CONTENT:
Narrative
An Amalgam World Belief
Teachings
Sample References

Narrative:

Introduction:
Biographies have been quite popular for the last decades, but that form I do not intend to use. Rather I want to relate the development process of religious teachings, ideas and experiences as these found their place in my life as lived. Therefore I will start with my earliest recalled memory that marks the beginning of the Narrative as experience, though there is one earlier awareness that I will reference much later in my Narrative.

I choose "Narrative" over story, because the latter can have a plot, whereas I am looking for meaning, but meaning and plot are cousins I feel! The word "narrative" itself simply means "to give an account", which is what I want to do. Biography gives an account of a life lived, which is not my intention as such, though I will make a biographical note at times. So, Narrative is it and in my case it accounts the development of religious understanding of my life and how I view human life and all of existence.

Motivation:
Growing up we all have been motivated in various ways. First you listen to your parents, next to your teachers and then you decide for yourself seeking to make a place for yourself in the society you know. Upon retirement some people continue with their choices, but I ended up on a journey that was totally un planned.

Upon retirement in May 1999, I started a four year sojourn living in my old country the Netherland with Canadian intermezzos. Upon resettling in Calgary in 2003 I started a study of religion in a general sense and now in 2017/8 I have come to a conviction and view that I want to express as time to do so is getting shorter, while my convictions are now well formed.

In human society we learn to value fame, fortune and power as important. These by themselves I consider roadside attraction to get us to move from birth to death. Within any society such goals are self validating, but not sufficient. We also learn the value of charity, the benefit of functioning within human society, without which no single human would survive.

However, all these goals are functional within human society, but say nothing about the significance of existence as we know it, nor about the significance of humanity within this existence. For me it is important that we humans come to an understanding of why existence exists and what we humans are doing within it. This is a tall order - I know -, but it is necessary because the handed down traditions, though necessary are no longer sufficient. Humanity needs an understanding of the larger framework of existence, which we are now discovering. Using this Narrative I will attempt to sketch my journey towards such an understanding.

2018-01-16
Childhood dream.
This early memory is the beginning of my self-narrative which I date at around three years, because it predates my ‘air defense’ memory with my late sister Els in our back yard on the 14th of May, 1940, the beginning of the German occupation in the Netherland.

The dream recalled is as follows. I am on an urgent mission and in a hurry. I have to identify which animals can or would be able to speak. For this they need to breathe and in order to determine that I decide to check whether they can cry out or not. The first animal I notice is a hare and it gives a shrill cry, other animals follow which can cry too. Next is a giraffe, it is too high up for me to be able to listen. A lion appears making a big sound, so does the crocodile which follows well ahead of me low in the distant swamp. This completes my search and I turn to go back. At a quarter right turn from my original direction into the forest type jungle I am confronted with a snake. Its head is at my face height right in front at about two feet away. I am startled and say: “How do I speak to an animal like that?”, as I barely detect some lispers. “You must approach it in a reasonable manner!” says a commanding voice from behind in my head.
End of dream.

Though I would recall this dream every so often throughout my life, its meaning and message never became clear to me until the late 1980-ties. Around that time I asked myself the question: ‘How would a snake speak?’ and the response came: ‘Through the motions of its body!’ I then used Jung’s method of ‘active imagination' recalling the dream scene. In that recalled dream scene I would ask the confronting snake my question. For example: ‘Do you have a message? It would then bend forward as an affirmative, not respond as not knowing. So, it was through this question and motion technique that I found out that this snake was about consciousness. Not mine, or some specific type, but about consciousness in general.

However, the acquisition of this knowledge was decades after my childhood, while the next childhood experience that I recall as part of my narrative is when I was asked about what I’d want to be.
<9:28am

2018-01-17
Apostle to be:
A significant childhood memory is from around nine or ten years of age. As I was present in our living room with my mother and her brother Leen, who was also our grocer, my uncle Leen asked me what I wanted to be. I recalled an image of the minister high up in the pulpit and said: ‘I want to be an Apostle’! “No, no” was the reply from both my mother and my uncle, that is not possible they said. “Who not” I wanted to know and it was explained to me that Jesus called the apostles a long time ago and no more apostles could be called as Jesus was now in heaven. “But, you can become a disciple.” “What is that?” I asked. “A disciple is a student or pupil”, was the answer. That was it for me, I was not going to be a student of someone else; case closed.

This memory remained dormant for decades and though I did become interested in religion and remained so throughout my life, I never considered it for a career. As my life unfolded in many ways that early expressed notion of becoming an apostle remained in the locker of forgotten events and notions.

Until that is about three or four years ago, when I was preparing for one of my seasonal talks that I hold for my friend Herman Aaftink’s Calgary Life Enrichment centre – CLEC for short. That presentation probably related to Existence Divine, which is a personal view of mine about our existence. So, here I was recalling this old notion of mine about being an apostle and now late in my seventies, actually being one in my own way.

As I am relating this just now, it stirs me that I have made a connection across so many years between that childhood notion and my present involvement in finding a modern way of dealing with the religious diversity of humanity through that concept of Existence Divine – see side bar.

Side bar: Existence Divine.
This goes back to about June 2006, when I was preparing for my CLEC talk titled ‘In Search of the Sacred’. My website contains several reference to this concept ‘Existence Divine’ in web site categories ‘Talks’ and ‘Topicals’, the latter being essays. The concept itself has undergone substantial development over time as I worked with it to make it applicable.

In addition to the above references under Talks and Topicals on my website, follows here a short definition: “Existence lends reality to Divine, whilst Divine lends meaning to Existence, together constituting the mystery, but knowable, of Existence Divine that includes all there is.” The aspect of applicability emerges when we consider that the knowable aspect of this mystery is expressed in the diversity of humanity’s religious traditions, as each single tradition uniquely expresses this mystery of Existence Divine, which includes all there is.

