Masculine men are attracted to forms of feminine energy: radiant women, beer, music, nature, etc. If a man tries to hide his attraction, it reveals some degree of shame with respect to his own sexual core.

If you are like most men, you probably hide the amount of sexual attraction you feel toward women every day. At work, on the street, and in the grocery store, you see women that turn you on. Sometimes you might want to have sex with them. But many times the feeling is more of a wave of refreshment washing through you. Seeing an especially radiant woman can fill your whole day with delight. A woman's exquisite scent can transport you to an enchanted paradise. A woman's smile can melt the moment into sheer beatitude.

There are two ways to deal with your daily "ahhh" of attraction to the feminine: wisely and foolishly. To respond wisely, you must understand why you are attracted to whom. Your sexual essence is always attracted to its energetic reciprocal. Masculine men are attracted to feminine women. Feminine men are attracted to masculine women. Balanced men are attracted to balanced women.

About 80% of all men have a more masculine sexual essence. These men, of which you are probably one, are attracted to all things feminine. Not just feminine women, but anything with feminine energy, anything which is radiant, alive, enlivening, relaxing, and moving. Feminine energy gets you out of your head and into your body. Music, beer, nature, women, they are all forms of feminine energy.

It is not just a visually gorgeous woman who attracts you. If a woman is free and radiant in her feminine energy, you are probably attracted; sometimes more attracted, sometimes less attracted, but always attracted, at least enough to steal a glance at her form. This attraction is not only natural, but healthy. It is a sign of polarity, the same kind of natural flow of polarization by which electricity flows between the positive and negative poles of a battery. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's why there are men and women. The nature of nature is polarity, from the magnetism that flows between the north and south poles of the earth, to the attraction that flows between your masculine core and the feminine radiance of a woman.

If you feel uncomfortable with your attraction to women, you are probably uncomfortable with your own masculine essence. If you feel it is demeaning for a woman to be the "object" of your polar attraction, then you have probably disowned your masculine core. You have energetically emasculated yourself by condemning and suppressing your native desires. You are negating your sexual essence, rather than being at home with it.

Any negative attitude you have about your attraction to women is a sign of fear; somewhere along the line you learned that such attraction was "bad" or "evil." Your attraction to women, all kinds of women, is natural, normal, and beautiful. In fact, it is an aspect of the same desire that will ultimately lead you toward spiritual freedom.

Your desire for a woman is an aspect of your desire for pleasurable oneness. Your confession of desire is a confession of your desire to embrace life. To embrace life, to relax into oneness so that all opposites, including masculine and feminine, find their unity in love, is to be spiritually free. Eventually you will recognize that all desire is an aspect of your native impulse to give love. From beginning to end, your attraction to women can be seen as the essential gesture of your heart, your desire for love and unity.

If you are a man with a masculine sexual essence, you will always feel sexual polarity with anyone who animates feminine energy. You may feel this attraction many times a day, with many women. Enjoy it. Women are a blessing! The feminine, even in the non-human forms of a lush tropical island, a cold beer, or your favorite tune, could make the difference between dreariness and ahhh-ing in ecstasy. Our acceptance of sexual attraction, even with music and places, is at the root of our capacity to experience bodily pleasure.

Sexual attraction, however, is very different from having sex. There is a big difference between choosing to be intimate with a woman and simply being attracted to her energy and radiance. Intimacy is a choice between people who want to commit to loving and serving one another. Whereas the zing of attraction is a choiceless natural flow of energy between your masculine core and feminine energy, wherever it is found. When a woman is relaxed in her feminine radiance, she is like beautiful music or a warm ocean breeze. You don't need to have sex with her to savor inexpressible joy.

If you are like most men, a radiant woman can inspire you for hours or days. Remember, the desire she arouses in you is a blessing in itself. Acting on that desire and pursuing her is another matter entirely, dependent on whether such an action would truly serve both of you or not. But the mere inspiration felt while beholding a radiant woman is one of nature's gifts to you: the gift of feminine blessing.

The next time you come upon a woman who sends a thrill through your body, relax into the thrill. Let her waves of feminine energy move through your body like a deep massage. Breathe fully, without resisting the joy her sighting affords you. Breathe the joy all through your body, down to your toes. Don't stare at her, don't even interact with her. But when you see her, and you experience your attraction, fully allow the energy of attraction to move freely through your body. Learn to magnify and sustain your desire, so your whole body and breath open and deepen by its force. As you behold her, receive her vision as a blessing.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

The essential masculine ecstasy is in the moment of release from constraint. This could occur when facing death and living through it, succeeding in (and thus being released from) your purpose, and in competition (which is ritual threat of death). The masculine is always seeking release from constraint into freedom. The feminine often doesn't understand these masculine ways and needs.

Your basic motivation is to be released from constraint and experience the freedom on the other side. What are some of the most common forms of masculine ecstasy? Orgasm is one. The typical masculine orgasm, as you probably know, involves a build-up of tension, or constraint, until the dam finally breaks, and your tension and energy are released. The post orgasmic state is one of death-like peace, an emptiness akin to a blissful oblivion. The masculine is always seeking this release in one way or another.

