Title:
Impressions ITC 2015
Alice Bouwland – the Netherlands
See you next year in Santa Barbara!
Alice Bouwland is the lady with the wonderful smile on the right (front)
Dear reader: sit down in an easy chair, relax for a while, take a few deep breaths and then imagine.
It is summertime; the sun is shining while a gentle breeze is cooling the Dutch summer heat cheerfully. You arrive by train in a city called The Hague. You start walking and looking around. Within a mile or so you pass by highly interesting examples of modern architecture, houses of parliament, the future palace of the king, three or four museums with pictures of the Golden Age of the country, the famous Peace Palace and last but not least many cozy streets packed with cafes and terraces, restaurants, bookshops and especially art-shops. Imagine … this is real!
But you walk on and reach your destination: the Carlton Ambassador. You’ll see a stylish and classical hotel with painted white and red sunscreens. It looks comfortable, inviting and warm. The rooms are decorated with huge curtains and painted walls, “where I feel like a princess”, as one visitor put it.
You enter this beautiful hotel and there you find the very best: a vibrant, inspired, intelligent community of people from all over the world. There are participants from Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, the USA, Brazil, New Zealand, India talking, exchanging, communicating and drinking coffee of course; don’t forget, this is Holland.
They welcome you. You get an information-map and you look around again. Wooh, this is well-organized. You see a whole bunch of IT-guys sitting behind their apparatuses, registering all proceedings on video and immediately putting it on the web.
And they have something to register! What a high level of lecturing. What a consistency in the program: a strong connection with the results of past achievements, logical steps which lead in different stages to a definite goal, the ability to stay interactive, using different working methods by which all participants are involved - the World café - and last but not least there is laughter too; fun and cheer joy!
Whatever you might have thought, here it becomes clear: the Theosophical movement is strong, healthy and alive!
These ITC meetings seem to be stepping stones towards ways of interacting far stronger and deeper which will be worked out in a nearby future when more of those gatherings are to come. From behind the veils you feel the stimulating impulses.
Dear reader, your Theosophical fata morgana has been real, but perhaps you missed this conference in The Hague. Do yourself a favor: save-up all your money and try to visit ITC 2016 in Santa Barbara, California, organized by this hardworking and growing nucleus of brotherhood. It is worth it.
Step out of your visualization, return to reality by taking a firm decision. Hopefully we will see each other “live” in Santa Barbara!