Robert Bridgeman
1 May 2021
Anna met… Robert Bridgeman
In this new series of interviews, soul coach Anna Zeven seeks to truly meet people on a mission of personal and spiritual expansion. In this third article lightworker Robert Bridgeman, who after his bestseller Lichter Leven founded a retreat centre in France, where he receives and inspires lightworkers from all over the world. “We are in a very special movement right now as humanity. Everyone is awakening.”
It’s one of those first sunny days of the year. Night is falling. With Robert’s re-published book Lichter Leven (Brighter Living) in one hand and my briefcase in the other, I walk through the then still marshy land into the gate of Terra Nova. From the left about sixty half-wild horses greet me. When I try to find my way in the semi-darkness, I almost stumble over Robert’s typical hodgepodge of earthly spirituality. In this case children’s bicycles and Buddha statues. The Bruggeman family emigrated to the South of France to revive a retreat centre. And with success: the centre is well visited by lightworkers, transformation seekers and teachers from all over the world, who feast on the transforming energy of this beautiful and traditionally very spiritual Cathar country. Robert says he loves ParaVisie Magazine and can receive me between two retreats. Silence between retreat storms? No way! In these days of ‘rest’ the team is working hard on the centre. At the crack of dawn we plunge into the ice-cold swimming lake, we meditate and do yoga. What a delight to be here! Not to mention the food. As a dessert Robert treats us to a transformation session 2.0. This one I won’t forget in a hurry… Who is this Robert Bruggeman? Or is it Robert Bridgeman?
What makes you so fond of a magazine like ParaVisie Magazine, Robert?
Robert: “Ha, what a great question! I think it’s very
important that a magazine like this exists, because I believe
that after thousands of years of oppression in the
form of, for instance, church, book, witch and heretic burning – all together as lightworkers in a
spiritual coming out. And this magazine will be there
just come right out and say it, without beating about the bush, and that
I like it. Whether it’s mediumship, aliens, or
awareness in general, it’s just in there.
If we keep communicating in a disguised way, then the
people who wake up don’t know where to go.
We need to create as many places for them as possible,
online and offline.”
I hate to ask, but… what’s your name?
Robert: “You’re not the first to ask that question! My last name is Bruggeman, of course. My whole family is called that. But when we moved to Vietnam, it turned out to be a difficult name there. So a friend said, ‘Why don’t you call yourself Bridgeman?’ Besides, it’s quite normal there to have an Asian name and an international name. And because I was awakening at the time, I was loosening up about my name. When I came back, I went through life again as Bruggeman. Only I kept Bridgeman as my pseudonym.”
So we don’t have to worry about an identity crisis?
Robert: “Haha, no way! I did once have the desire to have it officially changed, but in hindsight I’m very glad I didn’t. You’re not your name, and at the same time you were born for a reason
with a name. But if I’m anything, I’m Robert Bruggeman. It’s not a package I’m hiding behind.”
Speaking of not hiding… You went barefoot last night, I saw on Facebook. Do you do that regularly?
Robert: “I had indeed given my opinion about the coronavirus a little too strongly. I wanted to bring peace, love and harmony, but my post evoked polarity and fear. So I had to bare my soul. Fortunately that doesn’t happen very often. Only when I took a wrong turn. If you inspire people, you have a responsibility. Your self-interest can never be greater than that responsibility. If you make a mistake, I think you should just admit it and not hide. People really appreciate that. And I’m going to be completely honest when I dive into the lake!
"In Vietnam I pretended to be more enlightened than I was."
You’re willing to put yourself out there?