Most sports provide this masculine thrill of release from constraint into freedom. In football, for instance, the team with the ball is constrained by the other team that is lined up in front and ready to block them. The challenge is to break through the line and carry the ball to freedom. People with masculine essences become insanely emotional during this ritual of challenge and release from constraint into freedom. And if the freedom is achieved, men will shout and cheer, as if their deepest heart desire has occurred--and it has. This breakthrough into freedom, however it occurs, is the main motive of the masculine. All masculine goals--at work, on the meditation cushion, or on the football field--are directed toward more freedom.

The typical masculine desire for freedom involves the feeling of death, which is the ultimate masculine fear and freedom, in one way or another. Orgasm is actually called petite mort or "little death" in French. You say that you hope your favorite football team "kills" the other team, and you celebrate your financial "killings" with great glee.

You are probably also familiar with darker aspects of the masculine desire for freedom. War, which is motivated by the desire for freedom, is a quintessential masculine pursuit. Most sports are ritualized war, but actual war itself resonates with the core of most men. Even movies about war--men being at their edge, giving it all they've got, up against death itself, motivated by a higher cause--evoke intense emotion in men. The capacity to face death for the sake of freedom, whether actually in war or ritually on the football field or chess board, is the ultimate masculine act, evoking men's deepest emotions.

The same capacity to face death is necessary for spiritual freedom. To live free in spirit, you must be willing to face your fears and let go of anything that limits your love. The attachment to comfort and security is what limits most men in their capacity to make a spiritual touchdown. The other team is your own need for private security. You are fighting a war with your own self-sense. To be free is to die to your need to be a separate self. What, then, could be constrained? Ego death, absolute surrender to the point of oneness, is the ultimate freedom. Few men ever release themselves enough to relax in this depth of freedom because they are afraid of absolutely no stress. No stress means no thoughts, no sense of protected self, no mission to accomplish. The end of the masculine game.

Yet, this stress-free, unprotected end of the game is exactly what you are always seeking, through orgasm, financial killings, or winning a war. You are willing to experience lesser forms of masculine "death" and ecstasy, but you are unwilling to face the death of your separate self-sense, and finally be the freedom you have only allowed yourself to taste in moments.

Men will always enjoy facing forms of "death" and coming out the other side into freedom, whether in the form of boxing matches, cop movies, martial arts, orgasm, philosophy (the stress releasing "ah" of insight), or ego death. You must own the primacy of your desire to be free. Then, you can enjoy the lesser forms of masculine ecstasy, but dedicate yourself to its highest form: transcendence of the fear of death by facing the limiting stress of your own self-sense, and relaxing through it, into the absolute freedom you have always intuited at your core, but sought through only temporary means.

The feminine, on the other hand, is not seeking freedom, but love. A woman's bliss is not in emptiness, but in fullness. Her means is not release, but surrender. This is why a woman is upset when a man begins snoring after orgasm. He has finally achieved, in post-ejaculative emptiness, the blissful freedom from stress he has been seeking all day, one way or another. She, however, is hoping to experience love and fullness through sex, and a snoring man just doesn't do it for her.

The feminine seeks fullness and abhors emptiness. She will fill her empty shelves with nicknacks, seashells, and pebbles collected from special places. When she does not feel full of love, she seeks to fill herself with ice cream, chocolate, or conversation, rather than empty her stress through tv or ejaculation, as men often do. Her dark side enjoys the emotional aggression in soap operas and romance novels, rather than the physical aggression of boxing matches and porno movies. She longs to fill her sense of spiritual emptiness by surrendering her heart and being filled with love. Her basic means toward spiritual unity is surrender into the devotional fullness of unbounded love, rather then breaking through the fear of ego-death into the unconstrained infinity of absolute freedom.

In the end, the feminine search for love and the masculine search for freedom reach the same destination: the unbounded and infinite ground of being who you are, which is both absolute love and freedom. But until you finally relax into the place you always are, your woman will continue to surrender--to you, chocolate, and shopping--in the hope of being filled with love, and you will continue to release yourself--through television, orgasm, and financial success--in the hope of being emptied of stress into unconstrained freedom.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

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.

Imagine that a man must go off to war. He hugs his woman good-bye. She is crying.

"Please don't go," she begs.

"You know that I must," he answers.

They look each other deeply in the eyes.

"You know that I love you," he says to her.

"Yes. I know. And I also know you must go," she replies, and another gush of tears bursts from her heartbroken face.

He turns and walks out the door, to his necessary destiny, as his woman, full of pain and pride, watches him disappear.

This exaggeratedly dramatic scene captures a profound energetic principle: Although your woman seems to want to be the most important thing in your life, she actually can trust and love you more if she is not.

A man's highest purpose is his priority, not his intimacy. Your woman knows this. Deep inside, she really wants it to be this way. The woman in the scene above would actually feel strange if her man suddenly said, "I've changed my mind. You are more important to me than the freedom of mankind. You are the most important thing in my life, and I don't care if my service to humanity is needed elsewhere, so I'm staying here with you." Even though part of her would feel glad, a deeper part of her would feel deflated, emptied, let down.

And yet, as her man leaves the door to accomplish his mission, she cries, wishing he didn't have to go. But he does have to go. And she knows it.

If a woman has become the point of your life, you are lost. You have a gift to give, a purpose to fulfill, a deep heart-impulse that moves you. If you have lost touch with this impulse, then you will begin to feel ambiguous in your life. You will make decisions because you have to, but they won't be guided by a deeper sense of purpose. You may take on your woman's purposes because they are stronger than yours. You may adapt your need for direction to externally regulated purposes, becoming a cogwheel company man or a dead-ended husband and parent, without leaving yourself open to your own greatest vision.

