Heart to Heart

My friend Stan Dale died last Friday. I don't know how my life would have unfolded without Stan and his passion as founder of the Human Awareness Institute.

Discovering HAI was like coming in to a quiet sanity, a respite from the thunder of sexual ignorance and fears that grip our lives and threaten ostracism, the stultifying cloud from which people hide their sexuality even from themselves. HAI accepts our insides without judgment. And what HAI offers are the tools to express those insides appropriately.

Stan taught that we're born beautiful and whatever we do ultimately comes from a beautiful place: among the simplest and obvious of truths, yet one I need to be reminded of time and again.

Stan taught the importance of

eric@ericnagler.

noticing ourselves from moment to moment, and learning to notice who we are without judgment. He taught that the deeper I look into your eyes, the more I see myself. And I feel less alienated, less alone when I see in each of us the need to love and be loved.

Stan taught that whatever I express - a picture, a belief, a judgment - is mine and belongs to me just as what you express is yours and belongs to you. As kids we learned the incantation "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never harm me." Heart Heart

Eric Nagler

Yet how often do we allow ourselves to be beaten down by the judgments of others? Where do our insecurities come from if not the judgments of others?

None of what Stan taught is complicated. None rely on a belief in some special energy, force… or person including Stan.

His workshops have thrived even as he himself declined. He spawned a self sufficient organization and a handful of gifted facilitators who hone and polish the workshops and take them around the world.

He created a program for those like me who serve, not him although we loved him, but his vision of replacing ignorance and fear with awareness and love.

Stan created a series of workshops where we may choose to notice our old habits and replace them with habits that better serve us.

What could be simpler? And yet few places offer the opportunity to explore ourselves in such a safe and trusting environment, to notice ourselves without judgment and to work on growing in an atmosphere of the gentlest encouragement and unconditional patience.

I'm grieving for the loss of my dear friend. At the same time the sense of loss is ameliorated by all that is Stan which lives in me.

Stan came to the realization of his calling late one night in a verdant garden in a geisha house in Japan. And I am bursting with gratitude to him for having brought that garden into my heart.