This article originally appeared in Passionate Living Magazine ©1993, NSS Seminars, Inc.

Pioneers, visionaries, and crusaders in the sexual communities of the world are all heroes. They have touched many lives and assisted in the personal growth of thousands. We owe them a lot and thank them for their courage to follow their visions.

Passionate Living interviewed one of these sexual heroes, Stan Dale, to get a glimpse of what created his commitment and ability to contribute so much to the development and enhancement of other people's lives. The focus of Stan Dale's life work is to heal the planet. His Sex, Love, and Intimacy workshops are the vehicle and are sponsored by the Human Awareness Institute (HAI), both of which he created. Stan believes that everyone is equally capable of sex, love, and intimacy. "It is [their] inheritance as human beings. People think they know what these mean, but the meanings get smushed together." Passionate Living Magazine takes a look at his philosophy, life, and work as an embodiment of his spirit.

PHILOSOPHY: Creating a World Where Everyone Lives
Stan's philosophy centers around "creating a world where everyone wins." His messages are dignity, respect, reverence, and compassion. He also believes in "a no belief-belief system;" a philosophy that is all love-based with bits of spirituality permeating throughout.

Sex, Love & Intimacy
How does all this relate to sex, love, and intimacy? Stan defines sex as "a metaphor." He says, "There is no such thing as sex. Sex is a metaphor for how I treat you with all of my body parts: hands, heart, soul and lips. What you can do with the heart and soul is infinite. What you can do with hands, etc. is finite."

This leads to the understanding that sex is globally expressed in all transactions, interactions, communications, and relationships with oneself and with others. It cannot be separated from the self, one's identity, or the reality that it creates in one's life. For sex to be positive, it needs to be born out of love for oneself and for others.

Love and intimacy are intertwined in this view of sex. Stan defines love as "energy." "Everything in the universe is love. We are love. When we talk about love, it is one of the most painful things in the world. We learn about it in all the wrong places and look for it in the wrong places. When we are afraid, we take ourselves out of love, we cut off the energy. There is always either love or a cry for love. When I am in love, I am alive. Anything but love is an act of violence. The most insidious violence is spiritual violence. ...our thoughts about how 'un-okay' we are. People repeat what they learn and pass it down from generation to generation that they are not okay."

According to Stan, most people think that intimacy means sexual intercourse, but intimacy really means "in to-me--see." It is a state of vulnerability where we allow our true selves to be revealed to another being. "Isn't that what we hope sex will be? People are afraid of being seen because they will be vulnerable and think they will be hurt. Most people do not have intimacy in their life because they are afraid."

The Power of Fantasy
Another hallmark of Stan's philosophy is fantasy. He talks constantly about the "awesome power of fantasy." It is the foundation upon which sits his belief in creating a world where everyone wins. The only reality we have is our thoughts which are interpretations of what we perceive and experience. "Thoughts can be changed from negative fantasy to positive fantasy. That becomes one's reality." Thus, we can create our reality with our minds.

The Human Being as Leader
Sex, love and intimacy sound great and Stan sounds like a pretty great guy. He is. He is also a real human being with imperfections. He makes mistakes and has all the problems of everyday life just like the rest of us. It is his willingness to be himself in front of people that sets him apart. He is willing to be vulnerable and let you see his flaws and weaknesses. They give him credibility and prevent people from idolizing him.

Another thing that sets Stan apart is that he provides an opportunity for people to honestly share how they feel about him and provide constructive feedback at any time and in any format. This is a more radical concept than it appears. Where else can you criticize the boss? Stan's employees do and so does everyone else in his life. He invites and welcomes this.

The Sex, Love, and Intimacy workshops are a stopping off place on the path of personal growth; they are not the end of the trail. He recognizes the need that people have to move on to new things and never tries to hang on to them. He encourages people to take advantage of many options for growth.

In Stan we find a man whose teachings border on intellectual and philosophical conceptualizations while having concrete applications to everyday life. His workshops focus on how to create for yourself all the sex, love and intimacy that you want in life. (These workshops will be described and discussed more fully towards the end of this article.) What is the world of Stan Dale? Where did he come from, and what brought him to the place where he is today?

LIFE HISTORY: Overview
Stan Dale is a synthesis of his heroes and his father, who was a major influence in his life. "If you want to know my father, know me. You are seeing my father, who was kind, gentle, caring, and took care of anyone in trouble." Stan's heroes, Super Man, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and the Lone Ranger, are also parts of his identity. He integrated the qualities of his heroes into himself. "I am a conglomerate because I rewrote my script when I was able to see that parts of my father's script worked for me, but the other parts [of his script] did not and did not serve humanity."

