The Hundredth Monkey Meditation
Today > World Healing
Hundredth Monkey Project
The M100 inner aid meditation
In the 1990s I ran a series of week-long annual camping retreats, the Hundredth Monkey Camps, to do world healing work as a large group - around 120 people were at each camp. Each day we would work on a specific theme - such as the ozone layer, South Africa, nuclear weapons or forest fires - starting with a group meditation, silently sitting in a big circle for 30-40 minutes.
After that we would go into a talking-stick process, and also at times we broke up into smaller groups to work on issues in a variety of ways.
While we encouraged Monkey-meditators to follow their own path, a meditation method was outlined in the early days, and this is it. Participants did not have to follow this method, but they were asked to work in harmony with it, in whatever way worked best for them. Some appreciated having a procedure to follow and others did it their own way.
The following was written in 1996 for the M100 Project:
The M100 meditation begins with holding hands and a group-attuning, while sitting in a circle. Once the circle has settled down, no one may enter it.
Each session, we work with a specific arena of world crisis, need or change – these are world cancers threatening humanity and its progress, reconciliation and healing. This is a form of ‘remote viewing’, though it is interactive, more than just viewing.
The emphasis is on strengthening worldwide awareness of choice and on dissolving public indifference and sense of impotence. We are not specifically working for peace or freedom: it is up to people themselves to make the best of their situation within the constraints of what is genuinely possible.
Our work can open windows of free-will for victims. It can help perpetrators become aware of what they’re truly doing and it can awaken public awareness of the core issues at stake, from within – without judgement, bias or cultural imperialism.
This meditation is adapted from instructions from the Council of Nine, yet it is universal, drawing benign influences into specific arenas and problem areas. ‘Higher powers’ need our assistance to ‘step-down’ spiritual-cosmic energies into the human sphere. This is how we do it.
The Drift menhirs, West Penwith, Cornwall
Stage one
Get yourself settled, centred and stable, and then go, in your imagination, to find someone involved in the chosen crisis and place in question. Scan around to find a person, group or situation needing assistance, or make a prayer to be directed to wherever your input is needed. This can be any relevant person, thing or situation that comes up. Keep it specific, humanistic and realistic. For example, this could involve an old man at a cafe, a village child, a soldier, an aid worker, a scientist, a diplomat or the president’s wife – follow your intuitions.
Sit and be with that person or situation, to witness whatever is being experienced by the person or the people involved, and feel it in real-life terms – feel their hopes, fears, regrets, pain, love, dilemmas and their perception of the facts of their situation. Explore this awhile, in its details, without judgement or analysis. Feel what’s involved in it for them. Operate like an observer or a counsellor, bearing witness and, if appropriate, adding your own detached objectivity, without intervening too much in any person’s life-process, except when asked. Act facilitatively.
Stage two
After 5-10 minutes of observation and/or dialogue, watch for, or help bring in, some change-factor that awakens this person to new opportunities inherent in their situation, or which appear at the time. Or, in connection with ‘higher powers’, help bring to them a new light of understanding, a new feeling inside, or inner assistance to change their situation and their feelings about it.
Stay with this awhile, noting the person’s or people’s response to what’s happening, and perhaps assisting them in adjusting to it. For example, I once ‘met’ a Bosnian boy who was given a football. This simple event reminded him how to play, starting him off on a new path in life. Another time, I met the Nigerian dictator’s mistress, who realised that she was in a unique position to get through to the compassion in his heart.
Or, help people receive healing or new strength ‘from above’. Or follow your instincts or ‘guidance’ and do whatever is appropriate. However, make sure you’re not imposing anything that is unwanted or cannot be utilised.
Note the thoughts, emotions and the sense of options arising for the person or people you’re working with. Help them sort it through and clarify their position. Give simple supportive insight and encouragement – make sure they understand what you’re communicating, noting especially any cultural differences between you.
Stay with this for some minutes, going through any details or implications that seem necessary to look into – take care to encourage moderate, realistic, healing feelings and actions, working within the person’s own frame of reference. Don’t push people beyond their capacities. Encourage them to think things through fully and sensibly! Keep it real – many ordinary people might have only some spiritual experience, and fear and conditioning-patterns are important to respect.
They might choose to go home from war, restoring normality in their lives. They might have a simple positive idea or a deep urge for change, a trust-breakthrough. Or they might come up with a plan of action – let it arise from them or ‘from above’ and help ease it through. Encourage them without pushing them into unworkable actions or into danger or rashness. Observe all issues and conflicts that arise, helping people clarify things and overcome their doubts and fears, as if you’re there with them. This concerns critical inner transitions where change is forged. It affects a person’s capacity to receive inner support.
Stage three
Visualise the person or people stepping forward to create a changed reality in their own or in others’ lives, arising from the insights they’ve just had or the decisions they’ve made. Watch them doing it, ‘hold their hand’ if necessary and be with them during their tight moments of risk or courage. If a change of strategy becomes necessary, help them through it.
