Fundraiser! - A Biosphere Project Blog

Dear friends,

It has been about two years now since I decided to take unpaid leave from my position as an art teacher so that I could devote myself full-time to my new adventure, A Biosphere Project.

I haven’t regretted it for a moment! It’s an exciting journey, uncertain at times, with many challenges. But I feel very passionate and full of energy, and I feel privileged and grateful to have the choice to follow my heart and passion. Not everyone is given that opportunity, and that makes me feel a sense of responsibility to truly give my all to serve the planet in this way.

But of course, the decision to take unpaid leave also comes with a price tag, literally and figuratively.

Since making that decision, I’ve been living off savings and donations from supporting members and sponsors of the project. That meant I also had to change my lifestyle, living much more frugally and focusing on what’s truly essential—and that in itself is a very valuable exercise.

And an exercise that, incidentally, we will all have to undertake sooner or later, as it becomes clear just how unsustainable our current Western lifestyle is.

What do we really need to be happy? And it soon becomes clear that it is primarily love, friendship, and connection. Once our basic needs are met, most of what we need is free.

But those basic needs themselves are not free, which is why, about a year and a half ago, I launched a program of supporting members and sponsors who support me and my work with a regular donation.

This support from loyal donors is essential for me to continue doing this work.

The aforementioned savings will not be enough to allow me to devote myself full-time to research, writing, and, increasingly also filming. The additional support from donors is already making a huge difference, and I am extremely grateful for that: the supporting members enable me to pursue my passion and offer you everything I can in this blog, in the videos, and in future video series. But in the long term, more support in this regard would be welcome!

That’s why I’m asking, if you:

Find my work valuable

Enjoy the blog and the musings

Like to join me on the Walkie-Talkies

Believe that what I do is relevant and deserves support,

Are still looking for a good cause to support,

Believe that the search for a new worldview is essential to finding a path through the maze to a better world,

THEN I would like to invite you to support me with a recurring or one-time donation.

Of course, one-time donations are also welcome, but recurring donations give me more certainty and the ability to plan a little further ahead.

For €10 per month, you become a supporting member; starting at €50 per month, you become a sponsor; and starting at €100 per month, you become a mecenas of the project.

You can find all the information about this on the SUPPORT PAGE on the website of A Biosphere Project.

There you will also find links for each option to Stripe’s secure payment platform, where you can choose from multiple payment methods, including credit card or PayPal. If you opt for a recurring donation, it will be automatically renewed until you choose to cancel it, which of course you can do at any time.

TO THE SUPPORT PAGE

If you become a sponsor, you can also choose three photo prints from the photo gallery for donors on the website. These prints are produced by Whitewall, in a 20cm by 30cm format with a white border on Fuji Crystal DP II archive glossy paper. The gallery features a selection of my photographic work from 2005 to the present.

If you choose to become a mecenas of the project, you may select six photo prints.

Supporting members and donors also receive a newsletter via email a few times a year.

For me, this work is a labor of love and passion, and I am grateful for the time I have already been able to devote to this new path. I very much hope to continue serving in this way for a long time to come. I have plenty of ideas for a new website, new video series, one or more podcasts, travel projects, one or more books, and who knows what else may follow... because if I’ve learned one thing so far, it’s that life is more magical than we often believe. That it is not a succession of purely coincidental mechanical events without reason, purpose, or meaning, but an unfolding miracle of energy, relationships, possibilities, synchronicities, and small and great miracles—all of which, taken together, reveal a universe that is an emergent wonder of breathtaking beauty, a magical stage where our potential and intentions can manifest and make wonderful things possible.

If all of that sounds a bit (or a lot) too rosy and optimistic to you, given all the current world news about war, genocide, and disaster, I don’t blame you. Yet I feel that it is precisely this that we can and must begin to feel more deeply, because it is precisely this that can give us the courage and energy to undertake the major transitions that await us, on the path to a more beautiful world.

For we must not be content with mere survival, with limiting the damage to the planet and to one another just enough so that everything doesn’t go to hell in a handbasket… no, we can and must strive to maximize life, both our own lives and those of all life forms with which we share the planet… for a harmony between humanity and the world that allows both to flourish. And that is possible, no matter how far away and impossible it may seem to us now.

It will indeed require a great deal of change, growth, and evolution from our society, just as life demands of each of us individually if we wish to continue growing... as above, so below. As inside, so outside.

And I would very much like to continue my exploration of everything that this great transition—the birth of a more beautiful world—will ask of us (and what it will give us in return).

Financial support, by the way, is not the only way you can contribute: sharing my blog posts, website, and YouTube channel through your own network (email, social media) is also a huge help and is greatly appreciated!

I am grateful in advance for any form of support you can offer me on this journey, and I look forward to a long collaboration (because that’s how I see it) with you.

Thank you for reading, and until the next episode,

All the best,

Filip

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