Page 22 - 100th Monkey

Have you sometimes noticed that when you're feeling most separate from someone else, behind
it all your mind is just not feeling good about you?

Secondly, your mind has become divided against your own body.

Your thinking has obstructed the free flow of your feelings. Your mental activity constantly crowds
out your experiencing the aliveness of your body.

You have neglected your body and instead put your energy into activities involving pride, prestige
and that ever-seductive "success" that have not brought you happiness or peace of mind.

Thirdly, just as your mind has become divided against itself and against the body which houses it,
it has also increasingly alienated itself from your four billion cousins that are here and now
sharing the planet with you.

You have lost the bond with Mother Earth herself and all her creatures — and forgotten how we
all depend on each other.

In too many situations we automatically experience people as "them" — not "us."

These jungle-type habits of mind are dangerous to our species.

In the millions of years in which our ancestors were surviving in the jungles, it was important for
their minds to create an instant "self-vs.-other" perception.

For animals eat other animals and no species can survive if all of its members are eaten up.

This instant perception of "otherness" is basic to survival for animals in the jungle.

We can learn a more effective way to make our lives work.

We are still creating a "jungle" of our civilized lives by continuing the operation of our "us-vs.-
them" mental habits.

We're all in this together!

"Love alone," wrote Teilhard de Chardin, "is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to
complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in
themselves."

UNDERSTANDING, COOPERATION AND LOVE ARE THE KEYS TO HUMAN SURVIVAL!

The problem I find in trying to go from the separate-self to the consciousness of my unified-self is
that my ego operates under the illusory programming that in order to like or love you, I must like
or love everything you do or say.

I identify you with your thoughts or your actions.

I lose sight of the fact that your thoughts and actions just reflect your life experiences and your
training.