Matt Peterson > Matt's Quotes

“Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine.

If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it.

Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel. And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control.

Instead, feel your suffering, rest with it, embrace it, make love with it. Feel your suffering so deeply and thoroughly that you penetrate it, and realize its fearful foundation. Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering.

By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.”
― David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire

“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.”
― David Deida

“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.”
― David Deida

“Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration. The same is true about every moment with your woman, only doubly so. Not only is her simple existence a test for you, but one of her deepest pleasures in intimacy is testing you, and then feeling you are not moved off course by her challenge.

The most erotic moment for a woman is feeling that you are Shiva, the divine masculine: unperturbable, totally loving, fully present, and all-pervading. She cannot move you, because you already are what you are, with or without her. She cannot scare you away, because you already penetrate her in fearless love, pervading her heart and body. She cannot distract you, because your one-pointed commitment to truth will not bend to her wiles. Feeling this hugeness of love and freedom in you, she can trust you, utterly, and surrender her testing in celebration of love.

Until she wants to feel you as Shiva again. And then the testing will begin anew. In fact, it is precisely when you are most Shiva-like that she will most test you.”
― David Deida

“It's scary being loved. Because life is complicated and all too often it throws you off balance by sending you the right person at the wrong time.”
― Guillaume Musso, Que serais-je sans toi?

“I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“And always, I could see that, despite his weakness for her or because of it, he seemed uncatchable, as if he might slip away at any moment.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“I think we could be friends," he said, falling into step with her. "It's perfect because I wouldn't fall in love with you, like I do with the mermaids. Girls always seem so exotic. But it would be okay with you, because you're more like...you know. Not like a girl." He shrugged.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson

“She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“Everyone will think I'm ugly."
Tik Tok smiled. "That's true. But we are a small village. We have narrow tastes. There's no telling who else in the world would think you're beautiful.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
― J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Build a house?" exclaimed John.

"For the Wendy," said Curly.

"For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!"

"That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights. ”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Intellectual passion drives out sensuality. ”
― Leonardo DaVinci

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci

“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.”
― Leonardo da Vinci