# The Hundredth Monkey/6 Understanding, Cooperation, And Love Are The Keys To Human Survival!

==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.
I may crystallize my mind against what you do or say and fail to notice your good intentions . . . which usually are just like mine!
Even if you drop a bomb on me your purpose is to settle arguments — and create peace!
These are good intentions — just like mine!
You just need a more effective way to realize your positive intentions!
A stereo set is not the record it plays.
If a record is scratchy, we don't throw out the stereo set. All we have to do is change the record.
We don't have to reject a human being because we don't like his or her programming.
We can just make it clear that we like the person — but we don't like a particular action.
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.
We are affected by a lack of harmony of any type anywhere on the planet — even if we're not consciously aware of it.
We are not separate.
What we say and do can affect the well-being of all of us.
We know that our health may be affected if we live among diseased people.
What we are beginning to learn is that our peace of mind may be affected if we live among disturbed people.
Our happiness may be affected if we live among unhappy people.
Our love may be affected if we live among clashing, unloving people.
And even the future of our species is in doubt with various nations stockpiling nuclear devices designed to destroy each other.
The nuclear nations today have created more than 50,000 nuclear devices — in an expression of the consciousness of the separate-self.
These dangerous toys enable some children of Earth pompously playing the roles of military and political leaders, to kill fellow humans in other nations.*
(*See Missile Envy by Helen Caldicott, William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1984.)
We pay a horrendous price for this separate-self — this "me-vs.-you" jungle-type consciousness.
No matter what illusions may dominate our minds, nuclear devices are suicidal for our species.
Any perception that our lives are an "us-vs.-them" matter is an illusion and can only create alienation, unhappiness — and perhaps death.
If our species is to survive, it must replace the illusions of separateness with the emotional experiences of acceptance, cooperation and togetherness.
Instead of "you vs. me" it must become "you and me" — on this planet together.
However much our ideas and ideologies may clash, we must remember that nothing is more important for survival and for happiness in life than feelings of understanding and commonness of human purpose.
All of the nations of earth are acting like spoiled children who are fighting over marbles.
Children forget that their happiness comes not from possession of the marbles, but from the fun of playing together — and from creating the great adventure of life together.
We can learn to keep our squabbles within bounds.
We must learn to disagree without throwing each other out of our hearts — and thus create rocklike hatreds.
We can become skillful at changing the desire systems in our minds.
Whatever we expect to get by creating hatred and separateness even if "justified" is always purchased at far too great a price.
Human love—our heart-to-heart love—is more valuable than anything else.
If we have this, we have enough.
Without this love in our hearts, nothing else will be enough!
Kierkegaard said, ". . . to love human beings is still the only thing worth living
for — without that love, you really do not live."
Let's not ruin our future because of anything that happened in the past.
Let us challenge our present approaches and rethink old assumptions.
Would you want your children to die because your mind is not flexible enough to forgive?*
(*Bernard Benson in The Peace Book [Bantam Books, 1982] gives a sensitive new angle by letting a child ask the pertinent questions and give practical solutions. Philip Noel Baker[Co-chairman of the World Disarmament Campaign and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize] said, "Everyone who wants to live should read this book." It has been translated to Russian and the author was interviewed by children on TV in Moscow.)
From the point of view of our complex desire systems, life will always seem "imperfect."