David Deida is a ...

No secrets given away with the title, you have to read it all because it all fits together. I didn’t write this, but it did come from a Deida David community website that existed for a while. All I know if the writer’s name was Tom.

How does this fit for me – there’s some truth here for me as I've been to a few Deida workshops and I can relate even down to the very end. While this tongue-in-check, yet real, message is aimed at David Deida, it’s probably true that any major name could be substituted with the message they offer. Don't get me wrong I have the greated respect for David Deida, Ram Dass, Pema Chodron, Adyashanti and all those who bring us great wisdom.

In the end it’s all about what we know and we’re willing to do with our lives, listening to the inner wisdom coming through.

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I'm paraphrasing this exchange between David Deida and a man at an intensive, because I don't have the exact words, but it is pretty close to the actual conversation:

Man: So I attended a workshop with you several years ago and described how my life was a mess and I wasn't in the relationship I wanted and you said that I needed to do a kind of vision quest and remove all the distractions from my life until the pain of not having a mission would compel me to act from my deepest purpose.
DD: And did you do that?
Man: Yeah.
DD: For how long?
Man: About 24 hours, (much laughter) but nothing came to me.
DD: And then what happened?
Man: Well, I got involved with this woman and her children and that has taken a lot of time, but I don't feel like I'm any closer to knowing what I'm supposed to be doing.
DD: So let me see if I have this straight. You spent 24 hours trying to find your purpose, then gave up because it was too hard. Then you went out and added a huge level of distraction to your life and now you are still lost and still don't have a purpose or the relationship you want. Is that accurate?
Man: Yeah.
DD: And do you have a question?
Man: Well, do you have any other suggestions?

It was a funny moment at the intensive, but I'm sharing it not because it was funny but because it was so honest. That guy was me. Not literally me. I was way too chicken shit to raise my hand at one of those events, but it was me just the same. I'm something of a zealot when I embrace a new thing. I attended the workshops. I read the books. I listened to all the recorded pieces. I started a men's group. I integrated it into my teaching. I knew the shit forward and backward. But I was still that guy asking that question: Do you have any other suggestions?

Then, at some point, I got it.

I stopped going to the workshops, because there weren't going to be any other suggestions. I already knew what I needed to do. The fucking truth was that I wasn't doing what I needed to do. I wasn't living what I knew.

People encounter David Deida's work at all levels. For some people he is "the how to find the perfect partner guy." For others he is "the how to have really great sex guy." For still others he is "the guy who punches their sexual or emotional validation card ("I'm a third stage______. Where are all the third stage _______s who are ready for me?).

If you need practices or techniques, he will give you those. If you need a glimpse of the third stage inside a safe container, he will take you there. But in the end, what he has is a beautiful theory about how men and women can live love, light, and consciousness in a larger way. I use the word beautiful here, the way physicists use the word beautiful or elegant: it describes the world we experience in the most truthful and accurate way. That doesn't mean we will like that theory. Especially if it conflicts with other deeply held beliefs, but it is still beautiful.

To paraphrase a famous essay that David Deida wrote about Ken Wilbur: David Deida is a Fraud.
He is God's shill in the audience. He the Goddess's circus barker. He uses sex and the idea of the perfect relationship to get us to pony up our dime and enter the tent of higher purpose to learn the secret.

At first, being inside the tent is exhilarating. David does indeed share secrets. But when one secret doesn't get us there, we want another secret. He keeps repackaging the one secret and giving it to us again and again. He gives us feminine and masculine flavors of the secret. He gives us dark and light versions of the secret. But in the end it is still just one secret. And it isn't that the secret isn't true or that the secret won't take us to God in a heartbeat, what drives us to the edge of insanity is that the secret is too hard to live.

So here we are, in the tent of higher purpose that we were tricked into paying to enter and some of us are pissed off.

Our first stage selves want to know "Hey, what's in this for me? I paid my money so will somebody just give me the answer so I can get what I'm looking for."

Our second stage selves are bargaining. "I understand that I have to give something in order to get something, so I will give as long as I'm getting."

But what I want to know is what's in it for God? God's secret, that David shares so craftily, is that when we stop looking to get or be filled and when we stop giving to get or giving in order to be filled, the only thing left is giving because we are full and there is nothing else left to do. We won't stop hurting, but we will stop suffering.

What it takes to make a community work is what it takes to make a relationship work. A first stage community needs the firm control of someone in charge. A second stage community needs a committee and a consensus around rules that make our exchanges safe. A third stage community needs a fearless commitment to be honest and open and to give the best of what we have to bring with no attachment and no expectation. Remember that this is the tent of higher purpose and the secret is nothing more simple and more radical than a shift in perspective from "doing to get" toward "doing to give."

The beauty of a community, even a virtual one, is the beauty of a relationship, it gives one a chance to practice.

So what have I been practicing? I've been away at a business meeting and on the final morning I had to make a short presentation. It was no big deal, but I did take a chance and say things that were a little provocative. After the meeting, I had 5 or 6 people come up to me to give me variations on the same compliment. One woman ( a fellow executive director for an affiliate of our national organization) said, "When you get up to speak, I just kind of relax, because I know that you are going to tell me the truth. You aren't trying to pick a fight, but you won't back down from one either."

That's what I've been practicing here. Doing that with integrity and consistency is something I haven't always been able to do, so it is my practice. But in practicing, I come to realize that I am filled with that capacity or more accurately I am that capacity. I don't expect to get anything from doing it, but I kind of figure I wouldn't have the capacity if I wasn't meant to be giving it. Sometimes I hope God gets something from my increasing my capacity to do it, but there are cable TV programs that are more interesting than my life, so I'm not expecting any big karmic rewards.

I am grateful for this community and the opportunity to practice in the same way that I am grateful for my relationship and the opportunity Kelly gives to me to practice.

So yeah, David Deida is a fraud. I bought the banter. I paid my dime. I was suckered into the tent with the promise of better sex and better relationships. He nearly drove me crazy as I watched my relationship deconstruct before my eyes. He told me everything I needed to do and told me I probably wouldn't manage it. Bastard! His curious little koan of polarity messed with my head and my heart. He tricked me into changing how I lived my life.

So, David Deida, you fucking fraud, at least for tonight, thanks!