Annette Beerens and Marinus Knoope
I would like to share with you the underlying philosophy of my work as a horticultural therapist.
I work with all kinds of people who suffer from ‘knots’ in their lives. Burnout, depression or midlife crisis. All the issues these people encounter have to do with the core question ‘What is my role in this Life?’.
I work with the Creation Spiral, this method was introduced by my friend, Marinus Knoope. He is physicist who discovered the natural way from wish to reality. I hope this introduction to the Creation Spiral will offer you food for thought and inspiration.
When a gardener has grown a thousand apple trees, he will probably say, “Don’t make a fuss. Apple trees simply produce apples.” But if you were the apple tree, what would you think? You got through a harsh winter and made it through spring after a couple of frosty nights. Summer was quite dry but at the beginning of autumn, you do have a few magnificent apples on your tree. You would be proud of your achievement.
Every living organism has its own part and its own meaning in the whole story. Every cell, every plant, every animal and every human being has its own destination. That destination manifests itself as an inner drive. By following this desire, every organism plays its part in the incomprehensible whole of Nature.
From a higher point of view, human beings are just organisms that fulfill their wishes. Of course things do go wrong every once in a while, but that is also the case with apple trees. Not every blossom turns into an apple, after all.
When conditions are favorable, an apple tree produces many apples. There is a natural way for an apple tree to bloom and produce apples, with a number of optimal conditions in each season. For human beings there also are certain ways to fulfill their wishes, with optimal conditions in each stadium.
If you were aware of the different cycles on the natural path from wish to reality, and if you were to know how to use visualization, positive thinking, conscious observation and mindfulness, it would be a lot easier to fulfill your dreams. At the end of the day, that is what we all want.
We all more or less know how the creation process works for an apple tree. In winter the tree is bare. The focus is on the roots. At the beginning of springtime it is ready to take a leap. It starts to bloom. A short while later the blossom falls out and leaves start to grow. Halfway through spring and summer it has a full coat of leaves. Then the buds that remained start to grow, until the tree is full of fruit. At the beginning of autumn, the fruit falls from the tree. A few weeks later also the leaves start to fall.
The tree thinks to itself “I hope I won’t die”. Anxiously the tree pulls back into its roots. That is exactly what it is supposed to do. If it just stays still and prepares itself, it will bloom again at the beginning of the next springtime.
This is what we call a natural cycle. It is about an ongoing process from winter to spring, from summer to autumn and then to winter again. It goes on and on, until the tree dies and becomes compost…