Welcome Home to Love

By Chip August

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 married, moderately successful, 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 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 some sparkle back 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. 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, 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....

As I write these words I have just passed the 17th 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, a world where everyone wins."

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