by Tim Ray

I'm sure you all know the dilemma. You've been at work all day, done good service to humanity, meditated, prayed, done your spiritual practice—but before you end the day, it would be nice to forget yourself for an hour or two with some captivating entertainment. So you leaf through the TV guide, rummage through your video collection, or scan your bookshelf, desperately seeking some good, clean, uplifting entertainment. And you find yourself stuck once again because even though there's no lack of adventure stories, fantasy books or action movies, the problem is that most of this stuff is not very spiritually inspiring or uplifting—so you feel you don’t want to pollute your inner space with this energy. So what's an earnest, fun-loving spiritual seeker to do?

This was the dreadful predicament that me and my friends at BeamTeam headquarters here in Copenhagen found ourselves in six years ago. Not knowing what to do we watched "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" for the hundredth time until we knew every single scene backwards in our sleep. The situation was becoming intolerable. We had to do something drastic!

A Desperate Plan

Then I came up with a desperate plan. One night after watching “Gandhi” for the millionth time, I though to myself, if nobody else is going to do it, I will! I mean somebody’s got to be willing to risk everything and do it! Just think about our plight! All my desperate prayers to George Lucas to tell us more about the Force in his next Star Wars movies had obviously fallen on deaf ears. I wasn’t in doubt. The situation was critical. In fact, it began to take on monumental proportions. As far as I could see, all earnest, fun-loving spiritual seekers in the world were now in the same desperate situation as me. We were all risking total annihilation from boredom!

I paced the floor, working myself up into a white heat.

I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I saw it all so vividly. The awesome possibilities… and I thought to myself wouldn't it be absolutely the coolest thing if there were books and movies that were exciting adventure stories that taught inspiring spiritual principles at the same time? Wouldn’t it be the absolutely coolest thing in the world if these books and movies not only satisfied our hunger for knowledge of spiritual principles but if they also provided us with the good, honest entertainment we are all so desperately longing for?

The next day I talked to Barbara about the idea of books or movies that combined spiritual principles with adventure stories. (Together Barbara Berger and I founded and run BeamTeam Books, a spiritual center and publishing company here in Copenhagen. Barbara is the author of many books including Fast Food for the Soul and The Spiritual Pathway to be released by Findhorn Press this fall.) Anyway, she loved the idea and we talked far into the night about the many possibilities. She quickly saw that the situation was desperate and that we couldn’t depend on anyone else to do the job. So suddenly she blurted out as is her wont, “Well Tim, it looks like you’ll just have to write a book like that yourself!”

When I heard her say this, I was shocked. Now that someone else was actually verbalizing my deepest desire, I suddenly felt like Frodo being sent to the Cracks of Doom. I mean I’d never written a book before or even talked about writing one. And now she was suggesting I not only write a book, but a book that was an adventure story that presented spiritual principles. She really had confidence in me. “Tim, you’ve always loved adventure stories,” she said, adding, “so if not you, then who?”

She didn’t leave me many options.

“But, but, but….” I stammered.

“Don’t think,” she said. “Just go home and write.”

So I did.

This is what I came up with: The situation was critical. The collective consciousness of humanity had fallen so low that in less than 48 hours Mother Earth was going to make a total axis shift that would completely eradicate all life on the planet. The only ones that could save humanity from this impending doom were three ordinary guys from Denmark. What on Earth were they going to do?

I let myself go—and wrote and wrote like a madman. To my great surprise the story and the spiritual teaching just flowed out of me and in a few days I had written the first five chapters. I showed them to Barbara. That was when she really got excited. She said she thought I was really on to something. “Write on,” she said. So I did.

An Ancient Oath

Luckily for our three Danish friends, they were not quite as ordinary as they looked. Some 1500 years ago, in the Dark Ages of humanity, they were given a somewhat similar mission: To use the Force to create peace and harmony on Earth. Back then the mission failed. Now, 1500 years later, in humanity's most desperate hour, they are given a second chance to fulfill their ancient oath. But there's just one small problem. They've forgotten the Secret of the Force... and who they really are... and they have less than 48 hours to do the job!

I don’t want to tell you more because I don’t want to spoil the fun for you!

Hope you enjoy reading “Starbrow” half as much as I enjoyed writing it!

(PS You probably won’t believe this, but I just got a call from Hollywood… somebody actually wants to make a movie out of “Starbrow”! So maybe someone out there in movieland really is going to save us from total boredom after all!)