I love talking to Alison Armstrong. She’s spent decades researching men, and listening to her I always learn something about me. One thing she said was that there are “magic” words that a man can say to a woman whose feelings have been crushed and is now raging, criticizing, bringing up the past, etc. These magic words can literally “save” this women from her “rage-monster.”

The words are “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” When you say these words, it disconnects the rage monster. But you have to mean it, if you don’t mean it, it won’t work. And when you realize that this person’s upset has her feel cut off from her spirit, it’s likely you will really feel empathy, be sorry, that her feelings were hurt.

When I say “I’m sorry” I do not mean “It was my fault.” “I’m sorry” does not imply that you are right and I am wrong. My “I’m sorry” means that I can see that you are hurt, crushed. It is my deepest wish to make you happy. I can’t. All I can do is have empathy for the pain you are in. I’m sorry that, even though I had no bad intent and I was trying my best, I hurt your feelings.

Try the magic sometime and see if it helps you get back into love.

Why would anyone need to learn to orgasm? Aren’t we humans born knowing how? Isn’t it just “wired in”?

Actually, we humans are born with an ability to learn most everything. With that ability, some incentive, and lots of practice, we learn to breastfeed, and for some of us that can take several days. We learn to walk, run, skip, hop, jump and dance. We learn to talk and sing, read and write. In fact, we learn most everything we do. Some of us learn to do these all-too-human activities better than others. Some of us become Olympics-caliber athletes, professional dancers, opera singers, etc.

Some of the difference between those “stars” and we “ordinary” folks is innate, God-given, hereditary. I’m not ever going to be as tall as the average NBA player. My hands will never grow to be as large as an NFL quarterback’s. Yet there are successful pro basketball players under 6 feet tall - Spud Webb, the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk Champion was 5′7″. Doug Flutie, at 5′9″, was considered too small to play football. Yet he won the 1984 Heisman Trophy (for outstanding College play) and then had a 20+ year career in professional football. Ability, incentive and practice - lots of practice - and we humans can do most anything.

I was talking to Patti Taylor, author of Expanded Orgasm, and she said she wanted to have Olympics-caliber orgasms! In 1988 she had her first expanded orgasm and began a journey to study how to create these experiences, and share with others the potential they hold and power they unleash. She received her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology in 2000. Over the years, Dr. Patti has studied with many sources, including More University, the Human Awareness Institute, hypnosis and Tantra. Please note: some of her most extensive experience has come from her own ongoing intensive practice, having had 3-5 extended, ecstatic Expanded Orgasms per week for over 15 years.

In other words, with our innate ability, the incentive of a lifetime of ecstatic orgasms and practice - lots of practice - we all can have better orgasms than, perhaps, we knew were actually available. Hmmm, as of now, I’m in training!

When I was a younger man 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 second half of 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 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 would 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 my friends, my family, my co-workers, even 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 person 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 am approaching the 20th anniversary of those days. In these past twenty 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.”

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