See how the situation develops and how it affects others and the wider world. In the examples above, the Bosnian boy initiated football matches between soldiers – he thus became a peace-builder. The mistress managed to draw out the dictator’s own need for love, surreptitiously helping him soften up and become more forgiving toward his fellow nationals.
Observe and assist the issues and outcomes involved, for all those affected by them. See how positivity or new impulses can infect others and empower them to act positively too. This is the key to this meditation – one person’s progress or breakthrough empowers others, or it can act as a catalytic event in a larger situation. Sometimes the significance of a situation isn’t obvious, yet it might influence events many years later.
If you’re ‘downloading light’ into a situation, make sure you assist in the very human process of receiving light and making constructive use of it.
If things appear to go ‘wrong’, you can help transform this into some form of ‘right’. If your contact is killed, their death can bring a turning-point for others or a personal breakthrough for the victim, or the sacrifice might be noticed by the world. It takes only a shift of perspective to transform ‘wrong’ into more positive outcomes.
Finally...
Bring matters to a close. Check that all is as complete as you can make it. If incomplete, do whatever is needed to work it through to a satisfactory outcome. Wish your distant friend(s) well, wrap up your meditation in a bubble of goodwill and offer it to the universe to take care of. Then say goodbye. Leave slowly – don’t hurry off.
Come back to yourself at your own speed, feel your body, sense your environment and gradually surface again. Don’t hurry to finish – go at your own speed. Please remain quiet until everybody is back (otherwise you might disturb something crucial). At M100 events, a gentle chime will be sounded to end the meditation, but ‘wake up’ at your own speed – the chime is simply to give an awareness of time.
This meditation is done to help our fellow humans establish clearly that we do all have choice, even in the most difficult of circumstances. As you get used to this technique, use your intuition to ‘play it by ear’ and to follow your commonsense or inspiration.
It can at times be very realistic and exceptionally profound. Sometimes one can follow up such an experience with a repeat visit to your friend(s) or situation, to see whether there are further matters to assist in.
If you do not wish to adhere to this method, you may equally do any other silent meditation or visualisation that works in harmony with it.
To recap, the meditation contains three main stages:
• appreciating the reality of the current situation;
• awakening to new possibilities, and,
• manifesting these in constructive actions.
Basic meditations
If you’re unaccustomed to meditation, it’s worth developing some basic practices.
Some tips. Buddhist Vipassana or ‘mindfulness of breathing’ is form-free and universal, a very good starting-place and something to return to when unstable.
Sit comfortably and calm yourself down. Let your attention settle inside your nose, observing the sensation of your natural in-breaths and out-breaths and simply keeping your attention on that sensation. Just breathe naturally – don’t do breathing. If at any time your mind wanders onto intervening thoughts or disturbances, simply say “thinking, thinking...” or “worrying, worrying...” or “aching, aching...”, and pull your attention back to the sensation of the passage of air through your nostrils.
That’s it! Stay with it. Alternatively, you can focus on the rising and falling of your chest. What's fascinating is that all problems sort themselves out without needing to be thought through.
One simple Tibetan variation is this. For ten minutes or so, breathe in purifying light and breathe out darkness and impurities. This is healing and cleansing. Then, for 10-20 minutes, breathe in the world’s darkness and pain and breathe out light from within to heal the world.
Other small ‘tricks’ which can be useful:
• feel yourself being where and being how you are, feel what you’re sitting on, feel your back, and just be for a while;
• visualise a point of light in your heart, letting it irradiate you with light, healing, clarity – colours are useful;
• see a point of light (sun, cross, star, angel) above the top of your head, and let fizzling light or colour cascade down around and within you – dwell with this awhile;
• feel yourself inside a cocoon of energy/light/colour which cleanses and protects you;
• open the top of your head like a chalice, or envision a pointed cone or wizard’s hat above you, funnelling light, energy or insight into your whole being;
• let a cord unravel downwards from your solar plexus to hook into the Earth’s core – tweak it taut and stay with it awhile – then let a point of light rise from your heart to a point above your head, then join them, and let a cascade of light or insight flush down into and through you;
• move upwards slowly from the root to the crown centre, imbuing each chakra with rainbow light and opening it up – red at the base to violet at the crown (ROYGBIV) – noting thoughts-feelings arising at each chakra. Later, move back down, closing each chakra;
• ask Great Beings (however you see them) to bless you, say a prayer to re-dedicate your life, and stay in stillness, open to receiving energy and transceiving it to the world;
• simply open yourself out like an empty cylinder, channelling energy through to the world;
• at the end, give thanks, seal everything you have opened and dedicate all benefits to all living beings – put in a prayer or affirmation for you or people you know.
Whatever you do, give it its proper time before passing on. Adopt one simple method to return to any time you wander off and lose track. Always emerge slowly from meditation. A candle, incense or a crystal can help. These are but a few possibilities – there are many basic systems. It helps to have a basic method you can use as a foundation, for when sitting in a bus or as a fall-back during difficult times.
Keep it simple. Just do it.