Stan incorporated his heroes into his script. "Martin Luther stood for principles and revered human beings. He saw peace as the way. He asked people of all colors and backgrounds to love and not to hate, and that's a very important part of who I am. Gandhi said you can kill my body, but you can never kill my soul, and with that he was able to bring Great Britain to its knees. That is a very important part of my not backing down to authority. The Lone Ranger was never violent. It became apparent to me that he and the other heroes of old did not use violence and represented good overcoming evil. He also embraced this Indian as his best friend.

That opens to me that whole acceptance of everyone on the planet of different races and religions. It is also pure male bonding. (The word "kimosabe," the Lone Ranger's name for Tonto, means friend.) Super Man was definitely the quintessence of the man who could do good all over the planet in an instant. He had the power to save humanity and he never showed it off. Clark Kent was just this mild mannered guy who did not need recognition for what he was doing."

Early Life
Stan's life began December 20, 1929, in the Bronx, New York. Soon after his birth the family moved to Manhattan where he grew up. Both of his parents were from Odessa, Russia; About six years ago, Stan's "uncle," actually a close friend of his father, revealed some details of their story. Stan's father had been a captain in the secret police at the beginning of the Russian revolution. He and the "uncle" may have even been responsible for killing their countrymen in the name of the revolution for altruistic reasons. Stan's father's brother-in-law was arrested on a conspiracy charge, and the two friends thought they might be next, so, they took Stan's mother and one year old brother and escaped under gunfire I across the Polish border. First they went to South America and then immigrated to the United States. Stan's father never told him about his life in Russia and his parents never spoke about Russia to Stan. They spoke Russian only to each other. Both his parents were Jewish but essentially abandoned their religion. They were determined to be "American."

Stan was prejudiced against his parents because of their accents and because of the anti-Russian sentiment during the McCarthy era. He thought, if they were Russian, they must be bad. As Stan matured, he was sorry that his parents did not teach him the language or anything about his Russian heritage.

Stan talks lovingly about his father, who owned a candy store and gave bums off the street food, drink, and money if they needed it. "He was gone most of the time at the candy store in Manhattan and left early in the morning and came back late at night. They served meals there too, starting with breakfast. I rarely saw him except on Saturdays when I worked in the candy store and on Sunday when it was closed. I began to work there at age six or seven. My dad wanted me to stay home because I was eating the profits. I was a "candyholic." I liked meeting the people at the candy store, and it helped me to be gregarious because my father was a role model. I learned compassion from my father because he was so good to the bums. My dad never spanked me and only once tapped me on the shoulder with his fist and asked if he ever had to do that again. He told me how it hurt him to do that."

Stan's happiest memories of his childhood are working in the candy store where he could be with his dad who "was the Damon Runyan character always there for other people. I was being molded into that script, and my father didn't do a thing." The biggest impact on Stan as a child was his father. His father was "warm, gentle, outgoing, tender, always did for others, never threatened or put me down, loved me for who and what I was, hugged and kissed me, making me know that is what 'real' men did."

His mother also had a big impact on Stan in quite another way. "The gift of my mother was teaching [me] compassion." Compassion learned from abuse. Stan's mom often threatened to commit suicide. She told Stan that she loved his brother, Gene, (eight years older) more than him. She was constantly screaming. Stan's most painful memories are of his mother beating him with his "father's strap to the point I had bloody welts if I took money or candy. If I hid under the bed she would pull me out by the hair and beat me some more because I was a man and should not cry." It infuriated Stan's mom if he stole money or candy from her purse. He feels that he did it "because that was the closest I could get to my father." "Be cause of all the pain I suffered, I was able to see that it was a universal condition and the child becomes the parent and so forth."

Later in life, Stan was able to forgive his mother for the cruelty to which she subjected him. When she was an old woman, he asked her to tell him about her life and from that telling, Stan acquired a better understanding of his mother. Stan related to us her story: "My mom was a violin virtuoso. Her mother had divorced her dad and remarried the stereotypical stepfather. One night when she was eight, he came home and smashed her violin against the wall in anger. So something snapped in her, and she made a commitment to hate all men and to hate women because her mother had divorced the father she loved so much. On top of that, she married a man and had two sons. When my mother told me this story, I realized she was just a hurt eight year old girl, and I stopped hating her. I think that is where some of my compassion came from." Stan believes that all people have their own stories that caused them to be the way they are. His compassion is a driving force behind his work. Stan can feel the pain of others because he learned it first hand.

