Rice Experiment

After reading a very interesting book about water and a man's journey to document the water crystals when frozen, I was thinking a lot about the power of words--bad and good. The author of the Hidden Messages in Water had mentioned a rice experiment when he had said nice things to one jar of cooked rice and negative things to another identical jar of cooked rice. After a few weeks the nature of the rice had changed in the second jar with the negative words, but the jar with positive things said was still vibrant and beautiful. The author also said the same thing happened with other similar experiments in which rice wasn't used, but positive and negative things said to two identical things. What I got from the book was that words are powerful and that the greatest are love and gratitude--which he said were the most beautiful water crystals he has ever seen (and photographed) when he experimented with those two words and water. Those and many other crystals are documented with photos in his book. Very interesting!

My friend had also mentioned she'd heard of a lady who did this experiment. plus, I remembered something similar about the effects of various music styles played to plants in an experiment, when I was researching a writing paper on music, back in college my freshman year.

So...that said. Three times is a charm (how many times i'd heard about this stuff from varying sources). so  I decided to take up the task and try my own experiment.

I did.
Here is the cooked rice in two jars. Both were treated exactly the same and just sat enclosed in the jar for a full month. We labelled one jar "thank you" and the other "stupid."

3 weeks

3 weeks

  Although we didn't just say those words. W also said nice and happy positive things to the first. But for the second we said lots of negative things and always scowled at it.

Ethan and Paul were so cute and felt so bad saying mean things that they frequently just glared and thought the words, instead of saying them. I however didn't feel bad saying "stupid rice, I hate you. You are ugly." And the like.... :) although eventually I did as a friend suggested and said "you stink" instead of stupid, because we don't use that word in our house and Ethan started saying it more once we got in the habit for the experiment. (Luckily he is back to not using it)

5 weeks

5 weeks

After one month we opened the two jars. It happened to be on thanksgiving when the Cooleys were with us to. So they can vouch for the stench of the second "stupid" one. It stunk pretty bad and was totally mutated to where it looked like a pile of goopy liquid. While the first one was still almost the same as when we had put it in, except it had a slight smell of just starting to Germantown, but barely. It really was very fluffy and happy--pretty in my mind.

Happy Thanksgiving...when we opened these.

Food for thought...

• So...what do you think? 
• What are the effect of your words?
• Do you want to take up the trial and do your own version of this experiment? 
• What negative words or thoughts do you harbor--towards others? or even towards yourself!
• Is it time to change negative thoughts and words... or try them out on this experiment and see if they have a real visible effect over time?
• If you have negative words, they first stem from negative thoughts.
• Thoughts are powerful. Don't limit yourself or others. You can be anything you put your mind to if you don't label yourself or accept others negative labels of you.
• Everyone has great potential. How can we praise and help others see theirs.

I hope that I can remember the power of words and thoughts...not just negative, but that we can use them to build up and beautify--to perfect things and people to a more perfect state...or the opposite (changing the nature of the thing or person to a state of glum and , wel....bloop like the rie.  Hmmm.....

Interesting, no?