Robert: “Yes, right! I have a saying, ‘No one is anywhere’. When I was just awakening, I looked up very much to Buddhist monks and great teachers. Higher did not exist. But then you get closer to them and you discover that they are just people too. You also see it with famous teachers: one is addicted to cocaine, another can’t keep away from women, and yet another turns out to have sexually harassed seventy male colleagues. Or younger teachers who are supposedly fully initiated, insanely enlightened, understand and know everything … but have no children. Then I always think: oh, just wait… Total enlightenment doesn’t exist. You wouldn’t be here. You just can’t escape the fact that there are dependencies if you want to inspire people. But if you sit on that mushroom… I participated in it myself. In Vietnam I pretended to be more enlightened than I really was: walked in a white robe, bald head et cetera. I really believed it myself! My wife didn’t, haha. Because people really became submissive, it was easy to maintain that enlightened status. And then I came back to the Netherlands… A completely different ego-system. That didn’t work. If you teach on the basis of equality, then you start to see what you are worth. I have developed certain areas quite well, but I still have a lot to learn. No one is ever… You learn more from your students than from your greatest teachers. As long as you open up… I am always very open about what I myself am struggling with. For example with raising my children. Enlightened fatherhood is an art. Children can make you sick to your stomach.
For example, what do you struggle with in parenting?
Robert: “Children are huge mirrors and before you know it your mom or dad is talking instead of you. I always ask myself: is this mine or my parents’? My parents are second generation war victims. A war like that has such an incredible impact on people. A lot of insecurity, a lot of violence. It’s in us. All those burn-outs we have nowadays may well be linked to the modern world and its stimuli, but we are slowly but surely discovering that it’s precisely those unprocessed war traumas that are taking a heavy toll. With reincarnation therapy you soon end up in WWII.”
Previous lives… Also in your book ‘Living Lighter’ you write about this with conviction. You seem to be speaking from experience…
Robert: “That’s right, I’ve seen a lot of sessions by other people, both attended and guided, in which people ended up in past lives. But I myself have often ended up in past lives as well. In stressful situations, such as war, the incarnation period that follows is very short. Your soul then wants to process that trauma as quickly as possible. For example, in the round before this I was a soldier in Vietnam. I fought there and died from a grenade on my head. In the meantime I also know that there is a son of mine from that life still walking around somewhere. The life before that I was a jewish woman with two children in a concentration camp during WW-II. I was shot in my back. The time before that…”.
Wow,wait a minute,I’m already feeling the heat….
Robert, “Yes, that was also very intense! And that’s what keeps coming back. WWI, I remember, too. And further lives as a chief, Viking king, shaman, monk, pirate, jester – one of those little hunchbacked men who stands on a
to dance on the table. A life where I had slaves and also a girl as a sex slave. And so on.”
How do you get to these other lives?
Robert: “Regression. Or through meditation; then it can sometimes happen spontaneously. But the easiest way is in a trance. By experiencing it with myself and others, it is no longer something I believe. It’s just a reality
become.” You were just talking about being enlightened.
How enlightened are you?
Robert: “You may assume that someone who says of himself that he is enlightened is not enlightened. You can’t. I don’t think I’m at any stage of enlightenment. And it’s not that important either. But actually everyone is enlightened.”
Wait… First there were different stages of being enlightened, just now you weren’t enlightened, then it wasn’t that important and now suddenly everyone is enlightened. I’m lost!
Robert: “Well look, ‘being enlightened’ means nothing other than being one with the whole. And we can only be one with the whole. This is also symbolized by the image with the ring that you see there. The hole is empty. That stands for unity. The ring represents your conditioning. And that conditioning layer is what keeps you from that experience of oneness. That’s where we experience duality. But there is always a part of man that knows it is enlightened. That’s what we call ‘the source’, ‘divine spark’, ‘spirit’, ‘Buddha nature’, the ‘I am’. So essentially we’re all enlightened, only we’re not aware of it. Everybody is, but nobody is. At least, not here on earth.”
Ah, I think I understand. Say, when I read your book like that, you’ve done and discovered an incredible amount. Does that fit in a nutshell?
