Berend Lange’s KOMPASS

     When was the last time you couldn’t believe your eyes?

     For me that was Tuesday 11 September 2001, seven years ago today, when I saw airplanes crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York on TV, collapsing the twin towers within two hours.

     This simply cannot be happening, I thought. Is this a movie? It was just too outrageous to be real - and yet, as the tragedy unfolded before our very eyes live on TV, I had to accept it as true - seeing is believing, isn’t it?

     As incredible as the 9/11 events were at the time, they are part of our reality today and we see the world with different eyes - life as we know it has changed, not only in the USA.

     Although I lived in Cape Town at the time and I haven’t been visiting New York since then, it never occurred to me that 9/11 might be a gigantic, cruel show. Of course is wasn’t. However, we can believably show anything on screen these days with special effects technology.

     After all, in 1997 a movie called ‘Wag the Dog’ with Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro won two Oscars : a clever Hollywood producer and an American politician fabricate a war in Albania for TV, only to divert the public’s attention from a sex-scandal which threatens the re-election of the country’s president.

     Is it ironic that this whole scenario is very believable these days?

     Watching Fahrenheit 9/11 again on Tuesday and last night’s daily soap operas about the election campaigns in Austria and the USA didn’t exactly help, either.

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     Kennt ihr das Buch von Louise Hay?

     Ich habe es schon vor Jahren gelesen und die Paperback-Ausgabe von ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ steht immer noch mit ziemlich vielen Eselsohren im Regal - eigentlich sollte es mit auf meiner Liste von Lieblingsbüchern stehen …  

     Ich habe eben entdeckt, daß Louise Hay jetzt auch einen Film unter diesem Titel herausgebracht hat - ich habe mir den Trailer angesehen (vier Minuten, auf Englisch natürlich) und der ist wirklich gut !  

      Meine Lieblingsautoren Wayne Dyer und Esther Hicks machen da auch mit … geht mal hin und seht euch den Trailer an!

     Ein Leser machte mich schon vor ein paar Tagen darauf aufmerksam, daß James Redfield’s Buch ‘Die Prophezeiungen von Celestine’ verfilmt worden ist.

     Jürgen Prochnow spielt mit, Jürgen Fliege hat die Schirmherrschaft - Premiere war am 8. Oktober 2007 in Frankfurt. Übermorgen am 8. November ist der offizielle Kinostart, aber es gab und gibt in vielen Städten Sondervorführungen.

     Ich habe alle drei Bücher dieser Serie von James Redfield schon lange im englischen Original :

• ‘The Celestine Prophecy’
• ‘The Tenth Insight’, und
• ‘The Secret of Shambala’

     … und sie geradezu verschlungen, als sie erschienen! Sein neuestes Buch ‘Rückkehr nach Celestine’ habe ich noch nicht gelesen, aber das will ich jetzt schleunigst nachholen.

     Auf dem Website zum Film gibt es jede Menge Informationen, hier nur kurz, was zum INHALT gesagt wird :

„Wenn wir aufmerksam sind, können wir zu einem größeren Leben finden, ohne Rücksicht darauf wo wir sind, wer wir sind oder wie unsere Lebensverhältnisse sind. Wenn wir uns auf die mysteriösen Zufälle in unserem Leben einstimmen, und dann unserer Intuition folgen, werden wir feststellen, dass es da eine Tür und Möglichkeit zu einem größeren Leben gibt. Man kann nicht  ‚Opfer’ sein und gleichzeitig etwas erschaffen! Wenn man aber darüber hinaus wächst, wenn man einen Weg aus den eigenen Lebensumständen und Blockaden findet, stellt man fest, es funktioniert. Und es funktioniert immer. Das Einzige was uns zurückhalten kann, ist der eigene Unglaube dass es gelingt.”

     Zufälle, wie wir sie verstehen, gibt es nicht - Synchronizität ist nichts anderes als Resonanz, das Gesetz der Anziehung. Um die Entdeckung dieser Zusammenhänge und die Entwicklung unserer Fähigkeiten in dieser Richtung geht es in dem Buch.

     Wenn der Film nur halb so gut ist wie die Bücher, dann sollte man ihn unbedingt sehen!

     Wenn es euch interessiert geht mal auf den website für den Film - da gibt es wirklich umfangreiche Informationen, von den Hintergründen über Spieltage der Sondervorführungen in vielen Städten bis zu TV-Sendungen zum Film, man kann einen Trailer sehen und vieles mehr.

