Often we consider pop music to be shallow, and, I have to admit, most of the time this is a true assessment. But once in a while, we find a little gem.

Working on this web site and browsing for something totally different I ran into a video with these awesome lyrics…

You only see what your eyes want to see
How can life be what you want it to be
You’re frozen
When your heart’s not open.

You’re so consumed with how much you get
You waste your time with hate and regret
You’re broken
When your heart’s not open.

…

Now there’s no point in placing the blame
And you should know I suffer the same
If I lose you
My heart will be broken.

Love is a bird, she needs to fly
Let all the hurt inside of you die
You’re frozen
When your heart’s not open.

….

You only see what your eyes want to see
How can life be what you want it to be
You’re frozen
When your heart’s not open.

…

If I could melt your heart.

I omitted a few choruses that don’t add much to the message but make, admittedly, the song a lot nicer. Would it not be terrific if everybody listening to this song would actually hear the words and apply them to oneself? Because then the message would spread fast and wide because a song by Madonna is listened to quite often (about 40 million in this case – correction: 195 million!). The song is ‘Frozen’ and I assume that is from Madonna’s Kabbalah period – and here now you have it…

Trying to figure out what does and what does not work seems very confusing.

I have tried many different things that promised great results – from Scientology to urine therapy. At first, a new method to greater abilities or even enlightenment seem to work but when it came down to real and life-shattering changes, these new abilities or changed conditions did not materialize – at least not through the application of any of the new methods.

Let me tell you the first experience I had on my path to understanding this.

I had learned about macrobiotic, immediately started to apply the principles to my nourishment and had great success with it, as the body came out of a hidden apathy and started to work much better. During this time my father had been hospitalized and his physicians had warned him that he should not forget to take all this medication they considered necessary for his survival. My reaction to this was to give him the same book that had allowed me to understand what macrobiotic really was and how it worked.

To my great delight the book had the same effect on my father as it had on me. He changed his mind about his life, started to apply the principles he now understood and that did not include putting products of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry into his body. Two weeks later he was working again in his garden and the lack of the medication had not killed him – just the opposite. Being retired he had the time and energy to start a completely new career that involved traveling around the country and teaching seniors to enjoy life through dancing.

Once, during this time, I visited and ate with them – and got sick!

Yes, THEIR understanding of what cooking according to the macrobiotic principles was differed grossly from my understanding. I just knew that they did it all wrong and I got sick because I believed that I was eating all the wrong things and reacted accordingly by getting sick.

At least I was – already then – smart enough not to tell them. I knew to leave things alone if they worked. My parents continued with their way of eating and things continued to work for them.

But a few years later my father got caught in some other school of healthy living that actually contradicted the principles of macrobiotic. I still don’t know what drove him, but he gave up what had worked for him and he started to drink all those strange teas, then he got trapped by some (likely) misdiagnosis of his family doctor, believed it and died shortly thereafter of leukemia.

For quite a while a still believed that it was still the abandoning of macrobiotic and adoption of those teas had made the difference, even though my experience that I got sick eating what made him well should have given me a clue that this could not have been true.

It was many years and many other life-changing methods later that I understood what actually made the difference:

Taking Responsibility!

When he learned about macrobiotic he took charge of his own life. He did not believe anybody anymore just because he was told, he actually took a risk to implement what he felt was the right thing. That, in this case macrobiotic, was secondary and rather irrelevant. It could have been anything else that he could have believed in.

When he abandoned his own certainty and gave the responsibility for his health to somebody else, this is when he became sick again and eventually passed away.

You can learn from others, get data, educate yourself – but what it all eventually boils down to, is taking charge – knowing what is right and pursuing it.

And it does not matter what it is you do. This is why drinking your own urine heals some people while others just turn in disgust and would simply throw up. It certainly helps if you chose a method to improve you condition that resonates with you, and that makes it easier for you personally to stand behind – – but that just makes it easier, not possible.

Chanting and running around the kitchen table will not work for me because it would not fit into my frame of reference and I could not stand behind it, but it might work for others.

Imagination and creativity is the tool to break out of the mold, to leave behind that what everybody knows to be true.

This is probably the reason that I like imaginative stories so much, one of my favorites being “The Neverending Story” by Michael Ende. Quite a while ago I had found out that there was another book by Mr. Ende, titled Momo. Some years later, when working on the translation of a German book about cymatics into English, I even had to translate a quote from Momo used in this book ‘Water Sound Images‘. But only when I worked on some updates for the second printing of ‘Water Sound Images’ I ran again into this short excerpt from Momo and decided that now it was time to finally read it in its entirety.