Robert: “Yes! When I ‘woke up’, I first started to do a desk study. I started reading about all the better known movements, such as Christianity, Gnosis, Islam, Sufism, Buddhist movements. But I could not get any further with my head. Then I stumbled upon meditation. That led to many experiences of unity. The one on Terschelling is the most important: I saw my own fear, karma, self-image, convictions and so on, and how I hold on to them all. From that realization I started doing everything I could find to transform that. From meditation retreats to workshops on making spiritual games. Eventually I went into the authentic Kabbalah, Advaita Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhism and for years I was apprenticed to a shaman and an energy healer. With my wife I moved to Vietnam. From there I stayed for a long time in surrounding countries and visited many zen monasteries. Everywhere we met teachers and meditated with many monks. Meanwhile, in Zwolle, we founded the consciousness centre EEUWIG. There we met teachers from all over the world. Back in the Netherlands, I went looking for the translation to the normal human world and became a Mindfulness trainer at Google, did the Wim Hoff training – including climbing Kilimanjaro in shorts – followed Tony Robbins and did Touch of Matrix, Reiki Master and EFT. I don’t attach an identity to it, but it was all about getting to the bottom of those methods as best I could and finding ways to communicate it well to others.”
Gosh, it’s funny: most people will start with Tony Robbins and then go deeper and deeper, but you seem to have made the opposite journey. Why is that?
Robert: “Those unity experiences made me go very deep at once. So that was my starting point. And soon I’m going to see Joe Dispenza.”
Joe Dispenza is very much of ‘practice what you preach’, I know. Do you?
I usually meditate for at least half an hour every day,” says Robert. Before the children came, I even had a morning program of 1.5 hours, in which I did breathing exercises, visualizations and meditations. But since the boys arrived, that has become a little more difficult. I did that for eleven years and now I’m on a meditation break. But the vibration is so high here that it’s almost like one big meditation. I do get around to my practice.
'We sit as lightworkers all together in one spiritual coming out'
How’s that for a break?
Robert: “Yes, actually quite nice. I don’t have to do anything. I just didn’t feel like it anymore. After all those years I just needed to wake up next to my wife. Or rather, she next to me! But I’m starting to miss it a bit now.”
What’s different now that you’re not meditating anymore?
Robert: “Not that much actually! Although… I notice that when I meditate, I am more resilient. And it is easier to stay out of the illusion. I am less easily drawn into something and am more judgment free; there is simply more space. At least, if you maintain that daily. Because you deepen in longer meditation retreats. Daily practice, the formal morning sitting, is maintenance. And the rest of the day is meditation. I continued to do the deepening moments. Only the formal morning-sit I stopped doing for a while.”
There have been many human teachers on your journey of discovery. Have any unseen teachers come forward?
Robert: “Yes, definitely. In different phases I am guided by different spirit teachers. Some stay. These can be healers, monks, shamans and other forms of consciousness that work through me especially during a healing. For example, for a long time I had someone at
me breathing a certain way, so I always knew he was there. Now I feel the breathing
and move who’s doing what without knowing them exactly. But I only give permission to those beings who are directly connected to the source. In doing so, I immediately deprive all other beings of the permission to do so.”
Are there things you’ve deliberately left out?
Robert: “I have been in a sect once, where they worked with very strict dogmas and even with brainwashing and mind control. There were a thousand people in the room. Half of them were people of that sect, the other half was brought by the first half. They started to exert massive pressure. Including me. It started with one. I could resist, but when more and more came, I couldn’t take it anymore. My teacher at the time had to do everything in his power to bring me back. That is why I do not commit myself to anything. But I don’t regret it and I’m glad I was able to see and experience all that.”
In your book you also talk about how thoughts can be influenced by entities. How do you deal with that?
Robert: “By realizing that you are not your thoughts and not believing them. There are all kinds of influences that can manifest themselves as voices in your head. And these influences, often entities, feed on fear and pain. They benefit from keeping that part alive. As soon as you release this and stop believing in it, you can transform it. Because nobody is allowed to be with you without permission. So unconsciously we give permission to that entity to be with us. The moment I become aware of them and I encounter them, I say: ‘I love you, I think you’re terribly sweet, but I’m not going to listen to you anymore and I want you to go now’. But often it does take deeper transformation sessions to let go of this.”
