part0008

There is a psychospiritual disease of the soul that originates within ourselves and that has the potential either to destroy our species or to wake us up, depending on whether or not we recognize what it is revealing to us. In Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil , I pay homage to the way Native American traditions have long been tracking the very same psychic 2 virus that I point to. Indigenous people’s articulation of the disease inspires all of us to track and bring into focus this elusive, nonlocal parasite of the mind. (Terms that are in boldface are explained in the Glossary .) By combining the Native tradition’s expression of this disease of the soul with my own articulation of this malady, based on personal experience, both our visions come into sharper clarity and focus. I look forward to many others adding their insights to the mix, so as to deepen our understanding and flesh out our course of action in response to this psychic plague even more clearly.

Writing this book has helped me stay sane in a world gone mad. To quote the maverick psychiatrist R. D. Laing, “The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man … normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.” 3 Our species is clearly in the middle of a mass psychic epidemic, 4 which I call “malignant egophrenia” and Native Americans call “wetiko.”

To place this book in its proper context: I’m writing not as a scholar, but rather as someone who has had a deeply personal and wounding experience with reference to what I am writing about. I only have the author-ity to write about this vampiric disease of the soul so intimately because I have, due to the designs of fate and/or karma, become intimately familiar with it in my own life. This wound has introduced me to a healing energy in myself, as if I am a “wounded healer in training,” a role we all have the potential to play.

Unexpectedly in the course of events in my life, I was introduced to the spirit of wetiko and forced to struggle with it, like Jacob wrestling with the angel of God at the crossing of the river Jabbok. Had I not prevented it, this overpowering transpersonal energy would have killed me. In wrestling with this daemonic energy, I was preventing a murder—my own. Each of us in our own way must pass through some variation of Jacob’s archetypal struggle with daemonic energy. I feel as if I am coming out of the closet when I write that I have had “close encounters of the wetiko kind,” which entailed direct confrontations with all that the word “evil” attempts to name. As observed by C. G. Jung, the great Doctor of the Soul: “It is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.” 5 My experiences have been truly shattering (please see the Afterword ). Living encounters with the psychic wetiko virus have disfigured, re-formed, and changed me. As a result, I am no longer who I was, while at the same time never being more myself. This book, in which I share the insights I have gained from this ordeal, is the crystallization of this ongoing process.

My personal story 6 would be unimportant in itself, except that it serves as the outer garment which reveals the underlying archetypal , structural dynamics that set the stage upon which these events got dreamed up in my life in the first place (see archetype and the dreaming-up process in the Glossary). Through the wounding, trauma, and abuse that I suffered at the nonlocal hands of this malevolent entity, which literally almost killed me, an archetypal process was revealing itself through my very individual situation, which, though unique to me, was at the same time the deeper process happening in all of our lives. What was most eye-opening for me was that when I began connecting the dots and saw the internal pattern that was playing out, it became obvious that my life—just like everyone else’s—is a particularized microcosm, a personalized iteration of a collective macrocosmic fractal. It was as if my personal situation with its individual intra/interpersonal dramas was contained in and an expression of a deeper cosmic process that was enfolded throughout the underlying field.

I began to recognize that the diabolical energy that was nonlocally playing out throughout the entire field of consciousness was informing the field in such a way as to hide itself. Uncannily, at the very moment when the abuse was about to be illumined, something seemingly unrelated would happen, often out of nowhere: what is called an “edge phenomenon,” that would serve as a distraction, to divert attention from what was on the verge of being exposed. At the same time, in the very process of being veiled, a deeper process was revealing itself for those who had eyes to see. It felt like I had woken up to find myself in a sci-fi movie—as if a higher-dimensional intelligence were orchestrating and nonlocally configuring not only people’s reactions, perceptions, and behavior, but the natural world itself, so as to protect the figure of the abuser, thus keeping the darkness from being illumined. I was beginning to realize that there is a deeper order inherent in this nonlocal “protection racket” that is arranging and configuring the field so as to hide the abuser, while simultaneously expressing and revealing itself. 7

