Returning Paradise

It took Europeans a century of searching non-European cultures to return to paradise lost.

Hundred years of growing numbers of ‘western followers’ of Zen, yoga, Advaita, and of gurus like Krishnamurti, Bhagwan, Sathya Sai Baba and other Asian teachers/sages relearned to take care for our souls in non-Christian ways.

I was one of them. In 1964 I, 18 years, listened to Krishnamurti’s lecture and answering questions in De Doelen Rotterdam. In 1981 I visited Japan to experience martial arts and Zen Buddhism and practiced Tai Chi and Hatha-Yoga for many years.

Learning to listen to my enliving breathing and my always, relocating, heartbeat

I was fascinated and craving for Nirwana and Satori but to no avail.

In my long term education with dr. Ronald Black Horse Chavers I had many deep beneficial and deep painful experiences in groups.

In the end, after I was forty, it turned out to be much easier to return to paradise by deeply emerged myself in nature during many ‘getting lost’ hikes in the Belgian Ardennes.

But this individual return still seemed easy in comparison with returning to paradise as a family, with groups of psychiatric clients, and with groups of students.

In my ten years of guiding young men in groups as a (non-verbal) group therapist (1983-1993) I experienced on many occasions, moments and short periods of time of, ‘being together in well-being’. It remembered me ‘being-in-flow’ as a volleyball team in my adolescent years. Ten years later I could bring our collective experiences home as liminal and communitas experiences (Liminal Experiences in Adolescents 1998)

From 2005 on experimenting with Namonyah Soipan, Urmy Macnack and Kitlyn Tjin A Djie we learned to guide groups temporarily returning to paradise. Participants recognize these ‘sacred and transitional spaces‘ directly on a ‘non-rational’ (heart/soul) level but have difficulties recollecting what they experienced exactly.

For my personal manifestation of returning to paradise in this world: Squinted Hawk Lost Powers Returning 1996