“Blue Truth is a brilliant book, absolutely gorgeous. Ancient wisdom on sacred sexuality, freed of historical and cultural trappings, glows from these pages in exhilarating, luminous prose. Deida brilliantly lays bare the hidden psychology of feminine and masculine and offers clear instructions for tapping into our deepest core and achieving true harmony through sexual intimacy. I feel that Deida has reached a new level of poetic genius in his writing, and his understanding of feminine psychology astounds me. I am just knocked out by this book.”
Miranda Shaw, Ph.D., author of Passionate Enlightenment“Blue Truth is a fresh and original contribution to an unorthodox lineage tradition of unsullied new revelations. David Deida is in the dynamic living oral tradition of maverick spiritual teachers who, like free-jazz musicians, can riff directly on Reality, outside of established forms. Mark my words: in a future that I hope is not too far off, Deida’s original western Dharma will be widely known as one of the most sublime and accessible expressions of the essence of spiritual practice that is freely offered today.”
Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within“The openness, the love! What lively new language David Deida finds for the unsayable!”
Coleman Barks, author of The Essential RumiBlue Truth
A Spiritual Guide to Life & Death and Love & Sex
“Have you ever looked closely at a flame? The reds and yellows are easy to see, but deep in the center of the flame is blue. You can easily avoid the blue, miss it altogether if you just look at the surface colors. But always blue is here, deeper than where your vision stops …”
You are deeper than your life shows, and you know it. You are more loving than your relationships allow, more brilliant than your career suggests. In your secret depth of being, you are infinite, creative, boundless—and utterly unable to press your full glory into the world. Or so it seems.
In Blue Truth — winner of the 2005 Spirituality and Health magazine’s Best Spiritual Book Award — internationally acclaimed teacher David Deida presents a treasury of insights for uncovering your true heart of purpose, passion, and unquenchable love. In Part One, Deida shows you how to “open as the entirety of the moment, feeling as deep inside and as far outside as you can, for as long as now opens.” In Part Two, he reveals how to walk this path in the wilderness of intimate relationship, illuminating “the art and play of sexual gifting” and how to expertly navigate the tangle of anger, jealousy, fear, and lust.
“Knowing the truth is fairly useless; feeling it is profound; living it makes all the difference,” teaches David Deida. With Blue Truth, you have an unprecedented guide for living your own deep truth, and awakening “as the bare openness you are, in the free offering of love to all.”
Lama Surya Das on David Deida’s Blue Truth
How can I characterize Blue Truth and the spiritual teaching of David Deida? David presents the kind of challenge that creative artists, spiritual awakeners, and innovators in the history of human beings have always posed. When faced with something new, original, and profound, language fails and the mind is humbled by the lack of a category to hang it on. I could compare David’s work with the Tantric traditions that it certainly resembles in many respects—or Kashmir Shaivism … Or I could write of its similarities with my own Dzogchen lineage of Buddhism, for it certainly shares with our tradition deep insights into reality and what is.
But there are few categories I know of for an original like David; for his teachings there is no pigeonhole. He himself is carving out his own territory, like a pioneer, an explorer. Unlike much of what we find in the spiritual marketplace today, David does not merely mouth pale shadows of truths from other times, places, and people, but is in the dynamic living oral tradition of maverick spiritual teachers who, like free-jazz musicians, can riff directly on Reality, outside of established forms. This is why I am attuned to his provocative, sacred music.
Blue Truth is a fresh and original contribution to an unorthodox lineage tradition of unsullied new revelations. Much of the book helps us learn how to use our bare awareness and pure attention to reconnect and relax into the View of things as they are amidst daily life—with our kids, watching TV, at work, and so forth. Beyond our time on the meditation cushion or yoga mat, spiritual awakening includes transcending our unfulfilling habitual conditioning, learning to love, and expressing our deepest heart in the midst of our everyday human lives. Sexuality in particular tends to hold people back from spiritual progress and development; the second half of this book is directed at transmuting this limitation into an opportunity, through skillful means of naked awareness practice and truth-method of self-realization.
So do me a favor. Let yourself rest loose, and read Blue Truth with the openness and freedom from preconceptions about Buddhism and religiosity that Zen masters call “beginners mind.” When I read these oral teachings in written form, I like to remember the ancient Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu’s advice, who said: “I am going to speak some reckless words, and I want you to listen recklessly.” In that spirit, I can guarantee you that these insightful teachings will deepen your experience of immanent Buddha-nature and shine a new light on your moment-to-moment practice.
—LAMA SURYA DAS, from the Foreword to Blue Truth