HAI Inspired Me.

Once upon a time I had a vision of a future where people lived together in peace and harmony and where love was universally encouraged and cultivated.  I was a teenager.  It was the Sixties.  I was happy.   I was full of the joy of life.  I loved and felt loved intensely, passionately.  Everything seemed possible.

Time passed, the world turned, and the values and beliefs that so inspired me as a youth were put aside as I began to focus on career, marriage, “real life”.  And one day I was 35 years old, married, working as a moderately successful middle manager at a moderately successful ad agency, paying down a mortgage and car loans.  Living the life I had convinced myself would make me feel happy.  Unfortunately, I was not happy.  Somehow the “good life” wasn’t so good for me.  I felt empty.

My wife heard from her dentist about a weekend workshop by the Human Awareness Institute (HAI) that delved into the questions what is love, what is intimacy, what is sexuality.  It sounded like something that might put sparkle into our lives.  She signed us up.

I don’t really remember what I expected, but I do remember that this workshop went where I never dreamed I could go again.  For one sweet weekend I was in a room that transformed from a conference center into a room of love.  I experienced my heart opening, my defenses and stories falling away, and love flowing from me and towards me.  Even though the sixties were long gone, I was happy like I had been happy then.   I was full of the joy of life.  I loved and felt loved intensely.  In just one weekend I felt genuinely changed.

I doubted if what I was experiencing was “real”.  I wondered if it would just fade away like a dream as I went back to my life outside the room of love.  I wanted more of that open-hearted feeling but I worried that my friends, co-workers and family would all think I had lost my mind, become “woo-woo”, joined a cult.  

Throwing caution to the wind I started to act more like that guy I remembered from the sixties, the guy I rediscovered in the room of love.  I started offering hugs instead of handshakes to my friends.  I risked offering hugs to some of my clients.  I began to discover that I was surrounded by people who were open to having more love in their lives.  People just like me.

Instead of waiting to find out how long it would take to lose these good feelings I decided to go back and do a Level 2 Love, Intimacy and Sexuality workshop within a month of that first workshop.  Perhaps, if I spent enough time in the room of love I could become the me I once dreamed of being?  If one weekend was good wouldn’t two weekends be better?

Yes, most definitely.  Level 2 was a weekend of falling in love with myself.  Not just my thoughts, but all of me – my body, my gender, my heart, my spirit, as well as my mind.  By the end of Level 2 I was no longer questioning whether or not this was real, I didn’t care if it was real or not, I just wanted to stay on this path of more and more love, more aliveness, more intimacy, deeper and more profound sexuality, more fun, more me.

As I write these words I have just past the 17^th anniversary of those days.  In these past seventeen years the room of love has become my home, my work, my mission.  I have completed all the Levels of HAI’s Love, Intimacy and Sexuality Workshops. I have studied at Stan Dale’s feet (the founder of the work).  Since 1990 I have led the workshops.

Every day I keep learning that any room I’m in can be the room of love.  That the values and dreams that, for me, started in the sixties are worth pursuing and can help to create a world that is filled with peace and love and harmony.  To quote HAI’s mission statement:

The Human Awareness Institute (HAI) empowers individuals to be potent, loving, contributing human beings.  HAI promotes personal growth and social evolution by replacing ignorance and fear with awareness and love.   The Human Awareness Institute aims to create a world where people live together in dignity, respect, understanding, trust, kindness, compassion, honesty and love.  HAI is committed to creating a world where everyone wins.

The Human Awareness Institute (HAI) offers workshops and courses on the subjects of Love, Intimacy and Sexuality.  Telephone:  (650) 571-5524.  Email: office@hai.org.  Website:  www.hai.org

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