Two Insights:
Towards the end of my last year in elementary school, at which time I was close to twelve years of age, I had two ‘insights’ as I called these experiences for my self. The first one was when I returned from a home lunch to my elementary school named ‘Princes Beatrix School’. The second insight I experienced the ensuing summer when in Noordwijk Seaside where we as a family were in the habit of spending the month of August.
<10:22am~
2018-01-18, Thursday.
I experienced the first insight while waiting for an opening in the traffic to cross the busy artery called ‘Utrechtse Weg’ meaning the road to Utrecht from Zeist where I lived. I was standing on a small patch of dirt with a big tree – a beech possibly – to my right. Behind me was a paved bike path, in front the paved road, then the ‘Old Church’ and pavement all around with houses and shops down the ‘First Village Street'.

Then I gradually became aware that the patch of earth I was standing on was continuing underneath the pavement in front and behind me and even below the buildings and the church, stretching on and on. All of a sudden all this manmade stuff sitting on top of that earth seemed rather temporary and insubstantial, whereas the earthy soil was what really mattered and was most substantive. I was left with a feeling that al this manmade stuff was rather temporary, while the earth underneath was would go on lasting. Then that feeling subsided, I paid attention to the traffic and crossed the road when it was safe, continuing my way to school, but the memory of this experience stayed with me surfacing every so often.

The second insight I experienced while walking with my brother Okkie down the ‘North Boulevard’ in Noordwijk as the sea. As we strolled leisurely I looked towards the sprawling hotel complex ‘Huis ter Duin’. As I so looked in the distance I was overcome with a sense that all things would unfold as arranged, leaving me feeling reassured. While I experienced this unlooked for sensation, my brother and I kept right on walking and may even have been conversing.

This insight experience, like the first one was like experiencing a double reality, where the daily reality intermingles with a temporary simultaneous awareness that are co-experienced for a short little while, each maintaining its own integrity in a non-interfering coexistence. These insights were not like experiences where one reality overtakes or displaces another, nor did the new awareness displace the regular one, but had the character of an agreeable co-habitation for a short while.
<10:50am, Thursday.

2018-01-23; N.B: I changed this file’s name from ‘My World belief’ to ‘My World View’, because the chapters Narrative, World Belief and Teaching already have the term belief in it. In addition a view is a way of seeing, while a belief involves committed action and view.

Faith found and lost [ca 1954/5]:
Circa the age of twelve, I started going to catechism classes of our church – Gereformeerde Kerk van Nederland then and now ‘Protestantse Kerk Nederland as well as the ‘Young Men’s association’ also sponsored by our church. All this in addition to the daily bible readings, prayers and Sunday services, no Sunday school for this church. I mention this first because it is relevant background for the rest of this section.

The belief I held then was based on what I was taught in my family and church setting and confirmed by my most of my social circle. Growing older my horizons widened included and I learn about other churches besides my own. There was of course the Roman Catholic church, but that was off limits with their images, priests and teachings about ‘doing good works’! - Not such a bad idea actually- The more serious problem to me was the existence of other protestant churches were like my own, but different, such as the ‘Article 31 Gereformeerde’ Church, or the ‘Hervormde’ Church, not to mention the Christian Reformed Church.

My problem consisted of the fact that the Bible – God’ Word – was supposed to be our unerring guide for living our lives. How was it than that each of these very similar denominations argued and at time ‘fought’ each other about what were the true teachings? ‘If the Bible is such a good guide, then how come all these groups are arguing with each other?’ was my question. It kept me from making a real commitment which was becoming the expectation as I was becoming of age – 17 or 18 – to do confession of faith.

So, a wrestled with my question about why there was no clarity about what ‘true teachings’ were to be, if the Bible was to be our true guide. Then, I had an insight about this situation which shifted the burden from Bible to the human. I concluded that the Bible was trust worthy and true in its teachings, but is was in our human interpretation of it that we erred and hence argued. This cleared the way for me to let my parents know I was ready do confession of the faith of our particular church. This set the wheel of approval and examination in motion. This included a visit by two elders since I had not yet done the ‘Confessional Catechism’ classes. When they asked what moved me to seek public confession I answered that thought the Bible was our true guide to conduct our lives, we human err in our interpretation and end up in disagreement and go into error. They looked at each other and agreed that this is what Abraham Kuiper, the founder of our church, had held as opinion. So, that year – 1954 – at Pentecost Time, I did confession of faith along with many other young people in front of the congregation. A year later my belief in Jesus as a personal saviour, which was a center piece of our belief, came tumbling down after reading Albert Schweitzer’s ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’. This book and Hegel’s views came into my purview through the talks and visits with my teacher of religious classes in an extra High School year I had to attend in order to qualify for entry into the Polytech for Civil Technology sup surveying in Utrecht.

Hegel and Schweitzer held that the Christ figure was a derivative and combination of several mythical figures prominent in Antiquity such as Mithras, god of the Roman soldiers. Another aspect from that time was the wide spread worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis and her infant son Horus. This then combined with the fertility worship of the planter mythology of eternal return and the Greek ideas of the Semi divine humans such as Hermes and Hercules.

This is what I recall now, maybe not exactly like the two authors put is, but combined with the opinion of my teacher I came to the realisation that the figure of the personal saviour who knows your comings and going, was out of the question. I was on my own, but retained a belief in a higher being that or who transcended human existence, power and knowledge. Humanity was not the boss of the world, was my notion. With this conviction I entered the lonely and challenging road of secularity, where you are responsible for your choices and actions. It was the spring of 1955 and in September I entered the Polytech in Utrecht where I would get to know a friend who knew of Yogis, Theosophy, Buddhism and Ouspensky! His name was/is Jaap Elze, born in the former Dutch East Indies. We stayed in touch for several years even though he took the study of Silver smith after our first year in Surveying in Utrecht and I stayed to graduate in 1959.

2018-01-24; 10:19am
Emigrating and Canadian Church Experiences:
I landed at Montreal’s Dorval airport early in day 11 of August 1959 and made my way to Toronto with the evening train. I was met at both cities with the capable field workers of the Canadian Christian Reformed Church, who made my transition from Holland to Canada a welcoming one.

