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There is a contagious disease of the spirit, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called "wetiko"—covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests.
Recent examples of wetiko in action: the US went to war against a country it didn’t need to fight, and has nearly bankrupted itself in the process; a greedy corporation failed to properly secure its nuclear reactors at Fukushima, leading directly to a rise in thyroid tumors among children in the US, along with many other evils. Right now, a demented boy in control of nuclear weapons is aiming them at the United States.
All against the better interests of the people involved. All wetiko. AND ALL PREVENTABLE if we can just see evil with a clear eye, and understand what it is and how it is working in our lives.
Wetiko is why evil people gain power, and why good, earnest leaders end up doing terrible evil. It is why people let themselves be duped into becoming murderous extremists. It is why, without noticing it, we can do things in our own lives that we regret.
BUT, TO SEE THIS EVIL IS TO BE FREE OF IT, and that is what this edition of Dreamland is all about. As you listen to Paul Levy, you will gain a new perspective on evil that is deeply freeing, and will enable you to start living life in a new and better way. And this goes not only for our personal lives, but for our national and international lives as well.
Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, author Paul Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is its own antidote, which once recognized can help us wake up and bring sanity back to our society.
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the book dispelling wetiko
the book dispelling wetiko its also on kindle…
Kim Carlsberg wrote about the
Kim Carlsberg wrote about the hybrid human-Gray Bashar helping her deal with the wekito-like crisis the Grays presented in her life. The unwanted contacts stopped after working with the human-Gray hybrid that Darryl Anka channels. Bashar is a master of bringing forward the world in which to chose to live out of the shadow of wekito. “Dispelling Wekita” sounds like a delightful extrapolation of the profound principles the flawless mirror reflects, which Bashar has worked with for more than three decades.
Thanks for “getting” it on “Dispelling Wikita.”
The McCarthy era in the early
The McCarthy era in the early 1950s was the perfect wetiko storm for the national security state and Nazi infiltration viz-a-viz the rocket program. McCarthyism was the kind of nationalism that drove the Germans to wetiko madness in the 20s and 30 when they were lean and hungry. The Cold Warriors had overcome extreme poverty of the Great Depression and were determined to rear their children (Baby Boomers) in affluence. It makes so much sense. Thanks for the excellent book.
Ok, an idea that was used
Ok, an idea that was used more effectively by Colin Wilson in 1967 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind_Parasites). About the only original idea Mr. Levy used was the name Witiko. The original idea goes back much farther.
In addition to my previous
In addition to my previous comment I did like the Tibetan Buddhist take on these concepts. The idea that it’s fed by any form of dualism and an enlightened non-dualism would be the most effective respite from Wetiko. This is progress.
appears that it’s been with
appears that it’s been with us for a long time… but everyone finds it in their own time, and new voices are necessary to keep the message alive.
Does anyone read the magazine
Does anyone read the magazine Nexus? In the issue on the newstands now ( Vol 20/03 April-May) there is an article written by Khartika Gunawan titled ‘Adventures in Alternative Realities’ which takes this quite a bit further. She lists a number of different types of attack on our souls – some of which may seem very familiar.
So a couple nights ago I’m
So a couple nights ago I’m just up to the top of the “hill” and about to merge onto I-10 West from off of I-17 South in Phoenix (the lane isn’t the shortest forced merge in the area by any means but does not last long either), and as usual I signal and check my blind spot. There is a car speeding past me right there so I slow down a tad bit and let it pass, staying to the right as I approach the arrows signaling the impending end of the lane. It passes.
Everyday occurrence. Except when this car is past and I’m now actually merging in, a passenger in the just-passed car sticks his or her hand out the window and motions to the right, as if I had done something wrong. A little irritating but I largely ignored it at the time.
Fast forward to this afternoon. I start listening to this show. The thought of this non-incident starts dogging me and dogging me and dogging me and I start getting all pissed off and distracted. “Of all the self-righteous d*****baggery! I hope you looked really cool in front of your friend, punk!” So I start to ask myself to try, somehow, to look at it through this person’s point of view, but that only led to the ‘shaming woman’ thing (what else but my own selfishness could explain the fact that I dared to find what this passenger did irritating, rather than IMMEDIATELY having compassion, like a RIGHTEOUS person would do!), so I then start thinking of women who tongue-click at their sons and tell them all about how they are selfish, ‘just like their father’ and then begin to project THAT image onto this passenger, who is now in my mind a woman who probably goes through life tongue-clicking and shaking the moral finger at everybody, especially her sons (who are no doubt in her eyes selfish, just like their father)… Et cetera, et cetera…
It’s not so much that this thing happened, although it had been quite some time since I had gone into a tizzy like that one. It was the timing of it. Why now, just when I start listening to this week’s Dreamland?
