Thursday, March 17, 2011

Rice Intention Experiment - #11

Format: Week-long experiment with option of extending.
Goal: Do Masaru Emoto's rice intention experiment. See if it works.
Goal met? THIS IS SO COOL. (That's a yes.)

So here's what happened:
I was nosing around on various unschooling blogs and happened upon The Sparkling Martins. One of the posts was on the rice intention experiment. I was fascinated and decided that, while the blog was spiffy and all, I really wanted to try this one for myself. Soooooo... I did.

The idea with the rice experiment is that you can change the state of cooked rice by sending it emotions. If you send it love, it'll stay nice; if you send it hate, it'll get moldly and gross.



  • Step 1: I cooked some rice and, meanwhile, found identical containers to put it in. I got two glass jars that had recently held pasta sauce, washed them out thoroughly (like, three times thoroughly) and let them dry completely. 
  • Step 2: Once the jars were dry, I wrote words on them. One jar was the Hate Jar, and I wrote the suggested words on The Sparkling Martins blog ("I hate you, you fool") on it, in addition to a bunch of my own. All negative words, like "bad," "stupid," "you suck," "derision," etc. On the inside of the Bad Jar lid I wrote "HATE." On the Love Jar, I wrote "Thank you. I love you" as well as positive words like "gratitude," "kindness," "precious," and so forth. On the inside of that jar's lid I wrote "LOVE." 
  • Step 3: I put equal amounts of rice in the jars. I'd read about how sometimes the rice lower in the cooker has trapped in more heat and moisture, which can mess with your results, so I made a point of getting the rice from the same levels and alternating spoonfuls. One into Love Jar, one into Hate Jar, one into Love Jar, one into Hate Jar, and so forth. I screwed the lids on really tight (trapping plenty of steam and moisture in there). 
  • Step 4: The theory is that every day you treat each jar to its emotion for 30 seconds by picking it up, feeling as much hate/love as you can, and channeling that emotion toward the jar. I do not have that sort of self-discipline. In truth, I felt a lot of hate to the Hate Jar and a lot of love to the Love Jar on the first day, then put it in a high dark cupboard and forgot about it for a few days. On about day 3, I remembered and did it again, trying to make the emotions as intense as possible. I didn't see a whole lot of results at that point. Forgot about the jars again. Then, around day 7, I remembered the jars and went to go check on them. 

I was expecting to not have any results (or, rather, for both jars to have gone moldy, as that's what moist rice is prone to do over the course of a week), particularly as I'd done a very halfway job of this experiment. Instead...

Well, check it out:



Can you see that?! The Love Jar's rice is still in good shape. It's white, it's fluffy, it's beautiful. You can see water gathering at the bottom of the jar but it's clean water. The jar looks like I put rice in there an hour ago.

The rice in the Hate Jar, on the other hand, has deflated to about half its original size. The rice on the top has turned yellow and putrid, the rice on the bottom has gotten mushy, and on the whole it looks gross.

Here are some closer-ups.

Good rice:



Bad rice:



And that's after a week with inconsistent emotioning (that's a brand-new word, in case you were wondering). I think you can draw your own conclusions about this one. But seriously... How cool is that?!

Try this:
Do what I did, or google "rice intention experiment" for tips, articles, the efforts of people trying to debunk or prove the experiment, and all sorts of other goodies.

Coming Soon...
Dunno yet... But I'll keep you posted on the next week of the rice experiment for sure! Suggestions are, as always, welcome.

2 comments:

Bailey said...

very interesting! I think the same happens in relationships love and hate and I think the same happens to them :)

Marqueta (Mar-kee-ta) G. said...

Wow, how eye-opening! I've heard it done with living plants, but never rice before.

Makes you stop and think about what you are giving out to others, and what they're giving out to you!

Love,

Marqueta

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