Youth
Another traumatic part of Stan's early life was his membership in a local street gang. He felt like he had to belong for his survival, and was scared for his life most of the time. "At twelve years old until about sixteen I was part of a street gang. I was able to be more of a peripheral gang member because I was the most scared. I was continually being sick and creating ways to not show up. The gang would go on little rumbles and create problems. We were the big bad guys, the meanest on the block. It was similar to turf wars. Some of the guys carried knives but no guns. One time at our high school basketball game, there was a fight with another gang. There were some slashings. It was the first time I saw people with their abdomens ripped open and their faces slashed. There were about four guys hurt. Because of the code of ethics, no one could squeal. It was then that I realized I had to get out of it no matter what the cost. It scared so many people, it was a perfect opportunity for some of the kids to say no more of this. The gang slashed tires, created havoc, taunted girls. That was how we showed we were men. We threatened other gangs' members. Our gang was called the 23rd Street Hawks. It was a whole area in downtown Manhattan, similar to the movie "West Side Story." We did blood rituals and sliced our wrists and put them together to be blood brothers." Soon after the school fight Stan quit the gang.

Stan's brother, Gene, was more like a second father because of the age difference. He left home at seventeen to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and later became a movie actor. Stan did not have much contact with him, and found out six years ago that his brother had died.

Stan's sexual education began at age twelve. "My father never spoke to me about sex, and my mother said it was dirty and nasty. I had to find out all about it myself" Stan talked about his first memories of sex. "Painful, confusing. At twelve years old, I was at the RKO 23rd Street Theater for a Saturday matinee, and a lady sat next to me. She was about 25 and put her hand on my leg and unbuttoned my fly and reached in and played with me. After awhile (and I was enjoying this because I didn't even do this to myself) she said "Can we go someplace?" We went to the elevator shack on top of the six story building where I used to play space man. And there she asked me if I had any rubbers. I said I didn't wear any, thinking she meant galoshes. Then she said, "Do you have a handkerchief?" So my first intercourse was on the concrete floor of the elevator shack with my penis wrapped in a handkerchief. It was horrible. "

"The next year a barber named Joe in the same building had a prostitute come once a week to take care of his favorite customers. One day he told her to take care of me. He had a room in the basement with a bed set up there. So my first positive, beautiful sexual experience was with this mulatto prostitute. She was sweet and gentle with a little bit of a southern drawl. She said, 'Honey, you don't have to worry, I'm not going to hurt you'. I will never forget that. I never got to see her again."

Stan's situation at home was difficult. He says, "The first time I left home was when I was twelve. My mother made me eat fish, and I hated it. Fish was a traumatic food for me. My mom and I argued about the fish, and so I got up, ran to 34th street, and got on a train. The train took me to Miami. The conductor caught me, and the police were waiting for me in Miami. I was sent back under police protection to Pennsylvania Station. I thought my parents would kill me, but my mom was glad to see me, and things got better at home, but never really great." By age 16, Stan had essentially left home, staying with friends' families and working.

High school English created the opportunity for Stan to find a career that was to eventually give him access to a deeper and broader world view and expose him to people, places, and experiences that shaped the direction his life has taken. He began a career in radio in his high school Radio English class, doing programs on the New York City owned radio station. "I started doing all sorts of radio. The first thing I played was the part of Louis Braille in his life story. There were lots of other programs, too. I got so fascinated with radio that I hardly ever went home, and I got jobs at various radio stations. I would stay with friends' families. I went directly into commercial radio after high school. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was my first radio job, then to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and then to Winston Salem, North Carolina." There he met the infamous Betty, his first wife, who eventually changed the course of his life. He was married at nineteen.

Early Adulthood
Stan's radio career took off. Betty became a born again Christian. Eventually, Betty and radio were to lead Stan to Japan and exposure to a world where sex was okay; to experiences that made him look more closely at his life; to ways of being that he later incorporated into his workshops.

From 1951 to 1953, Stan was the announcer and narrator for The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. "I was even the voice of The Shadow for a short while with WXYZ in Detroit. I loved this. It was live radio. Brace Beemer was the Lone Ranger. He was 6' 4" and looked like the Lone Ranger except that he had a beer belly. But it didn't matter on radio. John Todd was Tonto. He was 5'3", a Shakespearean actor, and seventy years old. As a kid, I had listened to The Lone Ranger and here I was part of it! It was like waking up one day and finding out you are a star. The radio work was long hours of rehearsal, and there was tremendous tension because we had to be perfect. The producer yelled at me one day and said, 'Stan, the spot is 58 seconds, not 59 seconds, not 57 seconds.' I lived in total terror that I would fuck it up. The producer was a terrible guy and The Lone Ranger was the number one show. He had a wonderful way of making you feel like shit. The actors and actresses were the biggest in the field, and I was only twenty-one years old."

