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SHAUMBRA MAGAZINE: How and when did you find the Crimson Circle?

JOEP: That’s an easy one! It was in 2002. I had stumbled across Lightworker.com with Steve & Barbara Rother in 2000 and had been following them for two years at that point; had even done a couple of workshops with them in Holland. In 2002 Steve joined a four-way channel at a Kryon conference that they mentioned in their monthly broadcast. There was Lee Carroll with Kryon, of course, Steve and Barbara with ‘the group,’ Ronna Herman with AA Michael, and somebody called Geoffrey Hoppe with Tobias. I checked all of them out, being curious, and that’s when I first met Tobias and I was sold on him immediately. If I remember correctly, you could already listen to the monthly audio webcasts at that point, and then after a few weeks the text transcript of the channel would be put up on the website. So I read all the channels that were up on the website at that point – the first three series or so – and have been following them ever since.

The year after that, in 2003, Geoff and Linda came to Holland and presented the channeling workshop in Rotterdam – there are actually some pictures of the event in the Crimson Circle photo album – and that was my first meeting with Geoff & Linda, and also with Shaumbra. I was like, “Wow, there are more people like me!”

I was a “local contact” for a while, which were people listed on the CC website that locals could contact (CC stopped listing these at some point), and we had a local group of about 10 Shaumbra for a year or two, that got together every month. When they showed up at my door within a very short period of time, I was blown away that there were actually people living nearby who were into this kind of stuff.

One thing led to another, and in 2005 I came to Colorado for the first time and attended my first Shoud meeting at the Coal Creek Canyon Community Center. That’s where I met my soon-to-be wife (now ex-wife), Jean Tinder. Because of her I kept coming back and at some point, decided to settle down on the American side of the Atlantic. After living at Lake Tahoe for a while, where Jean worked at the CC office, we moved to Colorado when CC closed down said office, ending up in Coal Creek Canyon, close to the Community Center where the monthly meetings were being held.

That’s when I started helping out at the monthly meetings, mostly with the teardown, and started doing camera work, then helping with the bigger events, like the conferences. That was always a lot of fun, being on the staff as a volunteer, just being part of it and adding my energy. I remember the Quantum Leap in Taos, New Mexico where I spent hours each day in an office room with no windows, copying CD’s with recordings of the presentations that we sold to the attendees. Luckily the parties in the evenings made up for that!

SM: What skills did you bring and what have you gained in all your work with the Crimson Circle? It sounds like you’ve done a lot of different things.

JOEP: When I moved to the US, I completely stopped working for a while, but before that, back in Holland I worked in IT as a project manager. So that is something I brought to the table. I knew how to manage projects and was pretty tech savvy too. I knew my way around the internet and computers, so a lot of the stuff I did was with that, and also learned a lot of new things along the way.

I ran the Crimson Circle Facebook page for a number of years, as well as the CC Twitter account. I didn’t know very much about social media because that was still relatively new, so I had to really dive in and basically learn how to do it. When we started with Keahak, I was involved in the first Keahak year as a monitor. That was the first time we had a NING site, so that’s another thing I had to dive into. Then the Awakening Zone came around with Blog Talk Radio, and I did production work for several of the hosts. I was a co-host for Marisa Calvi & Kuthumi for a while, and ran the Facebook page and Twitter account for the Awakening Zone too.

I also started doing subtitling and translation. I created the English subtitles for several of the Advanced Studies classes, and then the translators could take the English subtitles and translate them into their language. I still do that now for some of the CC YouTube videos, and it’s something I really enjoy. I got pretty good at it.

SM: Yes, it’s very helpful for people, especially if English is a second language. Sometimes just having the support of the English subtitles is very useful.

JOEP: At the moment, I am mostly working with the translations, formatting them into a PDF file that can be published in the Crimson Circle store or as a Cloud Class e-reader. I also manage all the YouTube subtitles, whether creating the English ones or uploading translations that are sent in by all the translation teams.

