A good book to break open for Valentine’s Day is David Deida’s “Finding God Through Sex,” with a forward by Ken Wilber. Here’s a minute sampling: “Sex can offer an openness that washes your heart wide to God, and yet sex is also where your tightest fears can hold you back.”

Ain’t it the truth? This book is all about fullness, fearlessness, love, and divinity. Like all of Deida’s dynamic works, it will raise a curtain you’ve unwittingly been keeping over your eyes. In fact, that’s been a part of the process for me. I read his stuff, and the curtain rises. I live my life. Then when I pick the book up again, even if it’s only one day later, I realize that–whoops–that black curtain has dropped down again for the hundredth time. But then up the curtain rises as I read, and I see new ways to welcome in God’s light through intimacy. In short, it’s so much easier to be sullen, lonely, and disgrunted. Loving life and your partner with every iota of your being is challenging sometimes, but has rewards beyond rewards.

Deida links spiritual development with sexuality in a way virtually no one else has. He is a founding associate of Integral Institute and has taught and conducted research at the University of California Medical School in San Diego; University of California, Santa Cruz; San Jose State University; Lexington Institute, Boston; and Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. Here’s an “Enlightened Sex” CD/cassette course you can get through Sounds True that I know must be fascinating.

For more on his teachings: Deida.info