"For awhile I portrayed Jesus Christ on a show called Unshackled. This was a live studio show on WGN in Chicago and was on the radio allover the world. When I read the part of Jesus Christ, people looked at me as if I were God. They would even come up to me after the show and touch me. I was the center of attention; I was God, Also, Betty, my wife, had become a high pressure salesman for Christ, It made me feel weird and awesome because I did not even believe in God at that time. As I got older, I was able to see that the message of Christ is love, Of course then I would go home and fight with my wife, and the pedestal was gone."

"In later years when I reflected on those shows, I came up with 'The awesome power of fantasy.' These shows were all predicated on fantasy, and that was how I was able to develop the hypothesis that all of our thoughts are fantasies that create mental images. That was what we created on radio, mental images. Our minds cannot do anything but create mental images. When we talk about the mind, we are talking about a fantasy machine, no different than motion pictures, stories, or television. You can have the life you want because you can create any fantasy/thought you want. Most of us create negative fantasy/thought: watch out, be careful, you will be hurt. Those early radio shows were the foundation for my thinking."

"This is really the centerpiece for everything I do; having people see that life is fantasy and their thoughts can be changed from a negative fantasy to a positive fantasy. When you have a positive fantasy, not only do you feel better but you are saving your life. Negative thoughts create tension and illness and disease (dis -- ease)."

Stan and Betty were married for eight years. "Evangelists were coming home for dinner and putting pressure on me and praying for my salvation. She put gospel tracts in my sandwiches. It was real psychological warfare. Finally, I didn't want to go home, and so I moved out. We had two daughters aged four and seven. She said that, if I cannot have you, no one can. This was around 1955. At that time, if there was any change in marital status, draft deferments became null and void, so I was drafted. It was the worst and best thing that happened.

"I was at the top of my profession in radio, and now my career was destroyed. Betty took my two daughters and moved away. Everything I had was gone. I came out to visit my brother in Hollywood who had become a movie actor and was on television. My car was broken into, and everything I had in the world was taken. I started life allover again. So here is compassion again. I know what it is like to have your whole life torn apart. "

The First Transition
"I was sent to Korea and Japan. The peace talks were on in Korea. I was with the Armed Forces Radio." It was in Japan, a trip born from his divorce from Betty which forced Stan into the draft, that Stan formalized his ideas of what sex real I)' is and the potential it has for good in people's lives.

"Keenan Wynn was making the movie, Joe Butterfly. [If anyone has a copy of Joe Butterfly, please let Stan know] It was filmed at a geisha house. He invited us to a party there but the party was boring, so I started walking around the house. It was beautiful with waterfalls and ponds filled with koi. An elderly Japanese man came up to me and started talking. He got a translator, and we talked for three hours in his quarters. I fell in love with him because we talked about how we both hated the army and about our families and, at the end of three hours, he invited me to live at his house. I said, 'I am a private in the army. I don't see how I can live here.' He looked at me in a way I'll never forget and said I would find a way. A week later the four star general in charge of our area said he wanted me to do a radio show that involved a lot of travel. I told him I could not live on base and do the show. He said I could live off base, and so I moved to the geisha house for the next seven months. I became known as an American male geisha.

"Living in the geisha house was the single most important event in my twenty-seven years. I thought I knew everything about sex. There was no 'sex,' intercourse, there. What I learned was sense and reverence. At my workshops, what we teach is reverence and high sensuality. Where do the senses stop and sex begin? We demystify the craziness around sex, and we revere each person.

I learned an adage back then. If God wanted to hide, he would hide in human beings because that is the last place we would look. So in my workshops we look for the God and Goddess in each person. I used to hate God because the concept of God as a jealous, angry, vengeful being, all the negatives, made me sick. We call God' the father.' I would never do to my children what they said God would do to his. So I recreated God and an adage that has served me well: 'I know you; you are just like me.'"

While learning about some of the more spiritual aspects of sex at the geisha house, Stan also learned about the mechanics. He learned "from the sexologists in the sex drug stores in Japan. These were stores that sold dildos, vibrators, false vaginas, lotions, potions, and condoms. Everything that you can imagine that was sex paraphernalia. You would go in the store and sit down and have tea with the old men and women that ran the store who would explain everything that you wanted to know. Nothing was taboo. Everything was discussed. There were about six of these shops in Tokyo. That was how I got my sex training. I brought back a vibrator. After meeting my second wife, Helen, we used that vibrator from the very first day. It made her eyes bug out." [Stan remarried after his stint in the service].

Upon returning from Japan in 1957, Stan returned to Chicago to work in radio. "Everything in me was bubbling and churning because, when I got back from Japan, I had learned to look at life in a whole new way, and had learned about reverence, which is how a high geisha treats her clients." He got his job back as Stan the Record Man and continued it until 1968 when the show was converted to a talk show. Stan also did the news, announcing, and other radio work.