Be careful not to substitute default responsibilities for true purpose. It is easy to fill your day with chores and obligations, coming up for air only long enough to watch some tv or have quick sex. It's also easy to give up entirely on living a life of absolute commitment to truth, settling for the common life of absolute commitment to work, family, intimacy, and friends. Yet, you can only be a superior professional, father, husband, and friend when you are living these relationships as gifts given from your core, not as what's left over because you don't have the guts to discover your core impulse and live on its basis.

If you aren't living from your core, giving your fullest gifts, everyone will feel your lack of true purpose. Your kids will challenge your authority. Your colleagues will take advantage of you. Your friends won't expect much of you. And your wife won't trust you.

Even though she may seem to want to be the center of your life, she doesn't. She wants you to know the center of your life, however, so she can trust you. Even if you must go off somewhere without her to fulfill your purpose, like a man going to war, she will be able to trust you and love you, as long as your purpose is real and true.

If you are always watching tv, reading magazines, or gambling, your woman will feel your trivialization of life. She will feel you settling for less, and will resent the frivolity of your will. But if have discovered the purpose springing from your deepest core, and if your entire life is aligned by this deep purpose, your woman will feel the truth of your choices. Though she may not always like your choices, she will love them, and she will love you for having the courage to live your truth. She can relax and trust you because, even if you enjoy watching tv, reading magazines, and gambling now and then, she knows that you would never compromise your highest purpose in life--which includes, but is not centered around nor dependent on, your relationship with her.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

Some women are hotter, some are cooler. In general, blonde, light-skinned, Japanese, and Chinese women are cooler. Dark skinned, brunette, red-headed, Korean, and Polynesian women are hotter. Even though a man might choose to remain in a committed intimacy with one woman, his needs for different temperatures of feminine energy may change over time. A hot woman who aroused his passion several years ago may irritate him now. A cooler woman who soothed his heart several years ago may seem tiresome to him now. By understanding how different temperatures of feminine energy may affect him, a man could make more skillful life choices without confusion.

You probably have certain "tastes" in women. You might prefer blondes. Or Asian women. Or perhaps you have a special preference for redheads. Your tastes come from many sources: your early childhood experience, cultural influence, and perhaps even your genetics. But one aspect of "taste" has to do with how a woman affects you with her energetics.

Some women are cooling. Being in their company feels like a cool drink of ice tea on a hot sunny day. You might have referred to a woman, for instance, who is an "icy blonde" or who has "cool blue eyes."

Other women are hot. They are fiery, tempestuous, and quick of temper. You might have spoken of a "fiery red-head" or a "hot-blooded Latina."

Of course, not all redheads or Latinas are hot, nor are all blondes cool. Nevertheless, there is something true enough to be said about a woman's "temperature." Most men have a good intuitive sense of the difference between a woman who is cool and soothing and a woman who is hot and exciting, regardless of how they describe it. And this difference has a lot to do with why men have different tastes for women, and why your taste could change over time.

More than simple psychological preference determines your taste. Energy plays a major role. Sometimes you can be with a beautiful woman who just doesn't do it for you. You can see she is beautiful, you can understand why your friends find her attractive, but she just doesn't suit your taste. Different women offer different kinds of feminine energy. And one of the simplest forms of this difference is the difference between hot and cool feminine energy.

To help understand this, you could look at your relationship with food. Some men thrive on hot Mexican peppers or spicy Szechwan food, while other men are healed by soothing and cooling food, like salads, sweets, or milk. And any man's needs for different kinds of food may change over time. The same is true of his needs for feminine energy.

If you are a particularly easygoing man, perhaps a man who has difficulty getting motivated, then a hot woman is probably better for you. Her fiery nature can heat up your system and get you moving. On the other hand, if you tend to be quick tempered and hot yourself, you might find that a more cooling woman heals you and brings a balance to your body and psyche.

Depending on your health, your lifestyle, your work demands, and your emotional state, you may need different types of energy at different times. The important thing is to know there is a difference, so that you can be conscious of the choice you are making and how it might affect you.

You may begin to doubt your current intimate relationship if you don't understand how your needs for feminine energy change. When your life seems dreary and boring, a more spicy and hot woman will probably appeal to you. She will provide you with the fire you are missing. However, when your life is extremely challenging and you feel burnt out, a hot woman might be too much. You may be more attracted to the soothing gaze and touch of a cool woman.

Imagine you are married to a hot woman. For years you have enjoyed her passion, been amused by her anger, and been delighted by how quickly she responds sexually. Then, your career takes a turn. You begin working with people all day, under a tight deadline. You are dealing with people's emotions and resistance 50 hours a week. You notice that you are sweating most of the day. You are under the gun. Your life has become quite hot, as if you are spending the day in a pressure cooker.

You go home to your hot wife. She is rubbing herself all over you, eager to get it on. You feel like relaxing. You tell her you need a few minutes to take it easy, so she changes into her workout clothes and goes to the spa to flex and pump her supple body. Meanwhile, her best friend comes to visit. You open the door and invite her in the house. She moves so much more slowly than your wife. Her presence seems soothing and relaxing to you, even though she's not the kind of woman you are usually attracted to.