     Und erzählt auch mal als Kommentar hier, was ihr von den Büchern haltet - wer hat sie gelesen? Ihr könnt diesen Beitrag auch an Freunde schicken : einfach auf ‘Email This’ unter dem Artikel klicken.

     Hat schon jemand den Film gesehen?

     Ich kriege viele Zuschriften von Leuten, die sich mit dem Gesetz der Anziehung beschäftigen und den Film ‘The Secret’ gesehen oder das Buch gelesen haben :

• “Ich habe schon alles versucht, aber es klappt nicht.”
• “Warum dauert es solange, bis ich meinen Traumpartner finde?”
• “Was mache ich falsch - ich schaffe es nicht, immer nur positiv zu denken.”

     All diese Leute übersehen tatsächlich etwas, aber sie können nichts dafür - und ich bin nicht der Einzige, der ‘The Secret’ dafür verantwortlich macht.

     Seit einiger Zeit grassiert das ‘Secret-Fieber’ : die Zeit war reif für die neuen Ideen, die darin einem großen Publikum vorgestellt werden. Aber wie so häufig wurde das Konzept vereinfacht, um es so vielen Leuten wie möglich zugänglich zu machen … und das birgt immer die Gefahr von Mißverständnissen.

     Versteht mich nicht falsch : ich bin selbst ein großer Fan von ‘The Secret’, weil der Film so herrlich inspirierend ist und wir unser Leben wirklich entscheidend verbessern können, wenn wir das Wissen um die Macht der Gedanken richtig anwenden.

     Aber ich bin auch kritisch, weil der Film bei vielen den Eindruck erweckt, daß man von einer Minute auf die andere sein Leben total verändern kann, NUR indem man seine Gedanken jetzt auf Positives beschränkt, Dankbarkeit empfindet für die schönen Seiten seines Lebens, eine Wunschliste aufstellt von allem, was man haben möchte und eine entsprechende Bestellung beim Universum aufgibt : “Dein Wunsch ist mir Befehl”, Lieferung umgehend.

     Das alles ist schon richtig, aber das ist eben nicht alles. Es gehört noch mehr dazu :

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     Have you seen “A Beautiful Mind” with Russell Crowe?

     The film is based on a true story about a brilliant mathematician coming to grips with schizophrenia, and it won four Academy Awards in 2001.

     I’ve seen it a second time last week and was again captivated not only by Crowe’s performance, but especially by the fascinating illustration of how powerful the human mind is.

     While Professor Nash teaches at a famous American university, he is approached by secret service agents to decipher a code which the enemies of democracy use for their subversive activities, threatening national security. For years he works with the agents, exploring millions of connections and possibilities to uncover the mystery - until his wife finds out about his hidden life and supports him on the way out of the mess.

     It turns out that all the persons involved in the undercover plot are totally fictitious, they only existed in the Professor’s mind - so real for him, that he had developed a complete second identity around his scenario. His weird behaviour under these circumstances was obviously labeled ‘madness’ by his ‘normal’ peers - and yet he won a Nobel Prize for his academic work a few years later.

     Genius and madness are close neighbours, they say - assuming for a minute that you and I don’t fall into either of these categories, what is the lesson for ‘normal’ people here? As far as I’m concerned, I show more consideration for the unusual conduct of people these days.

     Who am I to judge others for things I don’t understand? I know that I have some blind spots, and may be that odd fellow I saw in the mall yesterday is a genius working out the quadrature of the circle.

     What’s more, I am reminded that I, too live in my own world - like you do in yours.

     A lot of things occupy my mind every day which directly influence my actions because I am absolutely convinced that they are perfectly sensible.

     Most of the time you wouldn’t find strange what I do, I suppose, but I am sure that some people wonder who the fool is that spends an hour on a perfect Sunday afternoon writing articles like this.

     What’s on your mind? Do you want to be president of your bowling club? Climb Mount Kilimanjaro? That’s OK, but I personally couldn’t be bothered.

     The point is that we are who we think we are, literally. I am not a professor, and I don’t want to win the Nobel Prize - but I want to write and that’s OK, too. Who knows, may be they’ll give me the Pulitzer Prize one of these days - call me crazy.

     Would you like to know what the future has in stall for you?

     In fact, the whole world is obsessed with the idea of knowing what will happen tomorrow, next week or in ten years time. The movie “Paycheck” starring Ben Affleck is a riveting thriller about the past and the future – and a huge paycheck he never gets.

     Analysts make a fortune predicting the ups and downs of the stock exchange. We watch the weather report to see whether we can go to the beach on Sunday, or try to pick 6 out of 49 numbers to win our first or second million – but none of these systems work with a great degree of accuracy.