It appears Wetiko doesn’t want me to hear and really “get” something!
Evil has always been part of
Evil has always been part of reality, and thrives on our lack of awareness, including ignorance of our true selves. Carl Jung wrote an impassioned small book about this because he could see, as have so many wise people through the ages, that this ignorance, this failure to know ourselves fully makes us terribly dangerous to ourselves and the world.
The problem is that evil, including our ‘small’ everyday evils, is addictive. We become addicted to the evil of blaming others for our troubles; of making negative judgements of others; of justifying selfishness; of feeling anger, hatred, prejudice and other aspects of our shadow that we project outwards onto others, and of gratifying our darkest urges and impulses…We become so addicted to these evils that we think that we cannot live without them, that we cannot give them up without losing something. We get our daily ‘highs’ from our evils, and don’t want to let them go…not really.
So the problem that Paul describes as Wetiko is not just one of awareness, but also of intention. Even when we recognise evil in ourselves, we must truly want to eliminate it – not just to change its name into something more acceptable like ‘going with the flow’ or ‘the necessary otherside of goodness’ or ‘being true to myself’ – but truly want to be free of evil. We must make goodness in ourselves and in the world our clear, firm and constant intention.
It is that strong, clear intention that will enable us every time we fall back into evil, even seemingly small evils, to recognise what we are doing and get back in touch with that constant inner goodness. It’s an everyday process of seeing and repeating to ourselves our commitment to tune into the pure inner heart, and each time we do it, we are building and strengthening new neural pathways in the brain, and strengthening biochemical and electromagnetic changes in the body and brain that support goodness, while those that were patterned by our evil become weaker.
In other words, conquering evil is not just an ethical, spiritual or psychological process, but fully engages our physiology down to the most basic cells in our bodies.
My first direct experience of evil as a real force occured many years ago during a tumultous period of my life in an unhappy marriage. Standing in a swimming pool one day, trying to figure out what I really felt and wanted, I consciously emptied my mind to become more aware of what else was there. And suddenly, a powerful rush of energy, so strong that I had to lean on the pool wall for support, poured in through my mouth, so hard that my mouth was forced wide open. With it came immense pleasure, a delicious feeling of power and victory, and I knew without a doubt that the negative energy that I had always sought to protect myself from with white light and positive intentions had entered, and that it was evil. I knew that if I did not do something right then, it would be inextricably woven into my being. So applying all the force of my mind, I commanded, Get out, Get out, You will not stay here, and reached deep into that sacred space that I sometimes could touch within and asked it to help me.
Now this might sound like the rantings of some religious fanatic, but until that day, I had never believed in evil as a force. I had always thought it was what we do. And I follow no religion, and believed possession to be a state of hysteria, not real. That experience taught me what I needed to know. Evil IS real. It IS a force created within the mind but also out in the world because we, generations upon generations of we, have projected it out into the world where it thrives and grows, and that we alone can and must defeat it, not, as Paul says, by fighting it but by cultivating and nourishing our inner goodness and love, and thereby depriving evil of its sustenance.
First comes the recognition of it in ourselves, which enables us to recognise it in the world. Then comes the commitment to feeding our inner light and spreading light till it fills the world. A great couple of interviews, Whitley and Paul. I look forward to reading the book. Many thanks.
(Can’t recall the title of the book by Jung, not well known but very important, and short! It’s somewhere on my shelves. I’ll post the title if I can find or recall it)
The timing for this couldn’t
The timing for this couldn’t be more perfect for me. I subscribed today because of how important this topic was, and will be getting this book.
Please read the following with an open mind. The below has been the focus of my life for about a year now. I have had no outlet for it until today.
I’ve been following Whitley since Communion. I have always been spiritual, compassionate, empathic, seeking God and higher consciousness.