The quality of this woman's voice seems so refreshing. She sees you are tired and, because she's known you for years, she asks if she can rub your shoulders. She puts her hands on your shoulders, and, before she even begins to gently massage you, you feel waves of cool, rejuvenating energy pour into your body. You sigh with relief. After a brief massage she says good-bye. She'll come back and visit your wife another day.

Your wife comes back home, full of energy, and she begins bouncing around the house taking care of things. She yells at you for not telling her friend to stay and wait. Then, seeing your fatigue, she apologizes and begins kissing you passionately. Her hands quickly go to your crotch, but you're still thinking about her friend, remembering how refreshing her energy was, wondering what the heck you're going to do about it.

What you should do about it is this: understand what is happening. You used to really enjoy your wife's spicy temperament, but now that you are boiling all day at work, you need to be balanced by a cooler energy. This doesn't necessarily mean you need to end your marriage. It doesn't necessarily mean you need to have sex with her cool friend. What it means is that you need to find a way to balance your life.

You can change your diet to a more cooling diet. You can keep your body cooler, wearing caps on sunny days, and wearing lighter more breathable clothing. You can take soothing walks around lakes or along rivers, and let the water absorb the heat of your day. Or, you can receive cooling energy directly from a woman, even non-sexually.

You could get a professional massage, for instance, from a woman with cooling energy. Sometimes all you need to do is spend a little time in the same room with a cool woman. In any case, it's important to realize that your needs for different kinds of energy will change throughout your life. It's something you will need to learn how to deal with. It's important that, in the meantime, you don't mistake a changing energy need for a reason to end your marriage. It's also important to know that you can receive energy from different women in entirely non-sexual ways, if you so choose.

In the end, you must make your own choice. When one man's energy needs change and he finds himself getting the energy he needs from the woman in the office next door --the kind of energy that he isn't getting from his wife--then he might end up having an affair, or getting divorced. Another man might communicate his changing energy needs to his wife, and then find that she is more than able to creatively provide him with the flavor of feminine energy that most heals and rejuvenates him.

Don't confuse your energy needs with a commitment in love, though. Energy needs are relatively easy to balance. You can probably get the energy you need from a masseuse or a change in diet. If you react drastically, and decide to leave your wife for a woman whose energy enlivens you more, you may be surprised when, in a few months, your energy needs change again, and you realize you have made a very superficial choice.

You must decide for yourself how to deal with your need for the particular feminine energy that fills your body with life, heals your rough edges, and soothes your warrior spirit. But energetic rejuvenation won't make any fundamental difference unless, at your core, your heart is growing more free, open, and loving. A cool glass of fruit juice, a vacation in Hawaii, or a redhead may temporarily balance your physiology, but only persistent commitment to the practice of love can take you through your fears, through your sense of separateness, and bring you to the absolute ease of being that is your deepest truth. Remember your priority, and decide what you need to do.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

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, not what she is asking for. In such cases, if the man does what his woman asks, she will be disappointed and angry. The man will have no idea why she is so angry or what could possibly please her. He must remember that her trust is engendered not by him fulfilling her requests, but by him magnifying love, consciousness, and success in their lives, in spite of her requests.

This is a true story. A somewhat quiet and sensitive man was learning sexual yoga. In this yoga it is important to learn to bypass ejaculation, circulating the stimulated energy through the body and heart in a kind of whole body orgasm, rather than losing energy in a spasm of ejaculative release. He was also learning to express his animal-like passion instead of always remaining calm and passive during sex.

One day, this man and his wife were driving in their car. Passing a park, they spontaneously decided to stop the car, run into the woods, and make wild love on the grass beneath the trees. Neither of them had even made love outdoors before. Here they were, clawing at each other, growling, shrieking, passionately aggressive with one another. It was a real breakthrough for them.

Suddenly, the man realized he would ejaculate unless they slowed down for a few seconds. "Stop moving for a bit," he told his wife. "If we keep going like this, I'm going to come."

But the woman kept moving, even more vigorously. "I want you to come inside of me," she begged. "I want you to fill me with your seed."

The man had a split second to decide which way he was going to go, and he decided to let go and give his woman her wish. He ejaculated inside of her, and relaxed.

But when he looked at his wife's face, she was clearly upset. "What's wrong?" he asked her.

"You came," she answered.

"But you said you wanted me to fill you with my seed, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I said that in order to feel that you were strong enough not to!"

The man felt depleted and empty. He felt he had failed in his practice of sexual yoga. He knew that ejaculating had not been the right thing to do in the moment, but he had succumbed to his wife's wish. Now, she was disappointed. When she said to fill her with his seed, she really wanted to feel that he was strong enough to maintain what he knew was right, and not ejaculate. That would have been much more erotic to her, more polarizing, and more trust producing than his obedience to her request to ejaculate.

Your woman probably tests you in this way all the time. Her ultimate desire is to feel your full consciousness, your trustable integrity, your unshakable love, and your confidence in your mission. Yet she will rarely ask you directly for these things. She would rather try to distract you from your truth, and then feel that she cannot--that you hold fast to your truth while you continue to love her.

If you are a weak man, this feminine trait of wanting one thing and asking for another will piss you off. You will wonder, "Why don't you just tell me what you really want, instead of saying one thing and meaning another, expecting me to figure it out?" This is the view of a man who does not understand that women are an incarnation of the divine feminine. And the divine feminine settles for nothing less than the divine masculine.

