About us
"We just get really excited from the ego awakening and integration process – innovating tools, improving exercises and... above all, working with people; assisting them with uncovering their blind spots, until... the eyes pop and the laughing starts."
The Alan Watts Academy was initiated by Richard van der Linde. In the winter of 2016-2017, he got captivated by the work of Alan Watts and took a deep dive. After months of reading, listening and summarizing Watts' work, a burst of laughter occurred – there was a shift of perspective that made all serious efforts look silly.
Talking about his experience, several friends became interested in the experience. Try outs followed, to see if it was possible to give people a peek beyond the paradoxes of non-duality by simply discussing the work of Watts and triggering intuition with discomfort practices at a private mini retreat.
Was it possible? Yes. In 6 out of 8 cases that summer, it only took 2-3 days for visiting friends to have the initial awakening experience. However, while at the time, each visitor was certain this would change their life, only one continued the journey. There was obviously more to it than just an awakening experience.
Besides a management consulting job, Richard kept providing services to people with a desire for ego awakening or the integration in daily life. Meanwhile, he wrote a book about the subject and tried out several formats with the potential to assist people in integrating retreat results in daily life.
Aad Havermans is a long term Wim Hof Method instructor who developed a strong interest in non-duality. When he met Richard, they instantly got along. After Aad tried out Richard's coaching and retreat format, the Alan Watts Workshop format arose as the solution to the practical challenges Aad was facing with integrating his insights.
Richard
Aad
About the Academy
We enjoy all the stages in the ego awakening process as well as optimizing the tools based on what we observe while working with people.
With more people reaching the meta-insight stage, the opportunity arises to host workshops in different areas. There's nothing special about the founders or current facilitators that participants can't reach.
Another future milestone is to have a permanent accommodation that allows for people who lives in areas where we don't offer continuous Alan Watts Workshops to submerge in non-duality for days, weeks or even months.
Alan Watts is a great source of inspiration to us, but nothing more than that. We're not aligned to the Alan Watts foundation or other organizations. Other sources of inspiration are the works of: Eckhart Tolle, Sam Harris, Osho, Jed McKenna, Rupert Spira, Mooji, Ram Dass, Michael Singer, Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta, David Buckland, Paul Hedderman, and many more.
Alan Watts was a marvelous interpreter of Zen Buddhism, Vedanta and Taoism as well as of teachers of his time like D.T. Suzuki and Ramana Maharshi, who based their knowledge on earlier teachings, such as that of Shankara or Nagarjuna. Similarly, we merely assist with interpreting Watts and his peers.
Our true goal of it all is to have a nice game – we're not driven by a desire to change the world or to save anyone from anything. We're just doing what we cannot-not-do after surrendering to the will of... God?
“Ego awakening with the use of conceptual thinking is like getting chewing gum off your finger. Every time you try to get it off one finger, the gum sticks to the other finger. Yet, it always comes off, at some point, if you just keep going through the motions.”
~ Richard van der Linde
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