However, letting go of my Dutch national and religious identities and adjusting to the Canadian ones turned out to be a complex and at times difficult process. The complexity stems from the variety of factors at play, such as religious, national and personal identities, held social and personal values as well as language. It is a situation where aspects of psychology, sociology and religion interact at the same time for the person who is making this transition from one culture to another. The adopted society is demanding change and adjustment, which are overwhelming at times, triggering the reaction to preserve a sense of self in value and identity, while trying to find a ‘reasonable accommodation’ of all those demands!

I knew from my days as a youth in the Netherlands that being member of a church meant social as well as religious support in about equal measure. Hence I realised that belonging to a group was essential for my own well being. Just how to do that presented a difficult problem for me and it took me many years to resolve it in a staged process.

The first few Sundays I attended services of the Weston (ON) church that helped with their field volunteers when I landed and who found me a home. It felt strange, but the people were welcoming and the church looked prosperous. Within ten days I had a job that took me from Toronto into a bush camp near Timmins; no church there, but good work in a forest that never seemed to end.

Upon returning to Toronto my friends and I tried some ‘Canadian’ i.e. Presbyterian churches and some others. This would demand as much adjustment as the social and work environment, which was too much at once. I tried the - Dutch - Christian Reformed Church who had welcomed me when I landed. It had a much more conservative feel to it than I was used to. Next was the brand new ‘Unity Church of Truth’ along Eglinton Ave West in Toronto. This was different again, with the ‘Lord Supper’ being celebrated as a mental and contemplative ceremony. However, I did buy book by a ‘certain’ Emmet Fox titled “Sermon on the Mount”. This looked safe and it was, but the meaning and impact of the New Thought message it contained had to wait until 1982 when I lived in Calgary.

The process I was optimizing at that time was one in which I sought the least amount of discomfort, while maintaining some much needed social contact. This became the mentioned Dutch Christian Reformed Church and its community at Taunton Road 1st Church, after about two years. Around 1962 I had made some contacts with this church’s student group at the University of Toronto campus where I was studying. Later I met my future wife Ina Blaak there, we married in the London church of the same denomination and later had our two sons’ baptised. And I even became elder for one year in the Taunton Road First Christian Reformed Church around 1969/70.

In 1970 we moved to Ottawa, but the Christian Reformed community there did not become a home to us. I traveled a lot for work, which only lasted for three years and we were off to Calgary. Even while still in Ottawa we had decided to try the United Church as we were no longer saw our way clear with the church in which we were married and our sons were baptised. This was on account of our different social and religious outlook.

The United Church of South Calgary became our new place of worship, but after about a year here too our roots did not take. It was not until around 1982 when my former wife and I tried ‘The Centre for Positive Living’ and found a home both in the spiritual and social sense. And with some intermezzos I am now still member of its off shoot ‘The Calgary Life Enrichment Centre’ and have been the Adjunct Lecturer there many years, first starting in 2004.

This semi biographical overview is meant to show that when a human makes pronounced changes in its life, it can take a long time to find a place of respite, because of the complexity of the processes at hand. The more so since a person also changes and matures during this adaptation process. It is for these reasons that we should be patient with people who come to our country or social home and help them, giving them time to make the adjustments they need to go through. In my semi biographical narrative I also mean to show that a failure or lack of success here or there along the road is part of the process and should be accepted as belonging to the nature of integration into a differing culture.
<12:28pm.

2018-01-25; Thursday.
Transition Experiences:
Beside the social adaptation required from the ‘New Canadian’ – which I was – I also had to make internal i.e. emotional and feeling value adjustments. The most pronounced of these involved my singing as part of the congregation of the English worded psalms and hymns. I my home town I had been member of the youth choir for years making me familiar with many melodies and I also sang in an Oratorio choir ‘Laus Deo’ with my uncle Leen. I recall with fondness the practices and full blown performance of Haydn’s ‘The Creation’.

But, as this newly minted and now singing immigrant the feelings that the singing called up were remote because of the English words where I remembered the Dutch, particularly when the melody was familiar. Unknown melodies with the English words were strictly a difficult exercise to complete; no release of my emotions and feeling there. The prayers and ceremonies gave me a similar experience of ‘foreignness’, holding me feelings in reserve.

However, this changed over the years as I grew familiar with the English language and my feeling values became associated with this new way expressing myself. Today when I sing in either language my feelings are in tune with the text and melody, but for each language they are a bit different, but that may be due to age. It was fourteen years after my emigration to Canada before I felt fully familiar with the English version of the hymns and psalm, as we joined the South Minster United Church upon our 1973 arrival in Calgary. I have checked this experience with my friend Herman, also an immigrant from the Netherlands [Hengelo] and his experience is very much like that he agreed.

I wanted to add this experience as it is an important aspects of adapting to an unfamiliar culture, a process that takes many years. Something similar can be noted for education. I remember the members of the various Christian Reformed Churches in Ontario being very much set on establishing their own ‘Christian schools’. When I pointed out to an elder I knew that I had spotted a Christian school in operation, his reaction was ‘Where’. I explained it was some where in the Leaside district of Toronto City. That could not be, until I mentioned that it was an ‘Anglican’ school. Well, that was not the type of Christian school the Christian Reformed Dutch immigrants were after. Illustrating again the value people place on their own heritage and though they do adapt and work hard at fitting in, there are limits and those need to be respected. A human being is very adaptable, but too much too fast leads to disorientation, loss of reference and instability of behaviour, which can include violence. An example of this can be observed in Afghanistan where trying to educate all children in a western style is too disruptive for that society.
<10:16am

2018-01-30, 8:51am, Tuesday.
Secularity, 1955-1982.

Having lost my newly confessed faith in 1955, a year after I made my commitment to it I entered the lonely and challenging road of secularity. The challenge was that I now felt on my own when confronting difficulties, which were now mine to address with my own resources the best way I knew how. I had to rely on my own resources and the advice of friends and others. The sense of ‘a Helper like Jesus’ to support me in my challenges was longer a reality to my. I had to make under my own ‘steam’! This way I became very much aware of my own resources and the skills I needed to apply and acquire. It also opened me up to other ways of looking at society and helped me accept the unfamiliar in my new country.

