Wetiko – The dream made real
In the following condensed articles I will do a simple “copy/paste” essay on what Wetiko is and why it is VITALY important that you read the works of Paul Levy, his personal story and the deep insights to this dramatic stage in the psyche of humanity.
I have personally been thru MANY of the experiences Mr. Levy discusses in his book, and feel now – at this time in our evolution, we must pay closer attention to what is being played out in the world, within ourselves, and within the collective psyche.
For a list of Paul Levy’s essays on this subject click here > Awaken in The Dream
The idea of a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul (which has been wreaking havoc throughout human history) is what the Native Americans call wetiko.
The term wetiko is a Cree term (windigo in Ojibway, wintiko in Powhatan)
“The wetiko virus is like a parasite that literally feeds off, takes over and aberrates the currency of the infected system. The wetiko-pathogen originally manifests as a disturbance in the field of the collective unconscious of humanity itself, creating the psychic ley lines upon which world events are erected and energized. The origin of this virulent disease is to be discovered within the psyche.
Because of the psychic nature of wetiko, it serves us to understand the psychological underpinnings of the virus, which is to say, how it affects our day to day relationships and lives.
We begin to ‘see’ the bug when we are able to get in focus and recognize its’ psychological signature in both ourselves and others. The fact that the source of the “wetiko-germ is within the psyche which means that the cure for this disease lies hidden within the psyche as well.”
The wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity’s inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into – and participate with – our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and contemplate this ‘topic of topics’ before this virulent madness destroys us.
“Up until this point in our history we have been too easily distracted by the ruses of the wetiko bug itself. The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us. Its cure is the most pressing and fundamental issue facing us today.
Author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen writes in his foreword to Jack D. Forbes book about wetiko psychosis, “Columbus and other Cannibals is, I think, the most important book ever written on one of the most important topics ever faced by human beings: why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive?”[i]
Historian Arnold Toynbee points out that “a civilization doesn’t die from being invaded from the outside, but unless it creates culture which nourishes the evolution of the creative spirit, a civilization invariably commits suicide.”
As if possessed – our civilization is, trance-like, sleepwalking in a death-march towards our own demise. The most pressing and inevitable question of our time is not just ‘why?’ but more urgently, how can we stop this seemingly out-of-control, self-destructive, hell-bent part of ourselves?
Wetiko disease is an expression of the convincing illusion of the separate self gone wild. Bewitched by the intrinsic projective tendencies of their own mind, full-blown wetikos are unconsciously doing the very thing they are reacting to while simultaneously accusing other people of doing it.
Projecting the shadow onto others, they will accuse others of projecting the shadow onto them. To use an extreme, but prototypical example, it is like someone screaming that you’re killing them as they kill you.
If their insanity is reflected back to them, they think it is the mirror that is insane. Suffering from a form of psychic blindness that believes itself to be sightedness, full-blown wetikos project out their own unconscious blindness and imagine that others, instead of themselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
“Governed by the insane, self-perpetuating logic of fear and paranoia, those taken over by the disease fear that if they don’t attack and rule over others, they are in danger of being attacked and ruled over themselves. In their convoluted, upside-down, flawless illogic, wetikos’ act to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist and are other than themselves, thinking that they themselves have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting.” (please see Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome (ADS)).
Someone fully taken over by the wetiko bug is like a kitten endlessly reacting to her reflection in a mirror as if it is another kitten separate from and other than herself. The evil we see in the full-blown wetikos is a reflection of our own evil; if we don’t recognize this, we will just be projecting our shadow onto them. We are then guilty of the very same thing (shadow projecting) we are essentially reacting to and of which we are accusing them.
In wetiko disease, the psyche takes the ‘terror’ that haunts it from within, and in its attempt to master it, unwittingly becomes taken over by it, thus becoming an instrument of terror in the world. We have then become the thing we most feared, ‘creatures of the European nightmare world,’ as we psychologically terrorize ourselves, as well as terrorizing the world at large.
Wetiko is the bug which feeds the experience of terror within our mind and out in the world, fueling one of its more prominent manifestations in our world today: the ‘Global War on Terror.’
Most of the above article was taken from an essay in Realty Sandwich
Below is an audio interview with Paul Levy. The radio introduction is nothing short of obnoxious, so skip ahead to the interview portion and dig right in.