Training in Psychology
The year 1957 also meant a return to school. He earned degrees in psychology and sociology and then began to teach speech at Loyola College while pursuing his radio career. Time passed. Stan and his second wife, Helen, had four sons.

Another Transition
Despite his revelations about life and sex, Stan was still a very conservative person until 1968 when his whole world changed. Assumptions about life in the United States were shattered. 1968 was the turning point in his political orientation. "Originally I was very conservative, anti-communist, pro-Vietnam war. In 1968 it all changed. I became an anti-Vietnam war activist. I was now on the other side." 1968 was also the year Stan started his workshops. This is how it all happened. "I was a prime newscaster for the station and a correspondent for ABC. I did a daily news program in addition to being Stan the Record Man. As a correspondent for ABC I covered the peace marches and protests against the Vietnam War and was one of the newsmen at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 when the police started to riot in Grant Park. They took off their name badges and ran through the park hitting and smashing people in the park who were protesting the war. They went through in wedges. They used tear gas. I was reporting on the riots live, in person, as they happened. I felt like Mayor Daley was a prime precipitator of the riots. That is my suspicion. I was conservative and objective until I was mistreated by a policeman at the riot and told to leave even though I was a member of the press. I was appalled at what happened in Grant Park. I was the first one to call it a police riot. Within two days Walter Cronkite called it a police riot. I was screamed at by the radio station manager saying 'how can you call this a police riot,' and I was fired. I was devastated. I thought that could never happen in America . After all, I was a newsman for ABC on a nationwide radio show. But everyone went into a tizzy about my description of the riots."

Stan experienced a tremendous period of personal growth. He covered the famous trial of The Chicago Seven, radicals of the time, who protested at the convention and were arrested for conspiracy to incite a riot. They included Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. (There were actually eight defendants until Bobby Seale's trial was severed by the Court.) Stan was also teaching at Loyola University and became involved with transactional analysis, learning from Jerry White.

These experiences converted Stan to the radical left wing and he became an anti-war protestor. "I supported the activities of the Chicago Seven. They slept in my basement one night as a favor to a friend." Stan never actually participated in their activities. Other events also influenced Stan's life and his final commitment to heal the world.

More Experiences
"I got fired from Loyola University for having Governor Wallace speak at my weekly 'Speak Easy Forum'. I hated Governor Wallace's politics, but I had an opportunity to get him to speak because he was going to be interviewed on my radio show. Word got out that the Alabama Bureau of Investigation sent several people to scope out the campus. The governor thought he would never get to speak at a Catholic university. I thought it was no big deal. I got called from a television station saying that Loyola had ‘dis-invited' the governor. No one from the university had called me. But the television station wanted to know the story. One of the deans said Governor Wallace was 'the devil reincarnate and it was a disservice to the Negro community at that time to have him there.' So Wallace was ‘dis-invited,' and I was put on suspension. Then came the inquisition. There were 13 lay and Catholic priests at a hearing to decide what to do with Stan Dale," who was a Unitarian at the time. He was told he was a valued member of the faculty, but he had done wrong. One week later Stan was fired.

Next, Mundelein College, an all-women's Catholic college sharing the same campus with Loyola, hired Stan to do his Speak Easy Forum. Sister Mary Ann Ida called and said, "Mr. Dale, I understand you are ready to work for us." "I said, 'but, you are a Catholic college also at the same campus.' She said, 'I never trusted men who walked around in long black skirts.‘” Stan didn't believe it was her, so he called her back, and it really was her. He went right down and talked to her and '''as at Mundelein College for the next two years. Then he did it again.

"Two years later I invited the head of the American Nazi party, Commander George Lincoln Rockwell, to talk. I thought this would be awfully interesting. He never got to talk. [The college cancelled him.] I got fired. And she had promised me I could invite anyone I wanted."

STAN'S WORK: Seeds of the Sex, Love,
and Intimacy Workshops
Stan's sex workshops had their birth in his radio talk show. He had a radio music show from midnight to 5 a.m. on WCFL in Chicago. People who called in were lonely and wanted to talk. "Between records I would talk to them about their lives. I was much more interested in the phone calls than the music. So I went to the boss and asked if I could put some of the phone calls on the radio. He agreed, and soon we were knocking out the phone company switchboards. People were desperate to talk to someone who was compassionate about their problems. So we stopped playing music and did telephone calls only. I was the first psychologically oriented talk show in the world. It became the 'Stan Dale Show'. About a year later I was fired because I said I did not think Mayor Daley should run for mayor again. WCFL was owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor. I was called into the office and was informed that WCFL was committed to Mayor Daley and I was fired, even though I had the hottest show in Chicago . It was a 50,000 Watt station. We broadcast as far as Canada , Alaska , Mexico , the West Coast, and the whole Midwest ."

