More about Hace

Hace was born during World War II, on 19 December 1943.
In April 1945 - during the battle for the liberation of the island of Texel - he survived an artillery bombardment on the village where he was born,but his father died in battle. Then, following this traumatic experience his mother never overcame the loss of her house, friends and beloved and she withdrew from all human relationships. Physically well taken care of, but emotionally disconnected from both parents at the age of only one and a half years old, Hace grew up and developed an autodidactic attitude in every aspect.
At the age of fourteen he studied the bible instead of schoolwork and made a conscious choice to become a Christian. At the age of sixteen he decided to join the Dutch protestant church and was officially initiated at the age of nineteen.
At the age of twenty two he was requested to become member of the church board of governors and served for six years. Three years later he was requested to take care of the spiritual education of the 14 to 18 year-old children of the church members. This he did, on a voluntary basis - two evenings a week - for ten years. During the first five years he worked alongside a protestant minister, and for the latter five years he worked with an ex-catholic priest. During this period he was also involved in the early stages of the Dutch movement: "Help rid the world of nuclear arms - and start by getting them out of the Netherlands".

Three years later, at the age of forty-five, he was asked to coordinate a protestant- church project to raise awareness about peace, justice and the environment in daily life.
In 1990 Hace co-founded an environmental foundation to give a voice to the local political minority and to protect the wetlands and long lake in his local area from the environmental abuse of chemical pollution and excessive building.
He chaired the foundation for its first five years and is still a member of the board today.
In the autumn of 1990 he reached a stage of "total burn-out" and was effectively disabled by this for several years. During this period he reflected on the reasons why this had happened. Then, four years later, at the age of 50, taking all his conclusions into account, he re-designed his life. He divorced, after thirty years of marriage, and leaving friends, family, "certainties" and ambitions set out to travel for several years.
Following this he went into a one-day-a-week psychotherapy program for more than two years. At the same time he became a pupil of the international school of the Golden r. c. which he continued to attend for several years. During this period he also studied Gnostic writings, becoming aware the limitations of psychotherapy at the "personality level" and the necessity of focusing at "soul level". Also in this period, he became a working member of the oldest and purest Dutch naturists club "Sun and Life". He studied Tantra and annexed this form of Buddhism as a lifestyle.
By doing so he re-socialised and re-educated himself into a natural way of behaving and living and as a consequence, also became a vegetarian.
At the age of 60 - when he had recovered from his life-long chronic depression and had learned to cope with his post traumatic stress syndrome, imposed memory and concentration restrictions - he left the Dutch protestant church, and left his country as well, to experience several months of solitude in the Catalan hills of Conca de Barbera.
Here he was granted a state of enlightenment on the twenty-second of February 2004.
"vader Zen zoon" (father Zen son) was written during the summer of 2005 whilst staying in the Tavascan valley, in a small travel caravan, with his Catalan lady friend. During that period, Hace drew inspiration from being in his beloved Cataluña and being a naturist surrounded by nature in the vast Pyrenean mountains.
"Ontology; the knowledge of being", was written in the spring of 2007, in the unspoiled Pyrenean valley of Ager.

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At seventeen, Hace left the parental home and went to England, where he was really not permitted to take on either paid or unpaid work. For several months he joined a team of road contractors, earning good money "by the yard". These adult weekly wages were mainly invested in profitable "merchandise" in later years.
At the age of twenty, when he had completed his two years of military service, he started doing shift-work in a steel factory and bought his first house. Then, at the age of twenty-one, five years after they first met, he married his school friend and eleven months later was presented with a daughter… who got a brother two years later.
By the time he was twenty-eight he was in a position to buy a larger house, with a study, and embarked on a three year marketing course.
When he had finished this, and graduated, he started on his successful commercial career and became familiar with purchasing; sales; training; coaching; consultancy and management. This all resulted in leadership based upon authority through skills.
In the early eighties he was co-founder of a couple of companies but withdrew from them after the first year. He finally specialised in the generation of "new business": developing new product/market combinations and he operated as a consultant in strategic marketing. Throughout his life, he continued to combine paid work with unpaid volunteer work.
The environmental foundation was positioned as a new service/market combination through "nonprofit marketing" and became effective through professional account management and structured communication.
After over half a century of survival, Hace now lives in both Spain and in the Netherlands. He enjoys living his life as a lover, writer, painter and nature photographer, and - every now and then - taking pleasure in flying his motorised para-glider alongside the birds of the Pyrenees.
He is, at last, experiencing life-long happiness as a reality:
Always here & now, and never later/there. Catalunya march 2008