     In ‘Paycheck’, Ben Affleck is a clever computer engineer who develops rip-off computer products for high-tech corporations, but must always have his short-term memory erased after each assignment so that his employers can claim the copyright. In his job for the “Allcom” company, it takes him three years to build a machine that can look into the future – and is promptly swindled out of his paycheck.

     But he knew what was coming, of course, and after his memory is erased, Uma Thurman as his biologist girlfriend helps him to retrace what happened in order to prevent a global catastrophe.

     That’s the plot, but why am I writing this?

     What struck me was a little sentence in the dialogue:
“Once you know the future, you don’t have a future anymore”.

     I had never thought of that before, but it’s true. What is it that we call the future? In my view, it is the sum total of all the interactions we still have to experience to fulfill the aspirations which we think will make us a more successful person.

     In other words, the future – by definition – includes an element of uncertainty and if you take that away, you don’t have a future. All you would have is a path on which you go through the motions.

     But what for? And where to?

     Life as we know it on this planet would be meaningless if we knew the destination of every road we travel, the outcome of every action we take.

     We tend to forget that in reality time doesn’t exist. It is just a concept – a very useful and necessary one - that human beings have to live by in their limited consciousness to manage a number of experiences and learn from them. We cannot see both sides of the same coin at once, only one after the other. Even a mirror doesn’t help, believe me.

     That’s precisely why we are so intrigued by the future - we want to know it all, right now : What’s going to happen? Will we succeed or fail in whatever we are doing? This curiosity is driving us forward.

     We all know some people who couldn’t be bothered, of course : ‘Who cares what happens tomorrow, as long as I have a good time today’. We sometimes admire them because on the surface, they don’t seem to have any doubts in their ‘happy-go-lucky’ lives. If you are not driving your challenges, however, you will be driven and confronted with them – life will not stand still for you.

     And those who constantly fear that some disaster is around the corner? Looks like they magically attract every manner of misfortune and not make any progress at all - and yet they too will eventually learn from their continual setbacks.

     There is plenty of evidence that some gifted people can in fact look into the future, though – what is it that they see then? If there is no past and no future, all that really exists is the present moment, and each of these moments literally has limitless possibilities, more than we realize. What we get an occasional glimpse of is potential, a likelihood of events, but nothing cast in concrete.

     The big chance we owe to ourselves is to shape that potential into something worthwhile and exciting and learn from it, with everything we’ve got. Since we all bring something unique to the party, imagine the endless variety!

     Paycheck or no paycheck : life today is the real thriller, and I have my very own. So do you.

     I have never liked Jim Carrey as an actor much, most of the movies he stars in tend to be a bit silly in my view. 

     But “Bruce Almighty” is different, I enjoyed it.

     The script is very clever : Bruce Nolan is desperate and complains to God that he is not doing a good job because everything is going wrong in what he perceives to be his mediocre life in small town Buffalo/New York.

     So God now gives him all his super-powers for a while - can Bruce do better than God himself?

     Morgan Freeman as God - in an immaculate white suit - calmly goes on vacation now, while Bruce goes overboard to get everything he ever wanted on earth for himself. His main ambition as a TV reporter is to become the news anchor on his network, although one of his colleagues is first in line for that.

     You can imagine all the havoc Jim Carrey as Bruce creates in the process - not only in town with his new Ferrari, but also in far away places like Japan when he ropes in the moon for his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston) who desperately wants to marry him.

     The film is very entertaining, and many of us would probably overlook the messages it has for us. One of them is that even divine strength ends where human free will sets in : Bruce arranges the most outlandish situations for himself to look good professionally, but alienates everyone else in the process – he still doesn’t know that selfish behaviour without any consideration for others will eventually come back and haunt you.

     Treat others like you want to be treated yourself. Why? Because the world you experience is a mirror-image of who you are inside, your attitudes and behaviour. This is one of the Universal Laws of Human Nature that can not be broken or ignored.

     Nevertheless, Bruce becomes famous as a newsman who is always first on the scene of dramatic action - but he cannot cope with literally millions of prayers addressed to God every day.

     He finally surrenders to divine will and voluntarily hands back the guidance for his life to a higher authority.

     At that point it dawns on him that he never really needed the extra powers granted to him : like you and me, he had all the qualities and talents required to make his life successful to begin with, but wasn’t aware of it.

     All it took was some respect and service for, not power over his fellow man. ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ - Lord Acton wrote that in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 and he has never been proven wrong yet.

     The receiving process starts with giving - service without concern for your own gain is the key to your happiness.

