The Hundredth Monkey

[Aster]

Here's another oldie, but goodie that you can read in its entirety online. By Ken Kesey Jr. The Hundredth Monkey

I tried to find a version without a lot of ads, but i didnt have any luck. I just cut and pasted into wordpad to read it without the side banner.

This is my fave part:

And our thoughts and actions can change because they're not us — in our essence.

I have the direct experience that in my essence I am something apart from the mental habits that spin out my personality and the current soap opera of my life.

Thus I can dislike a person's behavior and still feel that this is a human being who like me is just trying to make life work using the programming we picked up when we were young.

Your thoughts and actions are only a set of mental habits in a state of flux as you evolve from stage to stage of your life's growth.

All of us have done mean, sloppy and uncaring things that we wish we hadn't done.

I always hope that you won't identify me with the things that I've done that were unskillful responses to life situations.

The mind can be trained to nurture a "me-and-you" consciousness in which patience and understanding will compassionately harmonize the flow of our activities so that we all want to help each other work things out.

We can develop an awareness that things aren't problem-free for me until they're problem-free for you!

This applies equally to relationships between individuals or between countries.

When I create my experience of you I may forget that you are not your thoughts or actions.

I don't know you from inside — as I experience myself.

I may forget that in every important way you are like me.

You have a human heart that feels pain and warmth, sadness and happiness.

In your essence and in your intentions you are basically good — just like me!

And my ego is often too ready to treat as important all the differences that my mind notices: lifestyle, skin color, social status, educational background, our differing ideas and opinions and on and on.

When I continually magnify these outward signs, I create the experience that you are really different from me.

It's time we begin to realize that you and I are far more alike than we are different.

We are all fellow beings traveling the road of life together.

We don't live in isolation.

We are all interconnected.

We all live in one world.

Ya!!!