Stan told us about the famous people he met while in radio. He was doing his radio show from a station on State Street where walkers-by could watch through the window. "I know so many famous people because I interviewed them all the time. I have a sad story about Doris Day. When I did my radio show from the store window she was absolutely terrified. She was like a fawn that was going to be shot at any minute. She was a nervous wreck. I read many years later in a movie magazine that was her single most traumatic experience sitting there on State Street so vulnerable with hundreds of people around.

"On State Street 200 people were watching Mahalia Jackson. I asked her if she could sing a cappella. She said 'yes' and started snapping her fingers. The whole crowd was rocking to the music. Hardly anyone else would do that without music.

"One of the most painful experiences for me was interviewing General Douglas MacArthur and getting back to the studio and finding that the tape was blank.

"I had a fabulous experience with Marilyn Monroe. I spent over an hour with her and found out that she was an extremely intelligent woman which surprised me because I did not expect her to be intelligent. She was every bit as beautiful as she was on screen and it was a delicious experience.

"I interviewed Eisenhower after he was president. It felt like I was back in the service again. He was like a good Dutch uncle. I really do believe he was one of the most sincere presidents, and I didn't get that he was politically motivated."

Stan also did work at the Illinois Institute of Applied Psychology. "Hugh Hefner would send the women over to our institute, and we devised a body survey: How did they see themselves? Hefner would send them on the road for PR, and he wanted them to be conversant and comfortable with themselves. To a woman, they saw themselves as ugly. They took apart every body part down to their feet. The more beautiful, the more they think they are ugly and have pain around their beauty."

Sex, Love and Intimacy-- The Workshops Begin
In 1968, before Stan was fired, he started the workshops as an adjunct to his radio show. He wanted a forum where people could come to discuss their problems. There were no exercises in the workshops. It was all talking. "Sex problems were at the top of the list because nobody else talked about sex. I imparted sexology information that I had learned from the sexologists in the sex drug stores in Japan. I would draw stick figures on the board putting penis A into vagina B, like it was an erector set." "We had about 150 to 200 people at a workshop. We did the workshop three or four times a year at a hotel. Sometimes we called it a Stan Dale Love m. Many people attended more than one workshop. Once we had over 1,000 people attend a Stan Dale Love In. These were one day workshops and sometimes they were Saturday and Sunday if the people wanted to come back the second day. Basically, it was the radio show in person. They only cost about $10 to attend."

Soon Stan's Love Ins became real workshops with exercises and sharing. It was at Dr. Lonny Meyers' office in Chicago that he added exercises. "In 1970 this was a new concept." Because people were in a nice intimate setting (the office), Stan wanted to put into play some of the things he had learned in Japan : the reverence for the other person, touching the face of someone and observing the texture and eyes, etc. The original exercise devised for those workshops was touching the face of a partner. It is still the hallmark exercise of Stan's workshops and public presentations. "It is so profound that it brings up the deepest spiritual feelings. It is such a unique feeling for people. They may never have experienced it before and want to keep that feeling. It is a heart opening space and an opening to their sexuality. First they look in the eyes: [Stan's]'landing strip to the heart.' This is the window to the soul. When people get a chance to touch heart, body, and soul, it's an opening to feel the magic of their humanity."

Eventually the workshops became known as the Helen and Stan Dale Sex Workshops. They were no longer in Chicago. California became their home. An accident literally placed them there. This is what happened. Stan had moved to WDAI, an FM station. He had an early morning talk show from 6 to 9 a.m. It was the highest rated show of its kind anywhere. It was a wide-ranging talk show. "Usually there were no guests, but I did interview Jane Fonda and Thic Nahan (8 Vietnamese Buddhist Monk speaking peace). He had his saffron robes on and his begging bowl. I had never heard anyone with such potency and serenity in my life. He had this total clarity, total calmness." This made a huge impression on Stan. "He was one of my role models." Stan did the show until 1972 when he resigned. Helen had double pneumonia. He was working 20 hours a day on the radio, lecturing, and continuing his counseling practice. 

"I realized that I wanted to be with my family. I was about 42, and Helen was close to death at the hospital. I drove by a car lot on the way and there was a camper there with flood lights on it. Suddenly I said, 'I want it.' By that time we had 4 sons. I was going to the hospital to get Helen and bring her home. I showed the camper to Helen on the way home, and I told her I wanted to pick up the family and travel. Soon, we outfitted the camper for the trip. One month before we left my mother died. After we buried my mother and Helen's nephew who was murdered, we were ready to retire. We traveled in the camper for 53 weeks. Actually, after 4 months I got a new camper with a top that opened up. At the end of the trip a cyclone hit us on TransCanada Highway One. It knocked us over. We crashed and were lucky to have only a few broken bones and bruises. We recuperated and moved to Santa Rosa where I had friends who put us up."

