Diary of the Soul invites you to view the course of your life as a journey, a learning experience through which to grow, to find enrichment and depth. It sets out with the notion of life as an ongoing challenge. This book envisions your soul as traveling with you through the seven phases of life. Birth, child, adoles- cent, adult, elder, and death. The seventh phase is not quite a phase as such, but rather a foundation upon which everything else is based. In this book, we call it 'the Void'; it refers to the mystery from which you are born, to which you return after death, and which, throughout your life, lends meaning to your existence.
During each of the seven phases, certain forces awake within you, you receive a gift and gain a source of help for your personal development. Whether you are eighty, forty, or twenty-five years old, you can take up the gifts and their corresponding challenges at any moment of your life. Our lifespan elapses in a linear fashion, young to old, but at the same time we are timeless, layered beings. Within your adult self, the child still lives, and the child itself already contains the elder sage. Your age only emphasizes certain aspects of your development and invites you more
strongly to unpack the gift belonging to your current phase of life. Simultaneously, the comforting and inspiring truth is that it is never too late to unpack the gifts you have been given, in order to make the wisdom hidden within that learning experience truly your own.
The vision behind Diary of the Soul derives inspiration first and foremost from the people we have met in our line of work. Other important sources of inspiration are the psychologist Carl Jung, due to his eye for archetypes, as well as authors Joseph Campbell and Carol S. Pearson, who refer to the school of life as the hero's journey.
We were continually inspired by the great religious currents of Christianity and Buddhism, since both view the soul as a guiding principle; the Christian mystic Eckhart states that our souls contain the longing to make our home a place of God, and Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, advocates for
personal development because we shelter within us the inextinguishable fire of the desire for enlightenment.
Stories taken from world literature, myths, and fairy-tales, but particularly personal stories, provided us with inexhaustible sources for clarifying the soul's journey through the phases of life.
The soul itself is a concept found in all cultures: it represents your unique self, your free consciousness, your connection to the 'divine'. The soul knows many expressions, changing its garb throughout the phases of life, but it remains your guide on the path of development towards an inspired existence.
Diary of the Soul focuses on the bigger picture and provides practical tools to make your life richer, more fulfilled, and more
meaningful. Each chapter builds upon the previous one but stands on its own as well. On the next page you can see what that looks like in a chart. In the
spirit of a personal diary, each chapter ends with a poem, a look back, questions for reflection, and a dream that describes a theme belonging to that
phase on the subconscious level.
Bertie Hendriks (b. 1951) is a physicist, teacher, director, creative mind, and life coach. He has been leading courses and retreats at ITIP since 1990. Within the framework of open and direct contact he combines exercises from bioenergetics and psychodrama with art, image work, and the wisdom of various religious tradi- tions. In 2000, he became a co-owner and co-director of ITIP, a role from which he stepped down in 2018 to stay on as a senior group trainer.Besides his work within ITIP, he is an enthusiastic supporter of young entrepre- neurs in Africa, helping them realize their dreams: kameroenwerkt.nl/en/
Mirjam Tirion-Ietswaart (b. 1964), after achieving a degree in Arabic, worked as a project manager and organizational consultant for 15 years before deciding in 2002 to fully focus on coaching people. She was a senior group counsellor at ITIP until 2017 and runs her own life-coaching practice for an international client base. The central goal of her work is to help others (re)gain their inspiration, soulfulness and joy in life. As well as making an ongoing study of mysticism and Jungian psycholo- gy, she loves quiet, her books, good conversation and dining.
Frans Zwartjes (1927-2017) was a filmmaker, musician, luthier, draughtsman, photographer, painter, and sculptor, known nationally and internationally for his experimental films from the 1960s and '70s. Zwartjes, who was once given the title of 'most important experimental filmmaker of his time' by American essayist Susan Sontag, has more than fifty films to his name. He has received a great number of awards for his cinematic oeuvre. His film Living has been included in the Canon of Dutch Film.
