The 100th Monkey

Here is there and then is now. -Gregg Braden.

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. –Niels Bohr.

There is a story about social change called the 100^th Monkey. The story goes that scientists were studying a group of monkeys and they fed these monkeys they were watching, sweet potatoes that they would drop in the sand for them each day. The monkeys seemed to like the sweet potatoes but they did not like the taste of the dirt on them. A young female monkey figured out that if she washed her sweet potato off in the stream than she could solve the problem of the dirt taste.  She taught this trick to her mother and soon her friends caught on and taught it to their mother’s. Only the adult monkeys that learned from the young monkeys learned how to wash their sweet potatoes. There were plenty of other adult monkeys who didn’t want to learn and just kept eating their dirty potatoes. A few years into the study there were roughly 99 monkeys washing their sweet potatoes and when the 100^th monkey went to the stream to wash, that is when it happened. The entire tribe, even the older monkeys that had never washed their potatoes before, all started washing the potatoes in the stream. And not only that, scientists from different colonies in different parts of the world all reported that monkeys everywhere were suddenly washing their food in the stream.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about these phenomena in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. He describes it as a “ Moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”

Gladwell says there are three rules to epidemics. The first is “The Law of the Few.” You don’t have to have all the monkeys all over the world to start an epidemic but you do have to have the right kinds of monkeys. The connectors, the persuaders and the salesmen are the kind of monkeys that can really start something that will catch on.

Of course whatever they are selling has to have what he refers to as a “Stickiness Factor” that stays with people after initial contact and means something to them. He gives an example of how when Sesame Street first came on the air and everyone was talking about it and all their kids were watching. 

And finally it has to have the “power of context.” The power of context means that human behavior is strongly influenced by its environment. Are you more apt to laugh at a funny movie in a crowded theatre or watching home by yourself?

I remember growing up my stepmother used to tell my father to lock the car door “Because it isn’t right to tempt people.” I didn’t really understand that at the time but that fits right in line with the power of context theory. If a perfectly nice person facing hard times is walking down the street and sees your purse on the front seat of your unlocked car, something may trigger that person to stray out of their normal character and steal that purse. But if the windows are up and the doors or locked or they don’t see the purse, the thought will probably never occur to them.

A few weeks back I went to listen to a man named Gregg Braden who is a trained Scientist who has written many fascinating books on the subject of Science and Spirituality. The book he was speaking about on this day was entitled,  Deep Truth; Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny and Fate.

He spoke about countless of interesting subjects that he included in the book and I would love to reiterate and share all of them here but I am not a scientist and I don’t think like one. I love stories and love to understand things through stories and he told us a great one that day. (You can read the whole book if you want to for all the stories, I am just giving you one of many!)

The main thing that “Stuck” with me was that people for hundreds of years have assumed that what we do on this side of the planet and what happens to people clear on the other side has absolutely no effect on either one what so ever. Scientists have found that we are in fact all connected by energy. The Earth itself has measurable geomagnetic field in and around it that we are all a part of. It is literally in and around all of us and that includes human beings, animals, plant life, oceans, atmosphere, everything. These geomagnetic fields affect us as well as we can affect them in turn.

I don’t know if you have noticed but our resistance is running low!! When our resistance is low, when our energy is low, we affect the geomagnetic sphere and it can run low too. When this happens we can get tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, train derailments, murder and crime can go up. We can get in bad moods, depressed, upset about life. The more we are affected the more we affect. It is a catch 22.

Over the years scientists have been monitoring this geomagnetic field and they notice a few times over the years it has significantly spiked. Looking back the biggest spike was calculated as being on 9/11/01 at 9:00 in the morning approximately fifteen minutes after the first tower was hit. What that means is that the world was collectively having a shared experience of a heart-based emotion. No one was intellectually able to process what we were all witnessing but we were able to feel it in our hearts together. Our collective heartfelt emotion drove the geomagnetic field of the earth up to astronomical proportions and for weeks afterward you were able to feel the effect. Everyone was kinder, more sympathetic, we were bonded together and wanted to help each other get through the hardest time our generation has ever known.

Braden explained it doesn’t always have to be tragic circumstances that will spike the field either. Apparently after the very first season finale of The Bachelor the graph also showed a significant rise! Feeling it with our hearts! It happens on days like Super bowl too.

He spoke about the 12/21/12 “Doomsday” date that some people are making a big deal over. While he admits to not really knowing what that will entail he does know that the Mayan calendar is cyclical and it doesn’t end, a new cycle emerges. Remember the Godspell song “The Age of Aquarius”? Well we are cycling out of the very masculine driven Pisces and are moving into more of the feminine wisdom of Aquarius.

Now let me tie all of these things together. As many people have seen on the internet over the past few days there is a short movie called Kony2012 going around and with it some controversy that it may or may not have proceeds going to completely legitimate places.

Regardless of that, how did it make you feel when you watched it? When these young kids watch it and they want to do something to help other children on the other side of the world. That they are feeling a collective heartfelt emotion that what happens to someone on the other side of the planet does affect them and they should do something. Even if is just set an intention that you are praying for them, that connects us. That brings our geomagnetic field up! That protects us from solar winds and climate change and each other! The young people are showing us how to wash our sweet potatoes!

We don’t need the world to all think about this at the same time we just need that 100^th monkey to have a collective heart based emotional connection and we will change the world.