"We have spent thousands of years sat in fear and now go to love"
We are walking by your beautiful retreat center, ‘Terra Nova’. What do people find here besides the beautiful landscape, the spacious pool and even the stylishly decorated sauna?
Robert: “Even when you arrive here, you feel the peace come over you because of the high vibration of the environment. But above all people find themselves here. With pure food, yoga and meditation and of course the transformation sessions. What people release here, is what blocks them to be who they really are. Think of the image with the ring and the hole. We help them to reconnect with their essence and from there discover what their destiny is.”
Thank you for this very nice conversation, Robert. Do you have anything else on your mind?
Robert: “We are now in a very special movement as humanity. Everyone is waking up. Everyone on this spiritual lightworker and consciousness path is facilitating that movement. Regardless of your movement, the tradition you follow or where you come from. And whether you like the word “lightworker” or not. Anyone who is seriously engaged with consciousness is a lightworker in some form. And I find it immensely intriguing that all kinds of prophecies have been describing this for thousands of years. Think of the Mayans talking about the rotation of the earth’s axis. We are now in the farthest corner of that removal of the earth’s axis. And we are, as predicted, completely materialistic. But we make the move back. The tipping point was in 2012. The Hindus and the Kabbalists also provided it. Time goes in cycles. We are now in the age of Kali. You can compare it to a circle [Robert begint druk met zijn handen illustrerende vormen te maken door zijn handpalmen op elkaar te leggen en naar rechts te laten vallen zodat ze horizontaal zijn]. The universal movement is up. We have spent a few thousand years in fear and are now moving towards love. But a very large part of humanity – linear thinking people who are in the third dimension of fear – does not make that upward movement and keeps going straight [zijn onderste hand maakt een rechte lijn rechtdoor]. While people who have awakened move very naturally with the circle that has reached its lowest point and is now starting its way up again [zijn bovenste hand gaat in een halve maan omhoog]. You can imagine that these two streams are becoming more and more distant from each other. But because that movement upwards is the natural, universal movement, there is more and more pressure on the lower layer. This layer will eventually be sucked into the new consciousness. A kind of clapping motion [zijn handen klappen tegen elkaar]. It doesn’t take entities or aliens to make that happen or to help us. That’s just the vibration of it all.”
And what happens to those souls who are in the third dimension?
Robert: “The old system falls away, the people remain. The beliefs that maintain the current structures and systems fall away. There are many people who believe that the banking system is good, or a hierarchically organized society. The moment we awaken, we lose that vibration of the third dimension. Then we no longer believe in all those beliefs. No longer in that control, those systems, in the rat race or in the importance of money. Those people will also awaken and eventually they will naturally move with us. We are on the way to a new earth. Terra Nova. And that is a movement that will happen no matter what. This movement ensures that we are together in a different way. That we will take better care of ourselves, each other and the world. But also that we get rid of the hierarchical or pyramid structure and start living in circles much more. I also expect that people will go back to communities, old tribal bonds. We will regain the balance with ourselves and with the world. That to me is the new earth. That we live in connection with each other again. We now see in this whole corona crisis, that air pollution has decreased by twenty to sixty percent. So it’s just possible. If we behave differently as humanity and give nature space again, Mother Earth will simply recover. That is the Terra Nova, the promise!” – •
About Anna. As a soul coach in her practice Anna Zeven knows how to inspire many people to live more consciously, freely and connectedly. She is a smart down to earth powerwoman with a holistic and profound vision of life. From her nutritional expertise, the book The New Eating was born. She is currently working on a book about beauty. Tips and suggestions are always welcome! WWW.ANNAZEVEN.NL