I kept in touch with friends and acquaintances related to my work and the Christian Reformed Church, which was mainly social and a slow process of letting go former religious concepts and values, retaining others that fit the secular frame work. This process continued until about 1982 when it changed as I discovered New Thought through the Calgary Centre for Positive Living. In retrospect today I can say that the loss of faith and the ensuing long experience of secularity was a necessary process to come to a different belief framework. In that sense I consider being secular a religious experience of transition between belief frame works, without which that change would not complete.

Kundalini?
In 1984 my former wife and I went through a separation for about three quarters of a year. I lived separate from my family from April to about November. During the summer month I had some interesting dreams. In the most powerful one I sit in my station wagon and on the left half of the windshield I read a scripted string saying: `Myhrha Illrah`, followed immediately by “Allow to live” as its meaning. After some mulling that over I realise that this is an imperative. It is an instruction to me to allow others to live. Even today I realise that this was a course correction aimed at mitigating my 'oh so' critical attitude. In an other dream I wake myself up with a cry almost saying: ‘Feelings First’. I was in counseling at the time to deal with accessing my feelings.

Another most unusual experience occurred to me during July or August. I was sitting on the couch and experienced a feeling of two wriggling worms in the crotch, followed by a slight puff like explosion as that body location. This was followed with pauses with the same gentle explosion up my spine. Second came the lower stomach location, next the solar plexus, then the physical heart location – jumping off the spine line – then the throat, the fore head and finally the top of my head. That was it. This is a kundalini experience I realised, but there was no great emotional upheaval to follow all remained as before and I went on with my activities. I recall this experience some times and always in wonderment that this just happened to me while I was busy with other things and never in my life strove for such an experience, and as well that this physical experience remain so singular and almost disconnected to all I have done and do.

Searchings:
He period from ca 1980 to 1990 I read many on psychology, C.G. Jung in particular, on mythology – all of Joseph Campbell’s books on mythology among others in the self-help area as I became familiar with New Thought teachings through Herman Aaftink’s Life Enrichment centre and the 1985 INTA conference here in Calgary, managing the bookstore of all things for ten days. This period was one of reorientation, reconciliation and building for me as I studied New Thought through the many evening courses of Herman Aaftink’s “Quimby School” for three years until about 1990. The ‘New Thought’ genre of bible interpretation freed me liberated me from the old view associated with my upbringing and times of confession. Any attempts to re-read the bible previously had always stranded me on the banks of orthodoxy I had been thought. Emmet Fox now came to the fore after so many decades as I mentioned above under ‘immigration’.
Sidebar: J.C. Campbell reading conclusion and result.
Sidebar: C.G. Jung concepts used.

2018-01-31, 10:44am, Wednesday.
Left_Hand_Work:
In the fall of 1991 I started drawing with crayons on coloured construction paper prompted by an intuition at that time. After one or two right handed drawings, I switched to using mu left hand to give expression to feelings and notions that would be censored by my conscious ego when using my dominant right hand.

This left hand process led to some unexpected and interesting art work. The first one hundred so drawn art works are posted on my website. I am still not sure at this time what meaning can be gleaned from these drawings. Some point to inner processes that I was working through at the time such as the conflict drawings. Others introduce characters like “The Headman of Geometry” and “Speech maker”. Two drawings now stand out as premonitory such as “The End of Capitalism” and “Darkman seeking Admission”. Several drawings comment in the human situation saying “Men in/is the Crucible of experience”. My overall comment on this work is that it is a mixture of personal and ‘collective’ processes and expressions that were affecting me at that time.
I have continued with the left hand technique through the years and even at present deploy it at times.
Sidebar: Left_Hand drawing technique.
11:06am lunch and then visit to Knox United for the Wednesday drop in, now at -15dC!

Continuing at 7:59pm:
Catechism for the third Millennium:
It was in the fall of 1992, Sunday September 28 that I decided to dedicate my Sunday mornings to writing this catechism, though I had no prepared plan or outline for it. Consequently it became a product of intuitive inspiration for the time span of seven weeks, completing the Seventh Sunday – as called each entrance – on Sunday November the 8th.

At the time our family lived on 3628 36th Avenue SW within walking distance of Mount Royal College – now University. For those seven Sundays I walked over to the colleges seeking out a quiet spot, which become a hallway cubical close to the study hall of the English language faculty, just past the computer centre. Inside the hall there would be students working and chatting, so I moved to that outside cubical which became my own for seven Sundays. I wrote by hand – pen and paper – starting as soon I sat down with the first question emerging with its response to follow. That would go on for some time until my inspiration stopped for that Sunday and I gathered my papers and stuff to walk home again.

After seven such visits and recordings it was clear that this was the end and I now proceeded to transcribe this handwritten record onto my 486 Boss computer, purchased via my employer’s – SAIT – plan and copied the completed files to two floppy disks. That is where they remained, until I created my website in 2009 and posted this catechism on my site under the category label “Catechism”, where it can be accessed today.

I never felt satisfied with the end product, feeling that it was too descriptive, not providing an inspiration towards action to live by, but merely a kind of neutral view of human existence. It would take me many years to formulate this missing component, a challenge I am trying to meet now with this and the following chapters of this essay ‘My World View’ which has the intended components of belief and teachings.

Search 2:
The time from the end of 1992 to 1999 was filled with many experiences both in my personal life and at my work. In 1993 my wife and I went our separate ways, while at my work I was faced with student problems, jealousy from colleagues and a switch to a different discipline to teach. Yet all that worked out and in 1994 I moved into my rented condominium and spent five more teaching the new subjects with satisfaction and success, retiring in1999 on the Friday afternoon of the May long weekend. That same evening at around 7:30pm I boarded my flight to Amsterdam Schiphol to be in time for the 90th birthday that following Saturday of my aunt Stien.