The divine masculine is consciousness. A superior man practices maintaining full consciousness in all situations. If ejaculation results in a decrease of your fullness, a diminution of your presence, a collapse of your consciousness, then you should not ejaculate. Even if your woman says she wants you to. Especially when your woman says she wants you to.

Your woman will ask you to do all kinds of things, every day. Do not allow yourself to be swayed from your truth, from the direction of your heart. Underneath your woman's superficial request is her actual desire and need: she wants your passionate fullness to pervade her, she wants to be able to trust the unshakability of your loving, she wants to feel in her bones that your divine masculine presence is stronger than your distractibility.

Your woman is a form of the goddess, taunting you, testing you, seducing you, ready to chop your head off with her wrath if you are weak and ambiguous in your truth, and ready to surrender to the force of your loving if you are steady and brilliant in your loving consciousness.

Know that your woman is always pleased most by your strength in love, freedom, and consciousness. If her requests and desires can sway you from what she knows is your highest goal, she will be angry and disappointed with you, even though she asked for it. 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.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

In general, youth in a woman bespeaks radiant, unobstructed, and refreshing feminine energy. A young woman tends to be less compromised by masculine layers of functional protection built up over years of need. Traditionally, young women were understood to offer a man a particularly rejuvenative quality of energy. Older women may maintain, or even increase, the freshness and radiance of their energy, but it is rare.

Imagine you are driving your eighteen year old babysitter home one evening. She is so fresh, so innocent, so alive. You can feel that she is totally open to you. You consider all the consequences. You look at her radiant skin, her clear eyes, her incredible smile. The way she moves, talks, and laughs makes you happy and fills you with energy. You arrive at her home. She says goodnight, leaves the car, and enters her house. You sit in the car for a moment, breathing slowly and deeply, smiling.

There is something unique about being with a young woman, and all men with masculine sexual essences feel it. You feel rejuvenated by her. Just sitting next to a young woman can make you happy and fill you with life force. You might have nothing in common. But that doesn't matter. It is her energy that delights and inspires you.

Uncompromised, youthful, feminine energy turns you on and opens your heart. You actually feel happier around young women. You feel more energetic, alive, and loving. As women get older, they typically take on more and more masculine tasks and responsibilities in our culture, so their radiance begins to decrease. In other cultures, this is less true. Women maintain and even deepen their radiance. But even in these cultures with more wisdom, it is understood that young women provide a special energy that is fresh, uncompromised, and enlivening.

Our culture reduces this youthful energy to a sexual thing, whereas it is actually a whole body transmission of energy, affecting the heart as much as or more than the genitals. In other cultures, young women were honored for their gifts of spiritual rejuvenation, tending to holy sites and performing sacred arts, not just ogled for sexual titillation. As a man, it is your responsibility to honor the heart-rejuvenative gift of a young woman, without violating this honor by imposing your sexual desire on her.

If sexual desire arises, fine. Circulate it through your body. Learn to conduct the magnification of desire without needing to throw it off in a spasm of release. 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.

When you find yourself really enlivened by a young woman, breathe in her fragrance. Breathe in her energy. Relax your body and allow your heart to open in her presence. Take in her beauty through every pore in your body. Allow love to radiate from your heart toward her. Maintain a respectful formality so that she is free and empowered to give her gift, without being complicated by your personal agenda. Use the energy she has given you in your own service to others, passing the gifts of heightened aliveness and passionate heart into all of your relationships, so that all beings may benefit by the delight you have received from this woman, who, for now, manifests the youthful gifts of uncompromised radiance and life force.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

Any man with a masculine sexual essence will desire sexual variety. Even if he loves his intimate partner and is completely committed to her, he will naturally want sexual occasions with other women besides his chosen intimate partner. How a man deals with his desire for other women is up to him. He should know, however, that there is no way to avoid such desires. He should also know that acting on such desires, though temporarily enlivening and exhilarating, often ends up complicating his life far more than the occasion itself is worth.

Even if you are totally committed to your intimate partner in love, you probably think about having sex with other women. Even if you are totally fulfilled by the sex you share with your woman, you probably still desire sex with other women. Your desire for other women is not a reflection of any lack in your intimacy, it is a reflection of your nature as a masculine sexual being.

But this desire is not an excuse for promiscuity, any more than your enjoyment of tv is an excuse for becoming an obese couch potato. Desire springs from many sources, such as your addictions, your biological heritage, your childhood conditioning, and your open heart. To live a life of impeccable integrity, you must discriminate the source of your desire, so you know when to discipline your behavior for everyone's benefit, including yours.

The fact is you probably want to have sex with other women besides your intimate partner; how you respond to this fact is a reflection of your purpose in life. If your purpose is to enjoy physical pleasure no matter the consequences, then you should screw as many women as you want. If your purpose is to be a nice boy and please "mommy," then you should do what makes your woman happy. 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 those whom your actions affect.

It's your call. 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.

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.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

If a man is very masculine by nature, then he will be attracted to a very feminine woman, who will compliment his energy. The more neutral or balanced he is, the more balanced he will prefer his woman. And, if a man is more feminine by nature, his energy will be complemented by the strong direction and purposiveness of a more masculine woman. By understanding their own needs, men can learn to accept the "whole package" of a woman. For instance, a more masculine man can expect that any woman who really turns him on and enlivens him will also be relatively wild, undisciplined, "bonkers," chaotic, prone to changing her mind and "lying." Still, from an energetic perspective, this kind of woman will be much more healing and inspiring to him than a more balanced or neutral woman who is steady, reasonable, "trustworthy," and able to say what she means in a way he can understand.

