De Angelis’ Long and Winding Inner Journey

Self-help is an oxymoron, really, because if you could help yourself, you wouldn’t need Tony Robbins, Suze Orman, John Gray or Barbara De Angelis to teach you how to live, love and prosper. But there’s the sign in the bookstore, Self Help, identifying a whole neighborhood of manuals written by the champions of what has become a multimedia industry.

The New Age books are stacked nearby, tomes on reincarnation and channeling, soul-searching and meditation. It’s hard to say on which shelf Barbara De Angelis’ 11th book belongs. For 20 years, she has been firmly ensconced in the pantheon of highly visible self-improvement gurus. Her territory was relationships; her language, the endearments of romance. And like every late 20th-century maven to make bestseller lists and appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” sharing tips on finding peace and love, De Angelis blended marketing and common-sense counsel to reach the miserable but yearning masses.

Her latest book is “Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten Principles for Total Emotional and Spiritual Fulfillment” (Hyperion, 1999). If it sounds more concerned about the inner journey and less about the trip down the aisle many American women were trying to engineer a few years ago, that shift could be explained by De Angelis’ personal path and her ability to take her followers’ emotional temperature, then prescribe a remedy to cure the fevers of their discontent. And if talk about inner journeys and personal paths doesn’t make regular folks run for the exits, then De Angelis’ hunch is right--and the mainstreaming of what was once called New Age is progressing apace.

Although she’s been a Transcendental Meditation instructor, author, lecturer, seminar leader and radio and television personality, De Angelis considers herself an educator. She also likes the label “emotional midwife.” She is not, nor did she ever want to be, a therapist. (The initials PhD appear after her name; the doctorate is from an unaccredited university.) She is a superb communicator with the ability to motivate and direct groups of people. For the last 30 years, her main interest has been spiritual growth, but she waited to write about it till her radar told her others were curious about it too.

Spiritual Growth Is Gaining Acceptance

If not now, then when? Our president admits to “feeling our pain.” “Dharma,” the Sanskrit word for “life’s work,” is half the title of a network sitcom, and another popular series follows the earthly adventures of angels unacquainted with any Charlie. In supermarkets, soy products and herbal treatments share shelf space with potatoes and Pop Tarts. When Shirley MacLaine wrote about past lives and communicating with the dead in the ‘70s and ‘80s, she was the butt of jokes. But the vocabulary, the preferred exercise (yoga) and the concepts of what was initially a fringe movement, have been gaining wider acceptance in American culture. The straight and soul sick aren’t laughing anymore. They’re buying books.

“I usually decide what I’m going to write about next by paying attention to what questions people are asking at my seminars and lectures,” De Angelis said. “In the last few years, I wasn’t hearing, ‘How do I find a partner?’ or ‘How do I get a man to open up?’ People were saying, ‘Everything’s changing in my life right now, and I’m not sure how to handle it.’ Or, ‘I don’t know what the meaning of life is supposed to be anymore. I have all the things I’m supposed to have, but there’s something missing.’ ”

While De Angelis didn’t talk or write much about her personal quest for enlightenment till now, she never hid the fact that she was something of a love junkie. Of course she made a name for herself as the woman who could help anyone choose and keep a lover--De Angelis made it clear that nothing was more important than having a soul mate and bedmate.

Like much in her career, she says the emphasis on romantic relationships just happened. There was no master plan, no strategy to make a splash with a hot topic, then build on it. In fact, she isn’t an overnight success--she’s been plying her trade for 30 years. One thing just seemed to lead to another. In the late ‘60s, she left her childhood home in Philadelphia and spent two years at the University of Wisconsin, on the way to California. Throughout the ‘70s, she followed every offshoot of the personal growth movement--EST, encounter groups, astrology, Rolfing, rebirthing. She was teaching meditation when she started giving seminars for couples in her living room with her then-husband, John Gray. (Yes, the Mars and Venus guy.)

The seminars outgrew their home. She was invited to lecture to large groups. A producer for “Hour Magazine,” a national afternoon talk show at the time, heard her speak and made her a regular. That job led to a local radio advice show, which brought her to the attention of CNN, who hired her for a weekend slot that was broadcast around the world. A CBS talk show came and went, as did top-rated daily call-in shows on KFI and KABC.

Making a Name for Herself

While running seminars, and appearing on radio and TV, she wrote “How to Make Love All the Time,” “Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know” and “Are You the One for Me?” The successful books and all that air time made her famous enough to be recognized wherever she went. As De Angelis became more well-known, infomercial producers sought her out, and her “Making Love Work” half-hour began airing in 1993.

Ambition never influenced her choices, De Angelis said.

“I haven’t operated my career based on conventional wisdom. It’s been more intuitive, more about what has spiritual value for me,” she said. “I’ve turned a lot of things down that would have been smart career moves or made me money. I ask myself, am I defining myself based on what I’m accomplishing and achieving, or on how I’m growing? And if what I’m accomplishing and achieving isn’t the best thing for my growth, then it’s really not serving me.”

If De Angelis isn’t very rich, as most of her fans assume she is, she blames some bad luck and unfortunate decisions. The infomercial company she joined forces with went bankrupt, and even though she says they sold $40 million worth of “Making Love Work” home-study kits, she claims she didn’t make even a small fortune. She bought the infomercial back from the bankruptcy court and plans to begin airing it again soon.

In 1985, she founded the Personal Growth Center, which operated her seminars. Two years ago, she closed it down. “I didn’t sell it to anyone or franchise it,” she said. “I just stopped. I was tired. I realized I’d been working nonstop for a long time, and I needed to reevaluate. And that’s what I did. I kept writing, and I guested on TV shows, but I didn’t actively seek out the next huge project.”

Today her only full-time employee is an assistant. Several years ago she had seven, and a manager. Making those changes freed De Angelis to spend six months on a spiritual retreat and to devote last summer to introspection. In the last two years, she chose to spend a great deal of time alone.

That was after the end of her fifth marriage. Magician Doug Henning was husband No. 2. John Gray, who built on a number of the ideas he and De Angelis developed together and created an empire fueled by a catchy phrase and a flair for promotion, was, for a year and a half, husband No. 3. De Angelis has heard all the wisecracks lobbed at a relationship expert who practices serial monogamy. She makes no apologies, and, at 48, explains her romantic roundelay in spiritual terms.

Dealing With the Growing Pains

“Of course, I believe in reincarnation, and I believe that when I came into this life, I didn’t check the box that said ‘Stability.’ I checked ‘Growth.’ A lot of people around my age checked ‘Growth,’ I believe, and you can see what happened to society, because of that.

“Some people come here with simpler karma. Then there are those of us who came in and said, ‘Sign me up for everything.’ I want to learn understanding, I want to learn detachment. And to me, when you make those commitments, life throws the lessons at you, fast.”

The mild scent of incense drifts through the living room of De Angelis’ Pacific Palisades home, where she sits under a picture of one of her spiritual guides, looking, and sounding, quite serene.

“When you’re on a fast track spiritually,” she continued, “it means you have a lot of relationships, you have a lot of stuff going on. You don’t have a smooth-looking life on the outside. I obviously volunteered to go through a lot so I could learn many things I needed to learn, but equally important, so I could have compassion. People feel it. You can’t fake it. It’s come from a lot of living and a lot of mistakes. It’s why I’m where I am. I obviously was assigned a very big job, and there were certain things I needed to go through in order to do it. It makes complete sense--to me.”

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Mimi Avins can be reached by e-mail at mimi.avins@latimes.com.