Some paths are not chosen.
They are entered by listening, again and again, to what quietly calls.
My work grew from such a path, shaped by experience, and the willingness
to remain with what unfolded, even when direction was not yet clear.
What I offer today did not begin as a vision or a plan.
It arose through life itself.
Origin
There was a time when I lived close to the land,
in a remote region of California, where daily life unfolded in wide silence.
Not far from where we lived was a cave, a place held as sacred
by the Kawaiisu people, known as Creation Cave.
Something in that land spoke –
through vastness, rock, and the scent of the earth.
It was my first encounter with what I later came to recognize
as the living intelligence of the Earth.
Return & Form
Returning to the Netherlands brought a different rhythm.
Life asked to take shape within society, work, and relationship.
I was drawn to education and social work, exploring how people grow,
learn and orient themselves within changing environments.
Alongside this, my attention kept moving inward, toward emotional life,
awareness and the integration of lived experience.
What I learned in those years did not replace what I had met before.
It gave it form.
Places of Practice
Over the years, this path found places where it could be practiced and lived
in daily life.
Since 2011, I have been co-owner and guide at Uniovision.
Together with my partner, Rien, I co-created De Werfeling in Utrecht, a place held
within a centuries-old wharf cellar.
It was there that ideas could emerge, take form, and sometimes complete their cycle.
Not everything was meant to last. But all contributed to the learning process.
These places were not built to prove a vision,
but to allow practice – in presence, collaboration, and discernment.
Own Rhythm
In time, a need arose to move from my own rhythm.
To step out of shared structures,
not in separation, but in honesty –
allowing each of us to follow what asked to be lived.
This movement did not come as a rejection of what had been built before.
It came as a deeper listening to what wanted to take form through me.
From this listening, The Original Foundation was founded.
It became the first clear expression of my own direction:
a foundation created to support initiatives that return people, places
and organisations to their original strength.
This began with a project in the south of France, called l’Hermitage du Mystique.
During the course of this project, a whole new vision opened in me:
a vision on the role of religion through different periods of human history,
and on the way sacred places have given space to the development
of consciousness, both in the past and in our time now.
In l’Hermitage du Mystique, historical, cultural and spiritual lines came together
around a beautiful little church I had fallen in love with.
Although the project itself did not take form in the way I had first imagined,
the vision it awakened did not disappear.
It became part of the deeper foundation from which I now continue to work.
I have given this church a place on this website as The Celestine Chapel –
not as a project to be realised, but as a symbolic and visionary space
where the original inspiration of l’Hermitage du Mystique is still held.
From there, The Original Foundation opened into a wider field –
one in which consciousness, responsibility and soulful development
can take shape through projects, places and learning pathways.
It offers a foundation not only in a legal or organisational sense,
but also as a field of intention:
a place from which new forms can arise without losing connection
to their deeper source.
Escola da Mística
Escola da Mística arose from this foundation.
It is one of the living projects of The Original Foundation
shaped from within, guided by sensing rather than strategy,
and by staying close to what feels true in the moment.
Rooted in Portugal, between land, ocean and sky,
Escola da Mística gives this vision a more embodied form.
It gives space to the feminine principle – not as an idea,
but as a living movement of body, Earth, intuition and receptivity.
A missing piece in many spiritual and religious traditions,
where the sacred was often separated from the body,
from matter and from the feminine.
Here, I work in my own intuitive way – listening, allowing,
and giving form only where it naturally wants to emerge.
Always in connection,
yet grounded in my own movement.