Traditionalist that I am, I got the book from the local library and started to enjoy it one chapter at a time before turning off the lights and going to sleep. It got more and more exciting and today, a Sunday, I did not even turn on the computer until I was done with the entire book. Something like that had not happened in a long time but I just could not put a book down.

Momo, a young girl, and the hero of the story, at one point is asked to solve the following riddle:

All dwelling in one house are strange brothers three,
as unlike as any three brothers could be,
yet try as you may to tell brother from brother,
you’ll find that the trio resembles each other.
The first isn’t there, though he’ll come beyond doubt.
The second’s departed, so he’s not about.
The third and the smallest is right on the spot,
and manage without him the others could not.
Yet the third is a factor with which to be reckoned
because the first brother turns into the second.
You cannot stand back and observe number three,
for one of the others is all you will see.
So tell me, my child, are the three, of them one?
Or are there but two? Or could there be none?
Just name them, and you will at once realize
that each rules a kingdom, of infinite size.
They rule it together and are it as well.
In that, they’re alike, so where do they dwell?

I will certainly not spoil the story by telling what the answer is – you will have to read the book for yourself.

But I have to say that Momo’s story is a great example of what needs to be done to break the mold of existing conditions that keep us going into a direction that we do not like. It is a lesson that, in order to make big changes, we first have to see that those changes are possible.

Have you ever encountered the idea that to know somebodies real name gives you power over him?

The idea to know something true brings control over it?

This belief has been used in the Harry Potter franchise, in which it was taboo to use the name of the ultimate evil – Voldemort – in order to avoid making it more real as it already was.

Now the question is if there is any truth to it or if the whole idea is just hocus-pocus.

I believe that, if an idea is persistent throughout the ages, there is at least some truth to it. In ancient times, when perceptions were not that strongly tainted by a scientific mind, intuition and the knowing without data, had a much stronger influence on the population’s believes and interactions. Today we believe so strongly in the correctness of science that, as it has currently no concept for such a phenomenon, the idea that control can be gained by knowing something or somebodies true name is immediate discarded or considered humbug.

Or did you regard the avoidance of speaking Voldemort’s name as something worth considering outside of the fictional world of Harry Potter?

Now, that I have built the playing field up to the point where you would expect me to show you that there is really some validity behind this belief, I have to admit that I myself believe that the notion of gaining control over somebody by knowing his name is wrong. The effect does exist, I am sure, but the cause for this control is not simply knowing his name. Control can only be exerted with the agreement of the controlled and thus there must be something that the controlled does to give control over him to another person.

This ‘something’ is the belief of the controlled person. Simply the belief that, if somebody knows your name, you can be controlled. We are free to believe whatever we want – even if it does not make any sense and is even detrimental to our health. Without that deep belief, we would just be invulnerable even if anybody would know our name.

Many ancient societies like the Greek and the Romans believed that saying something out loud – for example uttering a curse – brought it into existence. And the reason, again, was simply the fact that it became more real in the mind of the recipient. Putting something out into the physical universe, simply by verbalizing it, makes it more real.

Now to my own personal encounter with the application of these facts.

My son, when he was younger, loved computer games, and I believe many modern parents have to deal with the same ‘problem’ (as they see it). Sometimes he exaggerated and felt rather crummy when he came out of a long session in the World of Warcraft, having done nothing creative all day. That was completely understandable for me, but he did not make the connection that a constant inflow of consuming did indeed created that crummy feeling .

Once, another person close to him observed his crummy feeling and negative emotion and uttered the judgment that he was ‘messed up.’ I had to instantly defuse the situation so that this curse did not take hold in my son’s mind – or in mine, as a matter of fact.

One of those ‘synchronicities’ of life brought a TED Talk into my view from an amputee and athlete – Aimee Mullins – which I just have to share here as it addresses exactly the danger of labeling a person…

After listening to this I contemplated that this ‘handicap’ she has – me, spending too much time in front of a computer screen – does make her unique and that I just have to trust her, that she knows what is good for her. Looking back into my own early life I have good justification for this trust. When in highschool I spend the bigger part of one year learning electronics and neglected my school work to such a degree that I failed two classes completely and had to do the whole year over.

My parents blamed the electronic course for this handicap, but it turned out to be of great advantage to me. Before I repeated this class I was a rather poor student and I had no real idea what I would do after graduation. I believe I even considered a career as a lawyer! But by doing this one class a second time I was able to catch up with all the things I had missed and which had made me a poor student. It suddenly became crystal clear what I wanted to do, I became a good student and graduated with all good grades in the natural sciences and went on to study physics.

I was ‘messed up’ as well, but used the adversity I encountered to my advantage, why should my son be less capable than I?