John XVII then and now
John XVII then and now. In Volzin, a conversation with Thomas about over fifteen years of Jan XVII. Features include Liber and the “Servant Hermit” vacancy.
John XVII then and now. In Volzin, a conversation with Thomas about over fifteen years of Jan XVII. Features include Liber and the “Servant Hermit” vacancy.
The business of inner renewal is our core business. The business of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the present. But come March, the
It is precisely a Christmas that is ‘completely different from what we want’ to put us on the trail of the deepest meaning of the Christmas story. Can open us to the birth of the Christ child, also in us.
Our lives end in one great ‘disappointment’: our death. Which is more relevant now? Our opinion about that death, or the real fact of it?
Our Lady of the Silence, painted by Liesbeth Smulders for the chapel of ZeeVELD, commissioned by the Jan XVII Foundation.
‘Welcome to paradise’. Imagine a world where the news starts every night with these words. After which we only start to relate to the other things of the day in a second instance, and then from that consciousness.
Are blooming and softening related? Does one follow from the other or the other from the one?
“You have to be willing to be called crazy by everyone.” Click on the image for the interview with Thomas in Puur Magazine.
‘It is precisely setbacks that can put a person on the track of inner renewal’. An intriguing thought, right now. Click and read what Thomas says about it in Klooster magazine.
Wash hands, stay home, keep your distance: apply these three rules internally, and you could end up with a great Easter contamination from the Corona virus! Read an Easter essay I wrote for Nieuw Wij here.
The Liber do-it-yourself coaching methodology explained in eight minutes. Click on the image to play this item.
Scared, angry, lonely or sad? Of course you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to wear that feeling. Spread your anxiety pants, panic shirt or worry skirt on your bed and let them tell their story. Click to read more.
‘…that I don’t coincide with what I think and feel: thanks to Liber I now understand.’ Click on the picture and read what Elke says about Liber.
Truly, a person is capable of much more inner renewal than we think. Take ZeeVELD as an example… (Click on the image and read on).
When we build a house, we start at the beginning. Against all the laws of gravity, we start with our house of life at the roof. Not with the question marks, but with the exclamation marks of our existence. Click on the image to read more
Life has no meaning. Because life does not think in terms of ‘having’, but of giving. So life ‘has’ no meaning, but ‘creates’ meaning. In that life itself. Click on the image to continue reading.
He struggled with depression for years. To the point of suicidal. Until Liber crossed his path. And after only three weeks he could exclaim: ‘why didn’t I discover this sooner? Away with complaints!’ How is that possible? Read more here.
Thanks to Jan Versteegh, who also visited ZeeVELD for a candid conversation with Thomas for his book ‘Becoming happy in this way’. Click on the image and read on.
Who is actually at the controls of what you think and feel? And if you now say: ‘that is myself’, what or who is that, that ‘self’?
“Libert does not help you realize your desires, but to learn to evaluate them detached. In the process you move from delusion to reality. You discover that life is not a must, but a lover who wants to love you.” Curious about what Liber is and does? Click here to read the summary…
Anyone who fears that man as we now think of himself will perish is right, for the simple reason that he has not been given that right to exist. It is not ‘designed’ that way. (Read more here)
‘Our lives must fit within the framework that we have in mind for this’ I wrote in an earlier blog. That framework turns out to have a beautiful name: cognitive template…
What can make learning Liber so difficult: it consciously breaks down your self-image. The Pietje or Marietje that you have built so hard on. Yet: whoever feels called to be more expression of life than self-image, allows himself to be brought down.
To become silent is to become a woman. And mother. All willingness to love and receive every word; then to wait motionless and finally to give birth: the life-giving word. And again. And again.
To keep moving, whatever happens, that is the art. Not: to be a single chord, but to dare to embody all verses of the song that lives inside you…
This is the extended version of Exercise 2. The exercise takes just over an hour, which will allow you to create an additional word cloud and have more time and space to relate to…
If you stand with your nose on the ‘Night Watch’, you see a blob, a smudge, a stroke. Certainly not a painting to write home about. It only becomes that if you distance yourself from it…
Liber teaches you to live on two motors: the motor of your thinking, doing and letting go, striving, finding, feeling, wanting to know and expecting, AND those of your completely silent awareness of this…
The sacred wall in the chapel of ZeeVELD has been joined by Roy Lichtenstein. An image of his painting showing Donald Duck…
Simple Gifts, an old Shaker song, could be the house anthem of Liber learning. Read more about it and listen to the song by clicking on the image.
Based on an interview with psychotherapist Edith Eger, this blog talks about the importance of words. Click on the image to continue reading.
Questions dominate the Jan XVII Letter of Friends 2017. For those who don’t shy away from savory food: click on the picture to read on.
“All spirituality is about dying before we die and being reborn as our True Selves in Love,” writes Richard Rohr. Read more here.
Faith in God is like daring to jump into the abyss upside down backwards. Hear what Bach makes it sound like if we don’t.
Transitium ZeeVELD facilitates transition processes. The specialty of the house: the Liber detachment method. Lake…
Monk’s work described in one word: detachment. Dying to self is at the heart of the spiritual journey. Read here what the Franciscan friar Richard Rohr has to say about it.
In the monastic tradition, the art of silence plays a major role. Such a big role that I will devote a lot of words to it in this blog.
The management of this company feels at home here and the reunion is warm. ‘You can set up a branch here,’ I joke. “That would be a good idea,” says the director, “a refuge”. Read more here.
Celebrating Christmas can become an unholy way of Christmas, getting in the way… Read and listen more here.
Every time President Trump says, ‘I am the solution’, I know again: yes indeed, in me the problem. Waking. There’s work to be done. Read more here…
When we talk about ‘denial’, we mean that someone does not want to face a wound, a loss, a form of inner blackness. On the
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, Transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity
More than seventy million dead and 55 years later, Hitler’s last secretary looks back with incomprehension on the fact that she did not say ‘no’
One day I want to write a book about tile truths. Or maybe organize a series of retreats based on that. Today’s turn: ‘whoever digs
Hillary Clinton knows what caused her to lose the election: ‘the FBI broke the momentum’. That could well be true. But the way of thinking
For the acknowledgment, acceptance and full embrace of the loser in ourselves, we pray. So that our ears may be opened for the Life giving
To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the master said, “If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people.
Forty years ago today, on August 12, 1976, the deed of incorporation of Jan XVII passed. Many can be thankful to the founders for the
What a relief to see some real political craftsmanship in action with the introduction of Tim Kaine. His speech was thoughtful and thoughtful, not an
Never out of date: ‘The soft forces will certainly win’ * The soft powers will surely win in the end — this I hear like
In another beautiful addition to the site ‘All of Bach’ Dorien Schouten plays the chorale ‘Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten’. The text goes
A snail may not have legs, but a snail’s pace does take place step by step. First, the snail secretes an adhesive with its lower
The mouth that is constantly chatting can hardly fall open in surprise. Which is exactly the reason why a person cannot practice silence enough. For
‘You can’t arrange something like that with a referendum’, ‘the stayers campaigned poorly’, or ‘politics made it their own’ – reasons for the result of
And then the British referendum turned out to be a battle between haves and have nots. With the underlying existential question: do you expect to
The greatest danger of excesses of excessive irrationality – Orlando, the murder of Jo Cox, a possible Brexit, presidential candidate Trump – is that they
