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Inspiring the Uninspired - Using the force of blogging to share wisdom, to motivate one another and to make this world a better understood place
After keeping a blog for my 6-months volunteering trip to South Africa, I came to understand that I can express myself openly and freely through writing. By sharing personal stories of success, growth and transformation, I was not only able to understand myself better, it also inspired and motivated family and friends. When we share our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our knowledge, our stories of success and failure, I believe that this world can become a place where we can understand one another better. The goal of the blog is to share, share, share. This will make it possible to share wisdom and to ultimately reach out with this knowledge to those who need it: Everybody! Please get involved by making active contributions, even a simple tip for an inspiring movie is welcome. Lets use the power of the digital world to making this world a better place, person by person. Starting with yourself! darrenvanes
Travel Blog Posts
October 29th 2012
The place that confronted me 1,5 years ago with all sorts of problems and where I saw the meaninglessness of the path I was on in life, is the same place where I have managed to find the path toward becoming whole again. This is an unlikely story which still seems unreal when talking about it. Back then India managed to break down all of what I thought was my real personality, initiating a time of despair. The personality and the mask I was wearing back then was crushed into pieces, making the trip to India one of my last real attempts at seeking happiness in the external world. The same India is the ‘place’ where I have found meaning and joy in life, away from material desires and into the depths of inner wisdom. Inside ... read more
September 13th 2012
Last week someone said: "When death approaches we realize how powerless we are." I think there are two ways of approaching this. On the hand there is the external world, in which we can control things up to a certain point, give some direction to our life, but (in most cases) the major turning points in life are the ones which we have no control over. When death arrives, this powerlessness hits us. But it can be beautiful too, a time in which people open up, become more real, as if they take off the masks they have been wearing all their life. Somehow in my experiences with loss I always got this nice feeling of peace. Then there is the internal approach to death. I think here we can have a lot of control over ... read more
Floating on the ‘Boom’ Boat
Published: August 29th 2012Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » Rotterdam
August 29th 2012
Boom Festival in my words… ...an alternative reality …Europe’s Goa …a result of the 60s flower power, sort of ‘modernized’ hippies …love all, exclude none …discovering a world of opportunities …unity …peace …creating, sharing, loving …nothing to do, nowhere to go, just be! Boom festival is a gathering of conscious minds. One week of expressing and experiencing the field of consciousness expansion. From Permaculture to trance dancing, from lectures to psychedelics, from Yoga to nutritious food, from natural medicine to meditation. This is Boom in a few words. When entering the Boom ground (in Portugal’s beautiful, deserted, unspoiled mid-land), I had this immediate sense of something special coming up. Having never experienced a transformational festival before, the idea was just to remain open-minded and jump into the experience wi... read more
The Natural Tendency for Depth
Published: July 18th 2012Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » Rotterdam
July 18th 2012
Its been a couple of months since my last blog. The problem is that so much information comes in on a daily basis, so many different ideas and thoughts which are worth sharing. And its usually also not easy to transfer this wisdom into my own words. Sometimes I come across books, music and movies which can describe something so accurately for that particular moment, that it blows my mind. In one of the chapters of Aldous Huxley’s brilliant book called Brave New World (written in 1932) the topic of religion is discussed. He uses a quote from another brilliant scholar William James: “They say that it is fear of death and of what comes after that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction ... read more
New Inspirations: Ayahuasca, Yoga, Holotropic Breathing, Fasting
Published: March 28th 2012Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » Rotterdam
March 28th 2012
The past two months have been marked by an increased curiosity and participation in spiritual practices. I was introduced to many new approaches besides Buddhism, which had been my main focus until recently. First of all, I will try to answer a question that has been haunting myself (and many others) concerning ideas such as enlightenment, the spiritual path etc. What is the deal with all these? Why do we bother? In the past blogs I have answered this with the conclusion that those who follow spiritual practices are those who see through the faults of material life. Why bother investing time in careers, money, cars, if you’re going to lose it all sooner or later anyway? This answer doesn’t mean that we should renounce all of life and live secluded in the woods. Spiritual practice ... read more
January 18th 2012
First of all, I would like to wish everyone a warm welcome to a long-awaited year: 2012. Since the time I started blogging (half a year ago) about topics such as spirituality, religion, Occupy and psychedelic drugs, I have found that more and more people are questioning life. Some of them have turned their attention towards the Mayan Prophecy for 2012, others are maybe not so aware of the accuracy of the idea behind the Mayan forecasts. It is mainly because of popular culture that the idea of 2012 has been ridiculed. The movies 2012 and 2012 Doomsday show how the ancient knowledge has been manipulated and disrespected purely for the sake of profit. Luckily there is internet, one of the few Western inventions which can benefit our evolution and survival as a species, where a ... read more
First exploration of psychedelic drugs
Published: December 13th 2011Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » RotterdamDecember 13th 2011
The following text was written on 7 October, one day before inducing 10 grams of truffles (alternative to mushrooms), in a spiritual setting and mindset: Life’s simplest truth is that all human beings want happiness. The biggest stumbling block towards achieving lasting happiness, for many of us, is the mind. All spiritual leaders refer to the mind as the vital link towards eternal happiness. Eckhart Tolle, the great new-age guru, says that the mind and our thinking habits are like a disease. The wrong conditioning of the mind (mainly due to poor education, as discussed before) is at the root of our problems. Many people in the West, including myself, are now on the so-called ‘spiritual path’, because we feel that life is not giving us what we need. We are in dire need of inspiration, ... read more
Internet, Occupy Revolution and the start of an Evolution
Published: November 13th 2011Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » Rotterdam
November 13th 2011
During my final graduation presentation, I decided to talk about the Occupy movement and its critical success factor: The internet. Just like the revolutions in Northern Africa earlier this year, the success of Occupy is related to the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It all started with a small group of people with a certain vision, just like Mahatma Gandhi in India and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. But this time the change is reaching out to the entire world and the internet plays a vital role in this process. The revolutions that are currently going on worldwide shows how powerful the internet is in mobilizing people. The people involved with the protests are unhappy about the inequality in the world, the unfair divide between the rich and the poor. They also realized that the ... read more
Early breakthrough on the spiritual path
Published: October 19th 2011Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » Rotterdam
October 19th 2011
“The primary and most intimate relationship you will ever have is with yourself.” – Cheri Huber (Book: Be The Person You Want To Find) The spiritual path is a long road towards eternal happiness, for the benefit of oneself and for others, for this lifetime and for possible future lifetimes. The path is marked with joy and pain, awakenings and hindrances. In the early stages it is a journey of wisdom, later on it turns into a journey of experience and actions. These experiences are confronting, painful and often requires us to let go of our possessions. People may get distracted by this truth and fail to stay on the path, because we cannot visually see the eternal happiness awaiting us. We should try to compare it to the sun, sometimes it is covered by the ... read more
Education at the root of all problems
Published: September 11th 2011Europe » Netherlands » South Holland » RotterdamSeptember 11th 2011
For those who don’t seem convinced about the problems in our society, I would like to discuss the educational system. Education is the most important thing in life. It is through education that we can develop a good heart, develop our creativity, gain social contacts, grow into the person we want to be. Education is used as the most important aspect of development work in third-world countries. Everywhere, we are building schools for children who live in extreme poverty. The emphasis is on education, education, education. So much that we don’t even see the problems in our own educational system. We learn what 1+1 is, how to spell happiness and what the capital of Brazil is. Yet, we don’t learn about life skills, leaving us totally unprepared to enter the real world (whereas education is supposed ... read more
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