I often think back to the time when I still thought I had an uninhibited childhood, at least, within the limitations that life gave me then. As I mentioned before, I didn’t have the very best childhood, I was hindered by illness, and the fact that I didn’t know then that I didn’t understand the people around me, and they didn’t understand me because I didn’t know then that I was gifted and highly sensitive.
Picture: Schaapsherder Joop van Limbeek Bron: Je bent een Velpenaar als.
Do you ever like to be alone?
In my earliest childhood I liked to look for peace. I had to clear my head. I always looked for the loneliest places, do you recognize this too? My most favourite places were the banks of the IJssel, the river that flowed past my native village of Velp (GLD) in the Netherlands. Or the stream in the Beekhuizen forest. But the most intimate place where I felt most alone in the sixties of the last century was the Rozendaalse veld, an area on the Rozendaalse heide, where for the connoisseurs there is now the off-leash field for dogs.
Did you also like to cycle alone in your youth?
I then cycled on my own, full of frustration from everything I had experienced at home or at school on that particular day, past the V.V.O (Velp football club Olympia) terrain onto the Kluizenaarsweg, this was an “adult” climb on my children’s bike. At the very top of that hermitage road was a road that I had to cross. This road was very busy, and the cars that came down through the s-bends from the “Posbank” towards Rozendaal Castle always drove very fast, here the necessary caution was required.
Do you know: The “Emma Pyramide?”
If you crossed the road safely, you cycled on a piece of road along “The Emma Pyramid”, a high sand hill where you can climb to view the surroundings from above, towards the Rozendaalseveld. When I arrived here, I was always surprised about the other “exhausted” cyclists who came up just like me, I felt top fit. I parked my bike in the parking lot and then walked towards the sand drift. There on a hill I would sit in all my loneliness, there was almost “no chicken” to be seen. When I still think back on it with nostalgia, I seem to remember that in those days I didn’t even hear a plane or helicopter flying overhead. If I still go there now in 2025, you will be disturbed almost continuously by these “air monsters.”
Have you ever met a paranormal shepherd?
Sometimes as a young child I sat there on a sand hill musing in front of me. I thought about what I thought others had done to me. I often forgot the whole environment around me and now call my posture a form of meditation. I often heard the sound of birds around me, and very occasionally also the sound of ringing bells. Not those of a church, but these bells belonged to the flock of sheep of the shepherd Joop van Limbeek. In my imagination, this man then wandered totally lonely with his sheep and his sheepdog over the long-stretched heaths in Rozendaal, and surroundings.
Have you ever had a Dejavu from your youth later in life?
I always saw the man from a distance and thought that without all the busy people around him, he would have to be very happy on this heath. I vaguely remember that in the village of Velp, where I was born in a house two streets away from my own family in a terraced house, I sometimes had to deliver a letter from my mother. Much later, as a young adult, I suddenly had to learn that the shepherd had suffered a heart attack in his sheepfold in Rheden and had barely been saved from death. When he recovered from the heart attack, he gained enormous national fame as a psychic healer.
Have you ever heard of: “Rosa Veritas?“
My life went on, and I met my current wife Monique when I was 55 years young. One day I went with her to her “denomination”, Rosa Veritas. This is a relatively small denomination that was originally founded by a Dutchman, in Australia. This society was founded by Mario Schoenmaker (1929-1997). When I got to know the members better, and heard their names, and heard where they originally came from, I was very surprised. Two members, Leo and Ans, came from my hometown of Velp. Ans had had a shop with her ex, behind one of my mother’s workhouses, and Leo (Van Limbeek) was the brother of the shepherd and paranormal healer Joop van Limbeek, whom I admired so much at a younger age. Leo was also psychic, just like his deceased brother Joop. In 2024, unfortunately, Leo also passed away, but I consider myself very lucky to have been able to get to know him and also Ans. What special surprises can sometimes appear completely unexpectedly from the “tube”.
Leave a Reply