With respect to that search theme, it was this: “I am going to find out whether reincarnation exists or not.” This question was motivated by my conclusion of all the searching that I had done. This led me to the point that if reincarnation does exist it would result in a totally different reality for us human beings. With this question and purpose in mind I left Calgary for Holland. There I was in for a surprising and eventful journey which had profound consequences for me in the years to come guiding and influencing me still today.
8:57pm.

2018-02-01, 9:25am, Thursday.
Dutch Sojourn ’99-’04:
Biographical note and time line:
My friend Tom and I had planned to live in various significant European cities for a month or so, moving from one to the next as we found rented accommodation, with all our stuff in storage in back home in Calgary. My turn was first in Holland and I had an offer from my youth friend Heleen to stay at their home while she and her husband were off to France for holidays. This worked out well for June, while Tom and I moved to a different place close by upon my friends’ return at the end of June. However, complications arose and Tom decided to go back to Canada towards July’s end. In the meantime I was close to finalising accommodation in Berlin for the month of August and as I had no place in Holland to go to, I decided to take that “Mit Whonen” place in ‘Charlottenburg’ near the Adenaur Platz in Berlin.

This was my start, but meeting my old youth friend again had triggered many old memories and emotions put away at my time of emigration in 1959. Upon returning from my very worthwhile stay in Berlin I found a welcome home at my sister Els (2017d) and her husband Olt (2003d) I Apeldoorn. With their help and support I bought a car and found accommodation in Rheden early November. Later that same month I met Hiltje through family relations of my former wife Ina and from her place in Zwolle I returned to Canada for the summer months.

In September 2000, Hiltje came over to Calgary from where we made a trip to the West coast, including Pacific Rim park and the Okanagan wine country. Upon Hiltje’s return I followed her to her abode in Zwolle in October. There we lived together while she worked and I got used to the routine of retired life in a new city and a very different old country forty-one years on. Though we were good company to each other, our social and family ties pulled us in different directions. As a result I decided in June 2001 to attempt living in my old home town Zeist when returning to Holland again after a summer in Canada. While still living with Hiltje in the fall of 2001 I found a place in Zeist near the end of November, where I lived until the mid October 2003 to then return to Canada for good – as my sister Tieneke put it with a question mark! And so it was, now still living in Mission since 2003, be it at 330 instead of the first year at 115 of 23Ave SW.

A Journey’s harvest:
During the time that Tom and I stayed at my friends Heleen and Peter’s place, many deep memories stirred in my dreams, though no defined symbols or events presented themselves. Looking back – as my brother in law Jan said later – ‘it was like walking into your late parents’ home’, when he came to pick me up in September 1999. It was living in this setting during June that must have triggered deep emotions that I repressed at my time of emigration. So, I had entered a time of integration in May 1999 that continued unrelenting during my stay in Berlin, then Rheden (’99-’00), Zwolle (‘00-’01) and finally Zeist (’01-’03), the town I grew up in and left from to my new country Canada on August 10, 1959. Yes, forty years and at that very date I was in Berlin in 1999!

2:45pm
Following my return from Berlin I stayed for about six weeks in Apeldoorn at my late sister Els her home. This gave me a chance to balance my affairs and emotions, with several things becoming clear to me during this time.

First was that the Heleen’s welcome to use their home for the month of June, had also opened a symbolic door for me to many forgotten memories and emotions. These were mainly my own and it took me some time and inner work to realise that these were not relating to the short friendship that Heleen and I had for about a year back in 1958/9.

This inner work as I call that, consisted of three stages. First I needed to own and assimilate the surfaced memories, emotions and even imagined possibilities of having not emigrated. This latter realisation was triggered by the large ‘Kadaster’ – national land title survey office – that I walked past almost every day. “I could still be working there”, I thought to myself, because my survey education in Utrecht was aimed at that profession and I was only 63 yet! This realisation revealed to me the full impact of my having emigrated and a whole other furtive life possibility rolled out in front of me. I needed to acknowledge this and disown it at the same time.

After such assimilation processes, which I called ‘achieving emotional independence’, came the ‘peeling of the onion’. With this I meant the tracing of the surfacing memories and their emotions to a source event that I could recall from earlier on in my life. There was however a core feelings of this onion that I could not place in my present life time, but which I sensed to be related to the time of the Cathars and their persecution by the French king and the pope at around 1200. Mont Secure comes to mind in this regard and some kind of betrayal that took place in that past. This point represented the end of my ‘peeling the onion’ process, as I am not into regression type activities.

This took me to the last stage of my inner work, which was and still is ‘integration’. This means the acceptance of the results and consequences of the earlier stages of ‘emotional independence’ and the ‘peeling of the onion’, lending it meaning as in ‘learned lessons’.

My second realisation was the result of my month stay in Berlin in August 1999, but that took years for me to detect its effect. That consisted of the closing of a door on the dark cloud that I had always associated with that city, due to my war and German occupation experience as a child from age 4 to 9, during the WW2 years. Berlin had always been the source and exponent of all the disturbing war experiences that I remembered. Visiting this Berlin renewing itself in 1999 with the 44 building cranes I counted at the renewing Potsdammer Platz lifted this cloud. Also my tour of the new reopening Bundes Tag – Zum Deutchen Volke – helped me join this wave of repurposing that the German people were engaged in, just before the Tag’s opening in early September 1999, first since the Nazis set it aflame in 1933!

So, during my Apeldoorn retreat at my sister’s place the opened door’s result led to much inner work and insight, while the other door closed on a past that had hovered over me since childhood. All this took place during the months of September and October along with buying a car, renting a house and getting my Dutch drivers licence – not an easy feat – as the many related greeting cards signify. 3:46pm.

7:16pm
Rheden respite and reincarnation: My time in Rheden became one of healing and solace using my new digital Kodak DC210 camera. My brother in law Olt and I had bought a digital camera when I was still staying with them in Apeldoorn, which we brought with us when He, my sister Els and I went to Texel island for a week’s stay in a summer house the second week in November 1999. When there I took my 1000th picture, having had my camera for just over three weeks, early evidence is the power and bane of digital photography.