Last year, all of that incurred a dramatic shift for the first time in 45 years. A dramatic shift to “embracing” an at-times tremendous amount of “negativity,” on a scale that I never would have imagined possible.
I began to see it from the standpoint of “learning from the darkness.” The greatest growth via darkness. Without the darkness we couldn’t see the light, etc.
But what is the most interesting is that it has become an embedded part of me. So much so that I don’t even care to change it.
I have gone from a person who lived based on compassion and the best for humanity, to becoming 90% the reverse, and I can only find hints of the “old me” when I bother to look, and look hard. Most of the time now, I am even wondering if I ever was that person I describe above, but did have some insight recently, a memory, that indeed I was that person. I genuinely cared. Now, I basically do not.
And it is brutally honest. I am psychologically sound and lucid. And I’m not deluding or feeling sorry for myself. I analyze it constantly…It just “is.”
I still care about family, children, the welfare of the less fortunate etc. But not to the degree I used to, and as far as everyone else is concerned, I could basically care less about them and am now here for just me.
Very briefly: I’ve worked hard my whole life, live on a low income, struggle, etc. Have some family (no kids or wife) that care about me, and I about them. I have also been “wronged” to a horrible degree by someone who has abused many other people (you could put them in a corporate position as an example). And I was always the forgiving type, but am not any longer. As an example of this new consciousness I have, I am actively figuring out how to ruin this person professionally; he/she is hated by many as is…and I was never like this before. This person deserves it more than you know, and it has become therapeutic for me to figure out how to do this to this person, so that I can witness the justice that may or may not be served any other way. I am near 100% sure I am going to go through with ruining this person, to both get them back for what they did to me, as well as teach them a long-needed lesson. Nothing violent…just effective ruin.
I was very ill seven years ago, long-term pain that “I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
I now find myself going to sleep at night actually spending time before bed meditating on having certain people experience what I did or worse. I never had this mindset for 44 years previous. Now I wish it upon a certain few people with a vengeance and luster I never could have imagined. Actual meditative effort projecting physical pain and hell upon people, praying that they receive it. And I enjoy/look forward to this practice, and find it extremely therapeutic, hoping that these people suffer.
And again…I really have no interest in changing or reverting back, nor any guilt, remorse or even sadness about any of it. It just plain “is.”
I am open to, and even believe it’s possible that I am spiritually “infected.” I no longer care about afterlife or consequences…I just want to see justice done, without breaking any laws to do it. So I operate from a spiritual and professional standpoint instead.
I am open to what this book has to offer, but I don’t want to change. I want the fulfillment that the people responsible for countless “evils” will receive. I want to see people suffer the way they’ve made me and others suffer. I no longer see a connectedness, even though I do believe one may exist as I always believed. I just don’t *care* about it any more, it just does not matter. I have not had enough extraordinary/supernatural (lack of better words) experiences to prove to me anything but a somewhat sadistic nature/god is in operation, and that part of this requires adaptation to that mindset of “fighting” in order to “work” within that system.
I hope this posting is accepted and received. I’ve been waiting to bear this for a long time, and am also seeking counceling just to see if someone can help me work through it. Please let me be clear: I am not dangerous or out to hurt anyone, but am willing to take advantage of what circumstances and the law allows in order for me to see people pay for wrongs, and to do what I have to do to fulfill parts of my life that have for the past 45 years remained unfulfilled. As an example, I am willing to take advantage of people commercially (as is done a million times a day in this country as is) and I’m willing to squash someone professionally to get ahead and see “justice” done that is long long overdue.
And I truly “enjoy” this mindset. It is somewhat thrilling in a way I suppose, and makes me feel powerful and strong, two feelings, perhaps ego-based, that I never felt before but seem necessary to survive in this world.
No help wanted on this blog, I’m just telling you what I’m experiencing to share it.
Thanks for reading, and thanks Whitley for a great site. I look forward to digging into lots of subscriber interviews, there’s a ton I wanted to hear.
If G-d laughed creating this
If G-d laughed creating this universe then I propose it was a maniacal laugh. Knowing that there are people of different religions who are awakening, I believe, is proof only that some people can awaken in spite of religion, not because of it. If I fully realize that everything about this world and universe is created by my own personal dream I hereby grant each and every one of you the consequence-free right to kill me immediately and allow me at this moment to offer my heartfelt apology to you all for what I have put you through, for I truly knew not what I was doing. Nevertheless, absolutely, put me down.