You have probably met a woman who seemed fantastic, only to discover she has some emotional weirdness that you don't really want to deal with. She seemed incredibly sexy, but also a bit "bonkers" or crazy, saying one thing one moment and another the next. You have probably also met some very reasonable and trustworthy women who don't seem to constantly change their mind and, in fact, with whom you could have good conversations that don't end up frustrating you. Although you may love these women and enjoy spending time with them, they don't arouse your passion as much as the women whose words you wouldn't trust to remain true for an afternoon, but who move their body in a way that drives you wild.

"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" many men have wondered. But, of course, it is precisely those ways in which a woman is least like a man that most attract you sexually, if you have a masculine sexual essence. A woman's feminine shine, the energy that moves her body, her utterly refreshing spontaneity and mystery, not to mention her delightful smile, are what attract you. And the more feminine a woman is at her core, the less she is likely to evidence strong masculine traits, such as speaking clearly and unequivocally about thoughts and desires, rather than primarily expressing her feelings of the moment.

A woman with a more feminine sexual essence will say she loves you one moment, and then, when you have done something you are not even aware of, she will say she hates you. This is the beauty of the feminine; to her, the masculine grid of words and events is less relevant than the fluidity of relationship and feeling. Thank God for such women, who make no apologies for their oceanic depth and riptides of emotion.

You are always attracted to your sexual reciprocal. So, if you have a more feminine sexual essence, you will be attracted to a more masculine woman. You have probably seen men and women in couples like this. The man is more radiant and lively than the woman. The woman is more committed to her direction in life than the man. The relationship is more important to the man, whereas the woman likes to be left alone much of the time. These are signs of a relationship where the man has a more feminine essence and the woman's essence is more masculine.

Other men, with more neutral sexual essences, prefer women who are also more neutral, neither particularly masculine nor feminine. This kind of couple can talk about anything, and they like talking about everything. They share hobbies, friends, even career goals. Though equally loving, this kind of couple is usually less sexually passionate than highly polarized couples. It would be unusual to hear about this kind of neutral or balanced couple yelling at each other, throwing pillows, wrestling each other down to the floor, and passionately making love right there and then.

Through lack of understanding, you might have depolarized yourself and your partner into a relationship that seems neutral, but actually isn't. Only about 10% of couples are actually the neutral or balanced type in their true essence. Another 10% of couples are made up of a feminine man and masculine woman. But if you are like 80% of couples, you have a masculine sexual essence and your woman has a feminine one. That is, her feminine way frustrates you, drives you crazy, inspires you, or turns you on, more often than she is simply your sexually neutral buddy.

The false neutralization, or depolarization, of relationships is one of the main reasons that couples break up. The rejuvenative charge of sexual loving becomes weak, while all the things that irritate you and your partner remain just as strong as ever. The secret is not to try to change your woman's irritating feminine ways, but to help cultivate the depth and rejuvenative power of her feminine blessings.

If you are like most men, you have probably minimized your appreciation of the full spectrum of your woman's feminine energy by numbing yourself to the aspects that most irritate you. For instance, she doesn't drive you crazy any more because you've learned not to take her too seriously. Perhaps you have learned to seem attentive while not really listening to her endless chat. Or, maybe you have learned to give her a daily dose of affection as a way to quell her ongoing need for more intimate time than you really want to spend with her.

This is the wrong approach. The feminine is an infinite source of love, inspiration, and power, both physically and spiritually. Feminine women are connected with the elements of nature in ways that more masculine people, such as yourself, usually aren't. Feminine women may seem wild, untrustable, or even irresponsible from a man's perspective, but such women are simply free of the masculine need to live in a world governed by reason and control.

Feminine women are free to feel flows of natural livingness that you are unable to feel. They are free to be moved by currents of energy of which most men are unaware. They are free to allow their bodies to be transparent to the flow of their hearts, uncontrolled and undirected by goals and structure. The feminine body is free to be moved by love, and by life itself. And this is highly valued by most men; to behold a woman free in her expression of bodily ecstasy is one of the most awesome visions most men have had.

Men will even pay to watch a woman's body express ecstasy, even if she is only faking it, like in a porn movie. In our secular culture, most men are only familiar with sexual ecstasy, and so it is this form of free bodily expression that men pay to see, in movies, on the stage, and in private rooms around the world. However, in cultures that admit a greater degree of spiritual revelation, women's bodies are viewed with the same masculine awe, but for a different kind of expression: not merely for their capacity to express sexual ecstasy in a way that is foreign, and unbelievably attractive, but also for their capacity to express spiritual ecstasy.

Temple dancers in India, for instance, are traditionally feminine women trained from an early age to combine skill and heartfelt devotion in a style of dance which frees their bodies to be moved by divine force, bringing tears to many men's eyes and openness to their hearts. A woman who is at home with her feminine essence is at home with energy, be it sexual or spiritual. For such a woman, there is no disconnection between sex and spirit. Her sexual surrender, if she is with a worthy man, is the same as her devotional or spiritual surrender. She opens from head to toe, receiving divine love-force deep throughout her body, so that she is rippled, arched, and undulated by its boundless flow.