That camera became my companion for the next few years and through my photographs I interacted with my old country caringly and affectionately. That year’s photo tally was 4000 when I returned to Calgary in June of 2000. My sister’s friend Jeltsje and I had met about three times during my stay in Rheden which had let to the discovery of our mutual interest in the Cathars as well as reincarnation.

This rekindled my interests in those subjects, which I pursued when retuning to Calgary. There I located the scholarly “The Cathars” by Malcolm Lambert and “Old Souls” by Tom Shroder dealing with the past life memory research conducted by Ian Stevenson. My third discovery was “Second Sight” by Judith Orloff on the subject of sixth sense perception

Reading these books I recalled my departing question of May 1999 about reincarnation. So, what was my conclusion now after all these experiences? It was that we need to process and assimilate the memories and emotions of our present life time, if we want to be able to remember past life time experiences. This because unassimilated memories and their emotion will interfere with a current life experience and must be kept at bay until their emotional charge has been mitigated through assimilation. That work must be done on this side of the divide, because emotional work in the non-physical realm is not possible; it is uniquely human.

Living in Zwolle ’00-’01:
Mid October I returned to Holland to live with Hiltje in Zwolle as we had become much attached to each other, enjoying each other’s company and activities. While Hiltje worked at her job at City Hall, I filled my days with reading the paper, photo walks, town visits, trips and some computer work. Though our times together after Hiltje’s work were enjoyable, the long daytime hours by myself became depressing. Mid January I made a short trip to Calgary which cheered my up, though I realised that I had been feeling quite down. Upon my return to Zwolle that depressive feeling returned, which made me realise that the confined nature of my relationship with Hiltje was a serious problem. Visiting a church or other social events was not something we did and I missed that.

Towards time of my summer return to Calgary I decided to live in Zeist for one year if I could find a place to rent before Christmas 2001. If not, I’d return to Calgary. A few days before I left Hiltje to fly to Calgary June 2001 I had an unusual inner sensation of shining lightness within my right chest opposing the position of my heart, like an 8th chakra location. With this light came an explicit awareness saying: “This is who I am, this is what I want to be”. I held this awareness in that place with the light and this saying in my awareness for some time, after which it slowly faded restoring to my regular sense of awareness. I recall this sense awareness every so often, still not fully sure as to its significance and place in my life.

After my summer I Canada where Tom and I spend much time finding a new coffee place every week and time with my sons, lunches with Herman and visits with friend, I returned to Hiltje’s place who kindly and generously welcomed me back to stay at her place and find accommodation in my old home town Zeist. This I found surprisingly quickly and in beginning December I was cleaning and painting my one bedroom apartment on the tenth floor up. I had to by furniture, a fridge, washing machine, a counter top gas burner, vacuum cleaner, bed and floor covering even. Apartments in Holland come bare naked so to speak. With help from my family and Hiltje I was just able to sleep in my place by the beginning of January 2002 and bought a bike a little while later.

I did a lot of reading, visited the market often and the adjacent library. There, early in 2003 I discovered several books on the Naghamadi scrolls and other Gnostic literature. This was something that had a hook in it. All the previous reading had been a bit helter skelter and I don’t recall much of it, but these Naghamadi translations resonate with me. It turned out that they were just the first beginnings of a long search that was to follow.

Besides reading I also did quite a bit of journal writing, photo walks and bike tours once the weather became more summer like. That way I visited Utrecht, Amersfoort and other places. However, my weeks were short as I always left for Zwolle to visit Hiltje on the weekends from Friday afternoon till Monday morning. Then I returned to Zeist via Apeldoorn where my brother in law was ill with terminal cancer since November 2000. I also visited with my aunt Stien who was now 92, recalling many family events.

In the fall of 2002 I enrolled at the University of Utrecht into History 101, but gave that up half way through as I was making it a do or die affair, instead of an enjoyable endeavour. A shame really, but I noticed that I was trying to prove to myself that I could have been a successful university student!! And that was not what this was about, though it was even now an interesting discovery about myself!

At New year’s eve 2002/3 it hit me that this year I’d have to make some serious decisions. I knew I would return to Calgary that summer for John and Tammy’s wedding, but there was more to it than that. And there was, but before that at around April I became aware one day that all the criticism I had always felt from my Dad was motivated by his concern that I would be hurt in life later on. This insight came after it had become clear to during my stay in Zeist and its many recalled memories, that as a son to be proud of, my dad had to swallow quite a few disappointments. I was no high flying eagle, that much was clear and my stay in Zeist from the fall of 2001 to the spring of 2003 had made that quite clear to myself. This valuable insight finally allowed me to begin to reconcile myself with my Dad. Even now I am still amazed of having gained this insight, be it about seven years after his passing in February 1996.

The summer of 2003 in Calgary showed me that I felt at home here, as I literally said so to my self as I heard two mother’s managing their young children at the foot bridge that lead from Shaganappi trail end into Edworthy park. I was stopped for an icecream there on a bike ride around from my apartment in Mission. The other insight about where I had to be was when I when my eye caught the little yellow ‘Samlung Goeschen’ books that I;’ brought with me from Holland back in 1959. “I emigrated to start a new life in Canada” I said to myself. That was my purpose and reason then, and it still is today. “my life is here’, was my conclusion.

That was the decision I had sensed at the start of this year 2003 and now it was made. I sent a letter to ‘Seyter Veste’ my land lord in Zeist of my apartment 2679 Laan van Vollenhove, Zeist on August 26, 2003. I returned to Zeist on September ca 16, met with Hiltje that weekend to visit ‘de Rode Hoed’, Amsterdam where Ephimenco held a talk. But, the iron was in the fire. Hiltje was booked for a flight on October 4, to London ON to visit her ailing sister Fre. I saw her off at Schiphol with her son Walter and left for Zeist to sell my belonging, clean the apartment to leave on October 16 2003 to return to my home country Canada, marking the end of my Dutch sojourn, but not he end of its effects which still influence me today. 9:17pm.

