for a whole-body orgasm.

The final part, on the yoga of intimacy, treats sex itself as a spiritual practice, a way for both partners to open beyond their individual selves.

Implication: treat sexual energy as something to be cultivated and directed rather than simply discharged, and approach intimacy as a practice that can deepen over time.

Limits

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