And last but not least, I take care of the copyright registration. Some of the CC products are officially registered for copyright protection, and I feed them into the copyright website – setting up all the specific information for each item and file type – so that they are then registered with the US Copyright office.

SM: What is the most wonderful and/or the most challenging parts of your job?

JOEP: Nothing too challenging at the moment, because what I do, I know how to do it and it’s pretty routine. One interesting part of the job is dealing with the people at the US Copyright Office. When I send in those applications, they sometimes send me back emails asking for clarification. They’re very much a bunch of bureaucrats, talking strictly legalese, and for me, English not being my first language, that was something I was a bit nervous about at first. Can I talk to them on their level so that they understand what we’re trying to get at?

One time, one of them asked me about Adamus. We list Geoffrey Hoppe as the author for all the documents that we file, but then in the document itself there’s Adamus doing all the talking. So why wasn’t he listed as the author, she wanted to know? I had to explain to her that, “No, he’s a dead guy, and Geoffrey channels him, so instead we put Geoff’s name on all the documents.” She actually got it in the end, but I had a good chuckle about that.

The most fun part for me is just being part of it. I really enjoy adding my energy to the CC team and the Shaumbra enterprise, so to speak. For example, with the translated e-readers and PDF’s I create, I like the idea that these are going to touch people and be read for years to come and I was able to contribute to that.

SM: What do you feel passionate about? Is there anything you would like Shaumbra to know about you?

JOEP: Well, after I took Threshold back in 2016, I kind of disconnected, even from Shaumbra. I think there’s at times sort of a Shaumbra group energy that tends to work almost like mass consciousness; in some ways it holds you back. It’s the ‘ungrouping’ thing Adamus mentioned a while back; at some point you just have to disconnect and find your own path to Realization. So, for example, I was one of the moderators of the Crimson Circle on Facebook group for a while, and I just stopped doing it because I got so fed up with all the same, recurring discussions and all the things that people were talking about.

I still haven’t found my New Energy passion; I’m still waiting for it to appear. Adamus has been pushing us really hard this summer in I Am Abundance and the Shouds, and also in Keahak, and I’ve really been feeling that, like I’m really at the Threshold of where I want to be. And the frustrating part, of course, is that you can’t force it. You can’t push it, which is what I would like to do, so it’s been quite an exercise in patience. I wrote somewhere that “allowing is the new waiting.” You allow, but you can’t push it, you can’t force it, you just allow, which sometimes just boils down to waiting for things to happen and come to you. So, it’s an interesting but challenging time right now.

After attending Threshold in 2016, my life completely fell apart – I got divorced, my dad died, I ended up living out of my car for two years – and it took a while to put it back together again. I’m at the point now where it’s like – we have a saying in Dutch – “death or the gladioli1,” meaning it’s “all or nothing” right now. You’re so set on something, you either get there or die trying. That’s how I feel about my Realization right now.

SM: I can hear your passion for Realization, actually.

JOEP: Yeah, it is there. So, if there’s a passion, that’s my passion: Realization – dead or alive!


Joep can be contacted via email.

1 The expression originated among bike racers who get a bouquet of flowers when they win a race and are willing to die to win that race, in a manner of speaking.

4 comments on "Meet the Staff - Joep Claessens"

  • Ieda T. Alves on March 3, 2022 1:40 PM said:
    Olá Joep Claessens Agradeço por seu belo trabalho, junto a esse maravilhoso grupo, Crimson Circle. Grande abraço!
  • Bernadette on September 29, 2020 4:40 PM said:
    It's really nice to "meet" a staff member, read their story, share in their journey.
  • Eola Ball on September 28, 2020 2:03 PM said:
    Joep! So fun to learn more about you! I felt I knew you from watching the Shouds and your wedding during one of them. Then met you in 2011 on the Egypt trip. I still remember so clearly hugging you on the Nile and feeling your wonderful energies! Then SES in Texas!! Thank you for sharing yourself with me and all of Shaumbra over the years. Loving Hugs!!
  • Felix on September 28, 2020 1:42 PM said:
    What a great story friend!

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