2018-02-06; Tuesday, ~6:30pm.
Gnostic Study:
I felt challenged by Herman’s invitation and also honoured, but I’d never made a presentation of this nature, let alone about a subject that was still very new to me. So, I studied and read all that spring and summer about Ancient Egypt, the Gnostic teachings and their influence on Christianity, to wit: the famous Gnostic Valentinus almost became bishop of Rome in Antiquity!

The source that was the most helpful to me was Kurt Rudolph’s “Gnosis” subtitled ‘The Nature & History of Gnosticism’. This author – referring to H. Jonas’ “The Gnostic Religion”, uses the categories cosmogony, anthropogeny, soteriology, community and eschatology to structure the Gnostic teachings. These five categories of theology were new to me; they mean beginnings of cosmos, -humanity, redemption, community and futuristic expectations. They were new to me then, but I have used them ever since, as all religions have that structure. I also studied Ian Shaw’s “Ancient Egypt – The Oxford History”, which I borrowed from the library for many weeks as I did with Rudolph’s book, buying them in the end! This study was an adventure for me and – looking back – an initiation into a long journey in to the study of religions in the years to come.

The Bleep Movie:
Following my study and talk on the Gnostics at the start of September 2004, I studied works on the human brain, its structure and processes. Here I learned the important interaction between the amygdala – seat of emotions – and the neocortex – the seat of after and fore thought and how we humans control many of our emotions, but certainly not all through the interaction between those two.

In the middle of this study the movie “What the Bleep do we know” screened in Calgary’s Globe Theatre. This show fascinated me as it examines – referencing our brain processes – how we know, what we know. Next an opportunity arose for a trip to Encinitas CA USA, with a friend. Once there we found out about a weekend seminar in Santa Monica early March 2005 about this very movie and we signed up. In those three days the process and commercial interests that drive such movies and seminars became evident to me. It taught me that commercial aspects are an important aspect of religious and spiritual activity, one that should not be discounted when claims are made.

Talks and Studies:
In the fall of 2005 my now late sister Els come over from Holland to see how her older brother was settling back in after his four year sojourn in the old country. We visited the BC west coast and my two sons and family here, including Annie’s first birthday. On my sister’s last Sunday here – Thanksgiving – Herman had graciously yielded the ‘platform’ at the Palliser to me for that talk.

My next talk was June 2006 titled ‘In Search of the Sacred’. In preparing for this talk I went through a deep searching experience in order to come to grips with my subject. Just where was the sacred and what was it? Can you say about some special group of trees in the forest ‘this place is sacred’ and the put a fence around it? Is the rest of the forest then not sacred? How would you know such a thing? In the end I resolved that, if there is a ‘the sacred’, it had to be everywhere. The sacred and the secular exist side by side in our daily existence and this state I called “Existence Divine”! And that is what I spoke about that Sunday.

I felt that this totally new concept needed to be worked out to give it meaning and application. This became a mission to me on which I have worked over the years until this very day, finding applications as I studied the world religions in the years that followed.

Starting with Buddhism, followed by Hinduism, China’s religions, Christianity – four talks – and later on Fundamentalism, Islam – twice, the Mayan and African religions, all interspersed with talk on Existence Divine, Belief frameworks, ancient religions and views of our human heritage going back sixty thousand years. You can visit and explore these talks on my website category “Talks” shown in the menu bar at the top of the home page of website: “TonysThoughtShoppe.info”.

Present Studies:
I am continuing with my studies of humanity’s religions and related phenomenon as is reflected in my ongoing talks. In the decades of 1960 to 1990, I used to think that religions would slowly fade into some kind of general neutral semi secular spiritual movement. The new millennium has taught me otherwise. Religious convictions have solidified, becoming less tolerant in many cases and taken on a defensive position, protecting handed down heritage and teachings. In a world of as much change as we experience, this attitude is understandable, but does not address the problems at hand.

It is this situation that now occupies me as we humans learn to live together on our home planet. I know that there are many local solutions, but an underlying foundation is missing as our various human traditions do not teach that other believers should be respected. My search and study at this time to contribute to the formulation of such a shared foundation enabling us to tolerate and validate the diversity of our rich human traditions, which leads me to the next chapter titled: “An Amalgam World Belief”.
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<8:15pm.

2018-02-07, 9:40am, Wednesday.
Summary:
My childhood snake dream to which I returned many a time gave me significant response over the years. One memory predates that dream and it is of my protesting to have to ‘go down so deeply into this dark place’. That is the total of that memory. The next one is my snake dream and the other reported experiences.

Very significant is my confession of faith during my adolescence, after I came to the insight that the human interpretation of the bible was the cause of the arguing denomination, but that ‘the word of god’ was a clear guide to human life. Next was my loss of that faith a year later and the beginning of my long secular journey. This state of secularity enabled me to consider many different teachings to which I never would have been open if I’d kept my original faith's convictions.

Hence, I now look at secularity as a state of transition between one value frame work and the next. In my own case, it made me receptive for the New Thought philosophy, which I discovered in 1982 through Calgary’s Centre for Positive Living. Its manner of interpreting the bible saying as empowering and supporting of one’s live goals liberated me from the old version that it all had to be given to you on the basis of your faith. In New Thought faith equals believing that you are empowered in your life as lived and responsible for it as well. That is instead of awaiting your blessings, in New Thought you claim your blessings.

At the start of my Dutch sojourn in 1999 I aimed at resolving the significance of reincarnation, one way or another. The result of this investigation was that reincarnation amounts to remembering past life times, which can be learned of so desired. It requires the assimilation of memories and their associated emotions of the present life time, before any others can be accessed. This is necessary in order to prevent old life time events from unduly affect the present conscious lived life.

