About me

For the past couple of years, I've been living and studying in Maastricht, in the south of the Netherlands (international business studies at the University of Maastricht). This has been a most precious time, as it has led to my starting to 'awaken' to this whole field of spirituality, consciousness, learning and development, Integral theory, mysticism and meditation, authentic community, conscious capitalism, evolutionary leadership, and more of that.

The way in which this 'awakening' came about makes for a pretty cool story, in my view. A few years back, I was having a beer and a laugh on the roof terrace (well, just a roof, actually) of the student's house in which I lived. I'm glad to tell you that I wasn't enjoying the beer and the sun by myself, because I had some noble company in the form of Thomas Vaassen and Jeroen Maes - my two best friends.

At some point during this Sunday afternoon, we ran out of beer. Not good. So we took a walk down to the supermarket at central station, which is open on Sundays. Having arrived there, we found out they only sold special (expensive!) beers, so we got some Amstel Bright - a light beer for in summer - and we went right back to chilling on the roof. It so happened that just a few days before I'd bought a digital camera, so we took pictures all the time, of us making faces, sitting in the sun, sipping a beer - you get the idea.

A few weeks after, my phone rings. I pick it up, it's Jeroen, saying he's reading the paper and there's an ad for a photo contest, in which you can send in your pictures with Amstel Bright and some expression of the summer vibe. That wasn't too hard, since we had taken a ton of pictures doing just that a few weeks ago. We sent some of the best pictures in and, ofcourse, we won. In fact, we won a 10-day stay in the Hilton on Curacao, an island in the Caribbean, near Venezuela.

I had lived there for over four years while I was in high school, so I know the island quite well and can tell you: it's the good life. Sun, beaches, palm trees, the goods! Anyway, the three of us packed our bags and took a trip. We took several books to read on the beach, peering through some cool sunglasses, and there were two that all three of us finished during that trip: A Theory of Everything, and A Brief History of Everything, both by Ken Wilber. And it blew our minds.

Imagine this: the sun setting, streaks of orange, red and violet in a sea that has this beautiful, sparkling blue color. A little restaurant out on the beach, three steaming steaks and a couple of bottles of red wine. Three guys who just got their minds blown wide open to an elegant theory connecting everything with everything else, a spiritual depth that literally gave new meaning to the word ‘meaning', an evolutionary story in which we turned out to be the main characters...

To date, we haven't recovered from the blows to our worldviews. We started wondering why these more encompassing ways of thinking were not being taught at university. What would a study of business and management look like if you added depth? What would it mean if we combined our studies and our new-born worldview into something called ‘Integral business', ‘conscious capitalism'? We couldn't find much on those topics at the time, so we started wondering how we could take up this challenge that was thrown at us.

That's when we started thinking about not going into ‘mainstream' business. About setting up our own company. We started connecting to others, first through the internet, then physically in the Netherlands. We enrolled in workshops and set up our tent next to the hotels, so we could save costs. We took a masterclass in entrepreneurship and wrote a business plan. We started meeting all kinds of intelligent, compassionate, but above all authentic people. Having conversations about things that really mattered, with people we hardly knew, and walked away feeling we'd gotten to know them intimately.

We started exploring who we were, finding a Zen meditation school in our city, buying a cushion and taking up the practice of sitting. We took on apprenticeships, projects, internships, we helped out wherever we could. We talked about what constitutes our meaningful practice with other passionate young people. The past few years went by like a hurricane, wiping out knowns, beliefs, assumptions. But it also felt like we were in the eye of the hurricane, quietly, eerily peaceful.

And now all three of us are finishing our studies. By summer we'll be entering a new phase in our lives, starting our own company, fully committing to living our meaningful practice. What a great story this has been. I feel so blessed to be a part of it. And I look forward to finding my story to be your story, our story. I think Zaadz would make for a pretty good publisher, don't you?

Update (Oktober 2006): all three of us have finished our studies and moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We're living the dream, as we are finally starting our own company and applying ourselves to the field of resilience, vitality and transformation of individuals and organisations. More on where we're at now if I ever find the time to blog here!

Update (June 2007): come and have a look here if you're curious about our company. We work in the space between the two meanings of our name, Realize!:
1) To realize: to become conscious of your own potential as a human being, of what is happening in the world and of your place in it.
2) To realize: to actualise who you are and manifest it in all that you do.
Basically it all comes down to bold dreams and changing the world. Come and have a coffee with us in Amsterdam if you feel like it, and we'll get realizin' together!