     Bruce has a unique talent to entertain and when he eventually settles back into his old job with humility and begins to share his appreciation for others in the local community, he wins more influence than he ever had and is transformed into a successful human being.

     His genuine concern for the wellbeing of others makes him a better reporter, and we’re left in no doubt that he now earns a bright future by first mastering what he is confronted with here and now.

     There is no such thing as a mediocre life in Small Town, we all have something important to contribute wherever we are - just know it, do it and be yourself.

     Concluding my mini-series of articles about inspirational movies today, “The Family Man” is one of these must-see-at-all-cost. You’ll enjoy it too, I guarantee it.

     It is all about a single and very successful Manhattan businessman who thinks he has everything, with a lifestyle that the world envies - until his girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) of 13 years ago contacts him and he is confronted with his choice not to marry her at the time.

     By some twist of events, Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) wakes up one morning to lead an alternate life of being Kate’s husband for a few weeks, happily married with two kids, selling tyres in the suburbs.

     Why would that happen, you might ask? Because over his obsession with business, he has completely neglected his personal life - and that’s catching up with him now. You can’t be out of balance for long, nature will always restore it - a Universal Law that can not be broken.

     As human beings, sooner or later we have to experience life from all angles consciously open to us - but we have our priorities, and therefore choices to make. For me this film is very relevant and believable.

     What would have happened, for example, if I had not decided in 1984 to live and work in South Africa?

     At the time, my biggest dream was to no longer live in Germany where I was born and raised - the two years in London I had done previously weren’t enough to satisfy my curiosity about people who live, learn and grow in cultures different from my own.

     As difficult as our decisions seem to be at times, we should be grateful every day that we have the freedom to choose and that we do have the right - and obligation - to become what we can be and want to be. This, by definition, always includes our choice against everything we do NOT want to be.

     Fortunately, the constitution of our country ‘guarantees’ that we may pursue any dream we have, as long as we take the responsibility for our actions - not everyone can enjoy this freedom and comfort.

     Be that as it may, if you want ‘guarantees’ buy a toaster. In my opinion it is more important to be aware that whatever we do to others will eventually be done to us, one way or another. That’s something that I will personally guarantee, for what it’s worth.

     If we all recognised that truth, I believe there would be a lot less suffering in the world, and more prosperity. But we decide to the best of our knowledge, so I must assume that right now most of us just don’t know better.

     One dilemma we often face in our choices is that we have to temporarily sacrifice something when we opt for one route over the other. We can never really take a wrong turn though : at the end of the day, one way is as good as the other - may be it’s a bit longer or more difficult than the alternative, but it is always exactly what we need to experience at the time.

     Obviously, we sometimes need to give up familiar and comfortable positions to obtain a more comprehensive picture of our place in the universe - and in “Family Man”, Jack Campbell at first has a rude awakening to a life without his Ferrari and penthouse.

     But once he discovers that the treasure of a happy life with family and friends is worth so much more than any material comfort, he doesn’t want to go back to his previous existence.

     Can we reverse our decisions? No, but with our new perspective we can adjust our course for the future. Be aware of your choices before you hit dead-end.

     ‘Long ago, in the faraway land of ancient Greece, there was a golden age of powerful gods and extraordinary heroes. And the greatest and strongest of all these heroes was the mighty Hercules. But what is the measure of a true hero? Ah, that is what our story is… ‘

     Fables are fashionable, no doubt about it. On film, the world in the 21st century is saved by super-heroes a few times a day because they have either futuristic technology or astonishing powers.

     For me, however, Disney’s ‘Hercules’ is the best movie in this genre ever made : it is their only film based on Greek mythology - these timeless tales about a world of complex interrelations between gods and humans explored the mysteries of life on earth, conveying important lessons to struggling mortals.

     The conduct of the royal society on Mount Olympus in those days seems to have been as fallible as today’s jet set and in the absence of TV, the stories about their lives and adventures, weaknesses and misdemeanours in ancient Greece apparently were the talk of the town.

     A modern ancient tale

     As an animated movie first released in 1997, the ancient characters in Walt Disney’s ‘Hercules’ speak a very modern language - Charlton Heston (Narrator), Rip Torn (Zeus, leader of the gods), James Woods (Hades, ruler of the underworld) and Danny DeVito (Phil the Satyr) amongst others have given their voices to a fast-paced, wildly funny and very entertaining film for kids and adults alike.

     What is often overlooked though is that the story of Hercules is also a brilliant parable about the human cycle of life on earth - for me, that is he most interesting aspect of the movie.

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