Upon settling back in Calgary again in 2003, a very different and unlooked for adventure unfolded to which consciousness and existence are central. Human consciousness became central to my search. I learned that the snake dream of my childhood had to be understood as consciousness to be approached with reason, as the dream told me. This process of reasonableness guided me increasingly in interpreting many of my experiences. I applied this in my studies of the world religions and belief frameworks preparing for my various talks for the Calgary Life Enrichment Centre.

The other exceptional experience and concept is that of ‘Existence Divine’, which emerged when I was preparing in the spring of 2006 for my talk “In Search of the Sacred”. This concept I will refer to in more detail in the next chapter. It has enabled me to formulate a general approach to the various world religions, which in a way was foreshadowed by my insight that the human understanding of the Bible teachings is biased. This then has lead me to my present conviction that humanity needs to consciously seek a new way of interpreting our human handed down wisdoms and traditions.<11:02am~
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An Amalgam World Belief:

World View Belief A.D. Vander Vliet, 2018-02-13.

This is the chapter on Belief within the essay “My World View”. At this time 2018-02-13 the Narrative chapter is complete and posted on my website. In this chapter I will combine some of the ideas and experiences from the Narrative with various traditional religions. This combination I have called ‘An Amalgam World Belief’. This chapter on belief is to be followed by a chapter on teachings, which will complete ‘My World View’ essay.

I am using the word ‘amalgam’ to mean a ‘combination with structure’. It was a notion that emerged to me one morning during the winter season as a kind of imperative: ‘Formulate and amalgam world belief!’. Prior to that emerging intuition I made almost half a dozen attempts of that nature, such as ‘My Apostolic View’, World Belief Framework’, ‘Existence Divine Framework’ and others. These often consisted of several pages of text, combining with lists of concepts and ideas, but never went beyond such an attempt.

With this early morning imperative urging me to get serious and giving me a clue at well, I decided that I must no longer postpone such a formulation of my convictions. To help me along the way I use this saying: “It does not have to be perfect in order to be useful” and combine this with a notion from a long ago dream. It showed me standing with others at a half emerged round Aztec/Mayan Calendar stone in a dark forest. This means to me that we are all contributing as we unearth something very important and forgotten.

My intention is to have two divisions, namely ‘World Belief Origins’ and ‘World Belief Conciliation’, which I aim to combine with my Winter and Spring talks this year for the Calgary Life Enrichment centre’ – CLEC for short. I will be using concepts and ideas mentioned in the Narrative with others to form a structure that combines humanity’s handed down traditions with findings of sciences over the last few centuries. Religions as a human phenomenon has interested me ever since I was a youngster and now at my age as sage at 81 I want to express my findings and share them for what ever they are worth.

Anthropologists observe that there is no human community without some sort of religious belief, though there can be secular views within some of them. Just like language, religion is universal among humans the planet over and as such must be defining of human nature. No one dismisses language as unimportant and neither should anyone dismiss or ignore human religious activity. During the larger part of the 20th century the public opinion considered religion as passe and that it would soon become irrelevant in a society where secularity was becoming more dominant.

Today – 2018 – we know that religion is front and center in our world society, playing an important role albeit not always a welcome one. Much criticism and admonishments are aimed at it, but an understanding as to why this is happening is difficult to discern. It seems easier to disapprove and condemn, than to try ti understand. Understanding is my aim.

2018-02-14, 8:57am, Wednesday and Valentines Day.
Towards the end of the twentieth century I realised that though science and religion had a differing understandings of existence, it was not very scientific to dismiss thousands of years of the human religious experience as irrelevant. Religion may not fit the newly invented molds of scientific models, but evidence is evidence and human religious experience and records are evidence of something.

Dismissing such evidence is contrary to our scientific standards. Rather, we must learn to understand what religion has to teach us. Human religion has been with us as a species from our very beginnings, which lie at least sixty thousand years into the past, when humankind started to fan out over our planet Earth.

As we can neither dismiss religion nor science, we have to learn to live with both. Science and religion at times do conflict, but both together can also enhance understanding the nature of our own humanity. We may ask: ‘How did humans survive since they first started to populate the earth without any science?’

Not only did humans survive, they thrived for millennia before they even invented writing! We must therefore investigate how humans came to flourish for many millennia before the beginning of our modern western year count! The point here is that we need to find ways to accommodate religion and science in our current global society and culture, leading to understand the better our own human nature as we search for ways to accommodate the diversity of our societies.

Illustration:

Flood stories, such as related in Genesis about Noah, are wide spread among the various cultures, myths and records in humanity’s past, suggesting a common natural event. Research based on deep core drilling in the earth crust and glaciers show that world wide sea water levels rose by about 300 feet or 100 meters twelve thousand years ago. Here science supports the mythical heritage that a flood did occur, though it reserves judgement as to the reason why.

That there had to be a reason was without question for humankind which did not know about melting glaciers. Unexplained major events have a destabilising effect on human society then and now. Therefore the only available explanation at the time was that a higher power sent the flood to warn or punish human society for some misconduct. This explanation put human effort now in the range of restoring stability in its society.
10:58am.

2018-02-15; 9:15am, Thursday.
OUTLINE for development of ‘World Belief Origin’ argument.
Oral tradition:
Australian Indigenous story on Tasmania access.
Oral historians, Canada Native, Koran, Antiquity:
Franklin stories then and now.

Conclusion re-validation of human oral/script history and record; Hammurabi and Moses tablets; [Later: continuity between oral to written.]
Further extrapolations: Cave paintings and microlith tools; first tool making, fire use and what food to eat.

Conclusion:
about the validity of human story and its continuity, informing and supporting our own story today. This is the common ground that all human traditions harken back to not withstanding their present day variety. Show the shared development as an amalgam belief origin affording a place to the diversity treasure of human beliefs, like a mosaic of humanities development leading from our past to today.

Teachings:

END

Sample References:

1. "The Encyclopedia of Religion", Ed. Mircea Eliade, 1987; v.9, pp. 158-171, on Manichaeism.
2. "History of Religious Ideas", Mircea Eliade, 1982, v.1 & v.2

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