More masculine or neutral women are less likely to allow such freedom of bodily expression. Yet it is a woman's expression of this kind of ecstasy that invites a masculine man to leave his heady world of thoughts and goals and celebrate the moment, in the flesh, through the heart. Whether in a strip joint or a sacred temple, men have been attracted for thousands of years to witness the feminine embodiment of ecstasy. Women are literally worshipped in such occasions. Men shout their praises to the goddess dancing before them in ways they would never do in public. The fullest of such occasions is completely sexual and completely spiritual at the same time. Men leave such an event transformed and inspired by the blessing power of free feminine embodiment. This is one of the unique gifts of the feminine form, of woman.

This is what you get in a woman with a feminine sexual essence: A woman who is all over the place emotionally. A woman whom you can depend on to change her mind. A woman who is much more sensitive than you are to the flow of subtle energies in your relationship. A woman who brings you delight and awe in the ecstasy, both sexual and spiritual, that her body expresses so freely and beautifully.

It is all one package. You can't have a woman who is always logically consistent, reasonable, and on time, and who also fills your heart and flesh with energy, instantly and throughout the day, with her bodily expressed love and ecstasy. She can animate reasonable masculine energy when she wants, but if she has a feminine core, much of the time she will want to dance, in wrathful anger or enchanting joy, beyond the need for reason.

So, choose a woman who is your complimentary opposite, which for most men means a more feminine woman. It is only a feminine woman who can give the gifts that you, as a masculine man, need. Along with these gifts, however, come the relative chaos and emotional weather storms that most men dread. Realize these are aspects of the same energy that turns you on. In fact, you can learn to be turned on by her dance of anger as much as by her slinky purr. This capacity is one of your gifts to her. You can learn to stand free and strong no matter what emotion she displays. You won't leave, turn away, or dissociate in disgust. You can meet her enormous energy and stand full, loving her through the storm, embracing her complete feminine power, dark and light.

You will only be happy in intimacy if you choose a woman who is your sexual reciprocal as a partner. And you will only be able to survive such an intimacy if her dark and light sides are equally embraceable to you. It takes time to develop such skill and strength, but in doing so you learn to provide your woman, as well as the world, with a man whose gifts are uncompromised by fear of feminine power and chaos.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

Asking a woman to analyze or try to fix her own emotions is a negation of her feminine core, which is pure energy in motion, like the ocean. She can learn to surrender her mood to God, she can learn to open her heart in the midst of closure, she can learn to relax her edges and trust love, but she will never "fix" anything by analyzing her "problem."

As a man, you can learn a lot about yourself by clearly analyzing your problems. One of the best ways for you to grow is to use your discrimination, feeling what is causing unnecessary pain in your life, and then changing whatever you need to change. You may notice, for instance, that you are unhappy with your job. You think about it. You realize it is because your boss is taking advantage of you, and you haven't said anything to him. So, you determine that the best way to deal with the problem is to walk up to the boss and say something. You get up the guts, you walk up to the boss, you get it off your chest, and it's over. Problem fixed. Finished. You learned how important it is to talk to your boss, and you've cleared up all the old stuff that has been burdening you.

You probably apply the same system to your intimacy. You realize that you're not happy about something your wife is doing. Maybe you talk about it with your friends or think about it yourself. You realize that your wife isn't caring for you like she used to. So, you determine that you'll be happier if your wife cooks more and massages you more. You then think maybe your wife wants you to do something more for her. So you tell her what you want from her, and then you ask her, "What do you want from me?" You tell her to think about it and let you know.

This seems fair to a man, but it is not. It is a no-win situation for your woman. Why? Because what she really wants is a man who can figure it out for himself. She wants a man who loves her, and escorts her with his loving, without having to ask her what she wants all the time.

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.

Suppose it's your woman's birthday. If it were your birthday, you'd love it if your woman would do anything you wanted. So you think she'd like that, too. You say to her, "Happy Birthday! For your birthday, we can do anything you want. We can go anywhere and do anything. And I'll do anything for you. What do you want to do?"

This is exactly the opposite of most women's idea of an ideal birthday present. Most women would get far more excited if you were to say, "You've got 30 minutes to pack your bags. Don't ask me where we're going, but we'll be gone for the weekend. Everything is taken care of. Just pack your bags, and leave the rest to me. I'm going to give you the best birthday you've ever had."

One of the deepest feminine desires in intimacy (though not in business or simple friendship) is to be able to relax and surrender, knowing that her man is taking care of everything. Then, she can simply enjoy without having to plan it all herself and tell her man what to do. She can be pure energy, pure motion, pure love, without having to analyze all the options and decide which ones are best. She can enjoy her man taking responsibility for the direction, so she can be what the feminine is: pure energy.

Like the ocean, the native state of the feminine is to flow with great power and no single direction. The masculine builds canals, dams, and boats to unite with the power of the feminine ocean and go from point A to point B. But the feminine moves in many directions at once. The masculine chooses a single goal and moves in that direction. Like a ship cutting through a vast ocean, the masculine decides on a course and navigates the direction: the feminine energy itself is undirected but immense, like the wind and deep currents of the ocean, ever changing, beautiful, destructive, and the source of life.

This same principle applies to problems in intimacy. Any time you try to force your woman to be more like a ship than an ocean, you are negating her feminine energy. Any time you talk to her and expect her to analyze her mood and situation to the point of being able to fix it, you are talking "masculine" with her. She can do it, she might even be better at it than you, but it won't make her a happy woman.

