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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of vulnerability and openness in relationships, suggesting that to truly connect, one must confront their fears and wounds.
David Deida's quote conveys a powerful message about the dual nature of relationships: on one hand, we can embrace vulnerability and openness, allowing ourselves to fully receive and appreciate the gifts that others bring into our lives. On the other hand, if we choose to protect ourselves by closing off and retaliating against vulnerability, we push away the very connections that could bring us fulfillment. It highlights the necessity of confronting our inner fears and emotional wounds to achieve deeper, more meaningful relationships.
In practice
During a discussion on emotional intelligence at a workshop.
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.
Whereas women are most turned on by a man's depth of presence,_x000D_ men are most turned on by a woman's radiance and energy:_x000D_ how she moves, moans, smiles, and opens in love.
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.
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'.
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.
If you are waiting for anything in order to live and love without holding back, then you suffer. Every moment is the most important moment of your life. No future time is better than now to let down your guard and love.
If you start to feel that you have given up too many parts of yourself to be with your partner, then one day you will end up looking for another person in order to reconnect with those lost parts.
Now let me be clear; millions of women around the world nurse their children beautifully for years without giving anybody else a hard time about it. Teat Nazis are a solely western upper-middle-class phenomenon occurring when highly ambitious women experience deprivation from outside modes of achievement.
This devaluing of listening is handed down from generation to generation. There are many children who don't have the experience of being listened to by their parents.
Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be surprise at the large number that re-enlist.
I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.
My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!
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