Will You Become the 100th Human to Create World Peace?

It may feel to many of us that we can do little at this point in time to help create peace in the world. Yet, just by becoming conscious of our thoughts we might be able to move ourselves and the rest of the world just a little bit closer to this goal. We can find peace if we become conscious of where we place our attention.

As the Jewish sage and mystic Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught, “You are wherever your thoughts are. Make sure your thoughts are where you want to be.”

Many years ago I heard this same teaching in metaphysical circles but expressed in a slightly different manner: Thoughts are creative. What we think about expands. You can deliberately or consciously create what you want with your thoughts, which most recently has been called the Law of Attraction.

Go beyond the idea of consciously creating what you desire, and it becomes clear that the principle can be applied to much grander and more noble goals, such as creating peace in our lives and in the world.

Focus on Peace

If you spend much of your time watching the news of war and terrorism, and if you focus most of your attention on the lack of peace and joy in the world, you find yourself experiencing more war, terrorism, sorrow, and suffering. However, if you force yourself to focus on that which brings you joy or makes you feel peaceful, you find yourself increasing your own joy and peace. In addition, the more joyous and peaceful your thoughts are—and, in turn, you are, the more positive energy you send out into the world. Your manner of thinking, therefore, becomes a form of tikkun olam, which in Hebrew means a way to heal or fix the world.

The Hundredth Monkey

If enough of us focus our attention on joy and peace, maybe, like the myth of the hundredth monkey, we can cause others around the world to experience more joy and peace. The hundredth monkey phenomenon refers to the alleged sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when a “critical mass” point is reached.

According to a story told by Dr. Lyall Watson, one monkey learned to wash its potato in water before eating it and then taught others to do the same. When the metaphorical hundredth monkey began washing its potato in the water, the rest of the monkeys suddenly began doing so. As if traveling in the collective monkey unconscious, this behavior jumped across the ocean and other monkeys in other places began washing their potatoes as well.

Myth Into Reality

Although The Skeptics Dictionary debunks Watson’s story, it notes:

The notion of raising consciousness through reaching critical mass is being promoted by a number of New Age spiritualists. Ken Keyes, Jr. has published a book on the Internet that calls for an end to the nuclear menace and the mass destruction which surely awaits us all if we do not make a global breakthrough soon. The title of his treatise is The Hundredth Monkey. In his book he writes such things as “there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

Along the same lines, Rupert Sheldrake has claimed that his theory of morphic resonance explains “the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them.”

You Make a Difference

Here’s the bottom line: It just takes one person…and then another and another. We don’t need everyone to change to create change on a larger scale. We just need enough people to change.

Imagine the possibility… You could be the hundredth human to transform your consciousness and help humanity reach a critical mass, a metaphysical and spiritual quantum leap! World peace would become a reality.

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