A happy woman is a woman relaxed in her body and heart: powerful, unpredictable, deep, potentially wild and destructive, or calm and serene, but always full of life, surrendered to and moved by the great force of her oceanic heart. When you ask her to analyze her heart's emotions, it's like building walls around a part of the ocean and turning it into a swimming pool. It's safer and more predictable, but far less alive and enlivening. Most men have made their women into swimming pools by continually treating them like men, talking with them about their feelings as if they can be analyzed to the point of "fixing" them.

Don't waste your time doing this, but especially don't expect your woman to do it to herself. It would be like forcing you, a man, to read romance novels or watch love stories at the movies. Sure, you could do it. But it probably doesn't touch your core the way it touches hers. And, if she made you do it, over and over and over, you would begin to resent her. If she felt that the basic problem in your life is that you just don't watch enough soap opera on tv, you would think she was crazy.

Soap operas, romance novels, and love stories touch many women deeply because the feminine's priority is the flow of love in relationship. But the masculine priority is purpose and direction. By analyzing your purpose and re-aligning your direction, you can solve many of your emotional problems. But love is the feminine priority, not purpose and direction.

Women do not become free by analyzing themselves. They become free by surrendering into love. Not your love. Their love. They become free by surrendering to the immense flow of love that is native to their core and allowing their lives to be moved by this force in their heart. It may involve moments of analysis, but primarily it involves deep trust.

The best way you can serve your woman is by helping her to surrender, to trust the force of love, so that she can open her heart, be the love that she is, and give this love which naturally overflows from her happiness. THIS DOES NOT INVOLVE ANALYZING THE BLOCKS TO HER LOVING. Analyzing blocks is a man's way. Men love to analyze blocks, on the football field, the chess board, in the stock market, and even in their intimate life. But it's important that you, as a man, don't project your way of doing things onto your woman.

Let her be the ocean. Encourage her to be as free as the ocean, as deep as the ocean, as wild as the ocean, and as powerful as the ocean. Be so full in your loving, so strong and stable in your presence, that she can just let go and surrender the limits she has put on her feelings. Let the emotions of her heart flow unguarded. Let her love be expressed with no limits. Let her go mad with love.

Love has its own intelligence. Honor love's intelligence by realizing that analysis is not usually necessary to serve your woman's openness. Love your woman with your whole body, perhaps pressing her against the wall with your belly and chest, pressing your love into her, breathing with her so that she relaxes her tension and surrenders to the love in her heart, and let her relaxation and surrender liberate the wisdom inherent in her loving. You have much to gain from the depths of her feminine gifts.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man

When a woman gets emotionally intense, a mediocre man wants to calm her down and discuss it, or leave and come back later when she is "sane." A superior man penetrates her mood with imperturbable love and unwavering consciousness. If she still refuses to live more fully in love, after a time, he lets her go.

If you are like most men, you probably aren't too fond of feminine bad moods and hysterical emotions. You may find yourself wondering, why is she so complicated? What's her problem? You may find yourself saying, "Just calm down and take it easy." The feminine bad mood is so foreign and dark to you that you may actually find it somewhat repulsive. And when your woman really goes wild, a part of you is afraid of the damage she might do. Her emotions are so much more wild and less predictable than yours that you'd rather not be around them.

Basically, most men are afraid of, or disgusted by, feminine emotions. That's why you try to fix them or escape from them. "I'll come back later when you can act like a reasonable human being," you might say.

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.

The way you relate to your woman's chaos reflects the way you react to the chaos of the world. If you are the kind of man who needs everything placed neatly in its nice little box, then you will also try to box your woman's emotions. If you are the kind of man who would rather hire other people to take care of the chaos in your attic, or the chaos of your finances, you would probably also rather leave it to someone else to take care of the chaos of your woman.

You can, however, train yourself to master the world--financially, creatively, spiritually--by learning how to be free and loving in the chaos of your woman's emotions. And you do so by standing your ground and loving so strongly that only love prevails. You can't quit when you seem to fail, but rather, you must learn from your failures and return to love. Give your gift. Like wrestling a steer or surfing ocean waves, mastery involves blending with your woman's powerful energy and feeling the rise and fall of the moment, without lapsing in presence for a second.

You're going to get stamped on by the steer, you're going to get swamped by the ocean, and you're going to get hurt by your woman. This is how you learn. You get up, dust yourself off, swim to shore, and turn and face your woman again. The only options are fear or mastery. You can quit, you can choose small steer and tiny waves, you can wait for your woman to calm down, or you can even threaten her. Or, you can take the moment as a challenge to your ability to conquer the world, and your woman, with love.

Keep your breath full. Keep your body strong. Keep your attention present. No matter what your woman says or does, give her love. Press your belly into her. Smile. Scream and then lick her face. Do whatever it takes to crack the shell of her closure, get your love inside that crack, and touch her heart. Learn to enjoy her anger, her tears, her silent hardness. The world will give you the same at times.

The game of life is to find each situation workable, to transform each occasion through the magnification of love, to give your fullest gift in every moment, and to have no attachments to the outcome, knowing it's all going to rise and fall and rise again.

You have mastered women and the world when no desire either to avoid or attain sways your loving or limits your freedom.

excerpt from Way of the Superior Man