“Well put” and “Ditto.”
“Well put” and “Ditto.”
I think it takes a tough
I think it takes a tough spirituality to resist the satisfactions of evil. I have seen that soft spirituality, all light and love and forgiveness that doesn’t embrace and honour the shadow, seems to fall apart under real pressure. Though I would not want to take the same path, Shades of Grays, I am glad you wrote about it. The more we know about what we are capable of, the more we can make up our own minds about which way to go.
Oh Whitley, thank you so much
Oh Whitley, thank you so much for this interview…..something came to me. I am a dancer, and a singer-songwriter. When I am dancing (I’m no longer dancing ballet, I teach and dance, dance fitness), I believe I am outside of the thrall of Witiko – I feel that I become just… light – pure joy, I feel that it is the relaxation of the finger trap spoken of. The same thing just – letting go, when I close my eyes playing music…. often just my guitar and myself. I just can’t explain the feeling – its not that you can’t see “the other side of the mirror” in fact you can see it clearly, but its that relaxation… it takes you to a place that is so difficult to describe. Watch a musician some time when they are “there” – Look at Stevie Ray Vaughan as an example when he was deep deep in that place, eyes closed a million miles away and yet present…. I’m not making any sense – I guess its pure light and “being on the other side”. Is it possible that the world is so consumed with money and treats artists so shabbily because of this “place”??? that is escape from witiko – seeing it for what it is? And yes, the older that I get, the more I yearn and am driven by, compassion for all………. Peace
… just bought it, it sounds
… just bought it, it sounds like I could use it …
Well we as a species, human
Well we as a species, human beings, bring evil to the world. We are the conduit for evil thoughts and evil deeds. If we were to be removed from this planet everything that would be left is pure goodness. And it seems more and more of us are being consumed with despair with the acts of violence such as the recent mass shootings, hostage taking and the latest situation where the college guy ran around stabbing multiple people. These are choices people make and it affects us all and seems to be contagious.
Just got my copy in the mail,
Just got my copy in the mail, looks like I’m in for an adventure …
I’m brand new to Whitley’s
I’m brand new to Whitley’s unknown country website, but a long-time fan and reader of many of his books since Communion was published. It was after I finally downloaded and devoured “The Key” this weekend and decided I needed to subscribe to unknown country. I have had a profound number of synchronicity experiences over the last 10-15 years or so that got my attention, but for some reason started going through a significant “dry spell” over the past year. However, I just had the most amazing “jump start” back into synchronicity experiences while listening to Whitley’s interview from April 5th with Paul Levy about his book, “Dispelling Wetiko.” I was aware that I had an interesting dream two nights ago and I did my best to recall it upon awakening. I was successful to a degree, but I definitely had the feeling that there was some portion of the dream that I was unable to remember. It was an interesting dream as the characters were members of my extended family that I don’t recall dreaming about before. In the middle of Whitley’s interview with Paul Levy, Mr. Levy was explaining what wetiko is and began making an analogy that involved a “tapeworm.” Bam! The missing part of my dream immediately flooded back… I had dreamed of an odd organic airborne creature of some sort landing near me on the ground in a yard where I was standing and conversing with my uncle (he lives a couple of thousand miles from me and turned 80 this year). My uncle asked me if I knew what it was and identified it as a tapeworm. It did have wormlike segments, but the segmented body appeared to be folded accordion-style so it wasn’t identifiable as a worm and it was huge. Bird-sized. Of course, I was puzzled because tapeworms don’t fly and I was wondering if it had been blown by the wind… it’s arrival made me think of locusts… but my favorite, agrarian uncle assured me it was a tapeworm. Now, how often have you had a dream, feeling it was important, and struggled hard to recall it and knew you had failed, only to have the specific and decidedly odd missing piece dropped in your lap by the Universe? I found Mr. Levy’s website, purchased and downloaded “Dispelling Wetiko.” Whitley Strieber, you’ve had me walking on a parallel path to yours for decades now and have impacted my life in so many positive and healing ways because you were honest/naïve/inspired/fearless enough to tell your truth and never to shut up. Thank you, my friend whom I’ve never met personally. Truly. Keep on keeping on, wher’er you roam. And thanks for unknown country.