"I visited KGO in San Francisco , and at that time there was a mental patient who tried to shoot Jim Dunbar. The sales manager came running out, and the mental patient shot and killed the sales manager and then himself. The program director knew me and called me in because the staff was so crazy about the death. I worked with the staff of KGO and then was offered a radio show on Saturday and Sunday night. I had reinstituted my workshops. They were called the Helen and Stan Dale Sex Workshops."

Stan's Dream Becomes A Reality
"For the first seventeen years we ran the workshops at cost because I had my radio salary. I was doing the workshops as a public service. Helen did all the logistical administrative work that needed to be done. She was my co-facilitator when it became apparent that we needed a woman to speak woman's issues. For the year or two that she helped facilitate she did a yeoman's job."

The first workshop in California was held in Ukiah at a psychologist's office. The psychologist had asked Stan to do a workshop for his clients. There were about 40 people in a workshop. These workshops were on weekends.

"After a few years, we held some of the workshops in private homes. At that point it was Friday through Sunday, and there was only one workshop. Then we moved them to Orr Hot Springs in Ukiah and expanded to multi-levels."

The Work Unfolds
"Development of the exercises and leading the groups was all intuitive. Level 2 came into being from participant requests for more." At first Stan thought "you've got to be kidding, there is no more. But that sprang the lock for the next secret compartment. They were called beginners and advanced. Then the super-advanced was level 3 and the level 4 became The Whopper." Level 4 was developed around 1978.

The exercises evolved to elicit what Sex, Love, and Intimacy is for the individual. Stan's label, "natero-sexual", is the label to obliterate all other labels because human beings are naturally sexual. "How one person expresses their sexuality may be 180 degrees from another person. But who is really correct?" Stan tries to abolish the filters through which people view their sexuality so that each person can express themselves in the way best for them and be accepted for that. Again he said, "There is no such thing as sex because sex is a metaphor for how I treat you, who I am. What I do with any of my body parts or my mind are the metaphor. If) am cold and uncaring, then that is how l am."

Over the years the content of each of the workshops has changed. Level 2 evolved into a workshop about learning to love yourself. The development of Level 2 occurred in 1983 when Stan went alone to the Mojave Desert and spent three months there from January through March. Stan had never been alone in his life and did not understand how it was that people loved him. He spent this time learning to love himself. While Stan was in the desert alone 10 years ago, Level2 was transformed and he also wrote the first version of his recently published book, My Child Myself.

The Work Includes Others
Stan's workshops grew in size. He and Helen continued to do everything themselves. Fortunately, a man named Rich Love changed all that. Healing the world alone would be a monumental task for anyone to achieve by themselves. Stan needed an army, even though he did not realize it.

At Orr Hot Springs, Rich Love (a participant) was ready to commit suicide. Rich had been a bank robber. He heard Stan on KGO and came to one of the workshops. After a couple of workshops he said he wanted Stan to teach him what he did. Stan said "no" because he didn't want to get sidetracked into teaching people; he wanted to focus on helping the workshop participants. But Rich persevered, and Stan finally said: "Find five other people, and we will start an intern program."

Since then the help has grown. Now there are 140 interns and five other facilitators. Workshops are held in California, Michigan, Massachusetts, Australia, and Japan [Editor: Also held in the United Kingdom].

Stan's Work is Supported by Others
The interns formed a micro-community that "lives the principles" of Stan's philosophy of "creating a world where everyone wins, treating people with dignity, respect, kindness, trust, understanding, and compassion. All the better qualities of humanity."

"The intern body is an autonomous, democratic, representative government and sub-community within the larger community" of persons who have experienced Stan's workshops over the past 25 years. There are many, many small communities of HAI graduates and participants who still actively participate in the workshops. Of those who have gone on to other things and do not participate directly in the workshops, many still socialize with each other.

"The interns are participant support and nurturers at workshops. Their prime roles are to be there for the participants and to do all the logistics of producing the workshops as well as being open spaces and open hearts. They are not there to provide therapy or to meet their own social or dating needs. They meet as a whole body three times a year for training and the annual selection of new interns. People make a two year commitment to assist, and many continue for many years afterward." Despite the fact that many linger on, Stan wants interns to go out into the macro-community. "The goal is to create a functional family in the midst of a society which is dysfunctional."

Recently a second crucial group has formed, "the volunteers." It is a "large group of 60 to 70 volunteers who are not interns but volunteer to help with HAl activities and who reach out into their local communities to represent and be role models for creating a world where everyone wins. Sex, Love and Intimacy are respected and integral parts of their lives."

