Stan Dale: Healing the Planet
With Sex, Love, and Intimacy (Part 2)
by Kathryn RobertsTraining 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 was 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 In. 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 (a 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, "naturo-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 I 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, Level 2 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: Now also held in the United Kingdom and Germany].
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, has 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 [tens of 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.