INTERESTING ADDENDUMS
The work he does puts him into the role of father, counselor, confessor, healer, and the man with the answers. No one can please everyone. Stan receives accolades and criticism. He has lots of love given to him as well as the bitterness of those that project onto him their own pain and frustration. When asked what the hardest thing is about doing the workshops, Stan replied: "Doing a workshop is so much fun and energizing that there is no one thing. [Maybe] taking care of everyone's demands and just being one man. Also, there are always financial concerns. How much are people willing to pay for a workshop compared to [the cost]? It costs us more to put on a workshop than other workshops that do not provide food and lodging. So the profit margin is very small, making it difficult to expand and bring the work to a wider percentage of the population. [There are] not enough hours in the day." Stan weathers it all and continues to express love. Amazingly, he never gives up. Stan is a survivor with a vision. All in all, Stan deserves to be respected for what he has created and the insights he provides. He is loved by most, yet will never be the kind of guy that people would follow blindly over a cliff.

The most common reasons people come to the workshops are "for personal growth, to meet new people, to expand their knowledge of themselves' and their interactions with other people, and for fun. The chief concern that people have is "that they do not know where they are going or how to get there, that many people are still at the affect of their upbringing and don't know how to take charge of their own life." 

About men and women, Stan told us what he liked and did not like. He said he liked “everything about women." "What I don't like is how ready they are to revert to their powerless programming. But I understand it, so it's not women, but their programming that I dislike. I truly do believe that women are the other part of men, that in the embryo we start out together and I am as much female as male. We become enemies instead of allies. One of my goals is to make men and women allies against the programming." About men: "I like everything about men except their complete readiness to be physically violent in an instant which of course, is men's programming. When men are given an option to not be violent and shown a way, [to not be violent] they breathe this great sigh of relief and drop their violence."

If Stan could do things better he would like "... better skills at communicating. I would be able to heal more people quicker and heal the planet quicker." His greatest strength is the ”pure love" that he strives to be.

Stan became a minister of the Temple of Knowledge in Los Angeles. He is often requested to perform marriages. He does "a lot of counseling," but does not charge for it. "That's my philosophy. I generally only do it for people in dire need".

Another fascinating aspect of Stan's life is the tremendous contribution his second wife, Helen, is and has been to him and his work. Stan also has a third wife, Janet, who, being much younger than either he or Helen, bas been designated as his successor. She has been supporting his efforts for the last 17 years along with Helen. Together, the two women's' life work has been to make sure that Stan had whatever he needed logistically and emotionally to do his work. Janet has been on the Board of Directors for several years. She is the Chief Operating Officer of HAI and has taken over the responsibility of making sure that HAI is financially sound so that it can serve people and keep Stan's work alive, intact, and available. This short paragraph does not do justice to the contributions of these two women, but this is Stan's story.

Stan's life has been changed by the workshops. "They have opened up the whole spectrum of the spirit and the soul of humanity. After being intimate with over [thousands of] people that have done the workshops, I probably have a broader base on which to build my platform, my foundation for my spiritual beliefs, than most other people on the planet." His biggest hardship is "that I cannot be in more than one place at a time and that I miss doing every single workshop. I could do a workshop every week and not get tired of it."

Stan's vision for the Human Awareness Institute is "that we would keep on growing so that we would be a presence all over the planet and that there will be centers, Human Awareness Institutes teaching to the masses. I would like us to eventually get a television or radio station to counteract all the negative programs being aired." He wants to be remembered as a person who "loved life and humanity with passion and gusto.”

Stan is 63 years old now and has many, many years left in which to evolve and ex­pand his work, and his contribution to others. He wants his work to live after he is no longer able to guide the ship. He has trained other facilitators to do his work.

Stan's father and mother, radio, politics, his heroes and sex have all shaped Stan's destiny. His sex life ranged the gamut from "the elevator shaft to pure wonderment in Japan to the beauty of what [he] receive[s] from Helen and Janet." Stan is good at what he does because he does know us; he is just like us. He has healed himself, and now his mission is "to heal humanity," a humanity that he identifies with and understands.

STAN'S PHILOSOPHY
When asked what he most wanted people to know about him, Stan's answer came immediately and quickly. He wants them to know "that I care about them more than their wildest imagination; that I love them and revere them with a depth of compassion that brings me to tears." Stan was in tears when he said this and was often in tears when he spoke about his life. Stan is a man who really "feels." He is able to grasp intuitively the pain, joy, emotions, and threads of subtle meaning and awareness that drive the lives of the people he reaches out to with his work. He can more often than not help them find their own answers to their search for a better, more meaningful, more love filled life. Stan helps people find their own paths and to recognize the abundance of love that is an option to us all.

Copyright 1993, NSS Seminars, Inc.

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