Instead of focusing on isolated objects and events, we can expand our fixed perspective and allow the deeper process (often taking the form of a mythic narrative of some sort) that is animating events to reveal itself. Instead of superimposing our limiting ideas and beliefs onto the waking dream, we can allow life to show its dreamlike nature to us. Once I began to notice the deeper pattern that was emerging, it became clear that people routinely got hooked through their unconscious blind spots and acted as unwitting conduits and agents of obfuscation through which the nonlocal disease could replicate itself. Everyone, to the extent we are not fully awakened, is unwittingly protecting the abuser in their own way, as well as protecting themselves. At the same time, all of us, when seen together, are being informed by and are potentially revealing a deeper pattern of unconscious behavior that is always operating in the shadows of the human psyche. We all instinctively assume certain poses and postures relative to each other, like aspects of an underlying, fluidly shape-shifting process that is emerging through our energetic interchanges. Our transactions are an externalized reflection of the same shadow dynamics taking place within and between the different parts of our own psyche. From the dreaming point of view—which sees the seemingly outer objective world as a dream that is speaking in symbols which reflect something within the subject (ourselves)—the dynamic of “protecting the abuser” is an expression of the aspect of ourselves that is hiding from the light and resisting the growth of consciousness. This is the complicit part of us that participates in our own abuse. It is a reflection of the aspect of ourselves that keeps us in the dark about what we are doing to ourselves. This book is meant to help blow the cover off of this nonlocal protection racket.

Hidden in the evil of wetiko is its own medicine. Encoded in the darkness is the revelation of the light. Seeing darkness is a form of illumination. As Jung reminds us, we become enlightened by making the darkness conscious. Protecting the abuser, though seemingly in the service of the powers of darkness, is, paradoxically, at the same time potentially revealing the darkness, and hence ultimately an expression of the light. It is as if the light needs the darkness in order to reveal itself, for not only is the darkness revealed through the light, but the light is revealing itself through the darkness. Seeing how the field nonlocally protects the abuser is a doorway through which we are introduced to the underlying unified and unifying field of consciousness where light and darkness are both expressions of a single nondual sentient presence. Seeing the fieldlike aspect of protecting the abuser is to see the field in its nonlocal glory, which is to be in a glorified—that is, more lucid—state ourselves.

Seeing the field in its nonlinear and nonlocal display magically empowers us with the visionary tools we need in order to navigate safely through to the other side of our experience, from a world of seemingly meaningless, random, separate material events to a world in which life is infused with meaning and we are fully rooted in our seamless connectedness with the biosphere, with each other, and within ourselves. Seeing the field—a place where we are all interconnected—is the portal through which we plug into the living plenum , the infinite reservoir of zero-point energy that fills all of the space in the universe. This is the place of leverage, our point of power where we can cooperatively help each other to step into the dream and put our lucidity 8 together as one, so as to intervene and creatively transform the waking dream in a way that changes everything.

A few of my nighttime dreams come to mind as examples of chilling encounters with the wetiko energy. In the first dream, I am hanging out with Dracula in his apartment. His true identity as an evil vampire with malevolent intentions is “cloaked” by his charisma and charm. We are very friendly with each other. I notice, however, that his eyes are beginning to glow in the dark in a “spooky” way. When I see the luminous, radiant light emanating from his eyes, I spontaneously begin making animal noises, as nature’s creatures do when confronted with an unfamiliar, dangerous otherworldly energy. I begin barking, grunting, squealing, and squawking. Dracula is not pleased that I have noticed his out-of-this-world, preternatural radiance. He didn’t know his supernatural nature was showing, and it is clear that he didn’t want me to see through his disguise of ordinariness. In the dream, as if coming to my senses and snapping out of a spell, I realize that I am in extreme danger and that I have to leave. Immediately . I wake up.

Fairy tales and mythologies the world over symbolically represent, in various forms, humanity’s encounter with evil. If a person’s psychological/spiritual development isn’t sufficiently evolved, they might need to take flight and avoid the evil demon, lest they get overwhelmed by the monster’s power and be destroyed. In the dream it felt like I would have been way over my head, totally out of my league, if I had chosen to stay and have it out with Dracula. It was all I could do to escape and get myself out of the precarious and soul-threatening situation in which I found myself. It is interesting that it wasn’t my mind, but my intuitive, bodily, animal instincts that initially sensed the danger I was in.

Vampires, and vampiric entities like wetiko, don’t like it when their covert, psychological operations are seen. Just like Dracula in my dream, the last thing the vampiric entity of wetiko wants is for us to be “on to it.” Because it gets its power from operating covertly in the shadows and out of sight, seeing a demon takes away its seeming autonomy and omnipotence. For when we see the nonlocal, transpersonal nature of the vampire, not only do we take away its power over us, but it also can no longer see us. By seeing “it,” we render ourselves invisible to the vampire, who cannot self-reflectively speculate upon the mirrored reflection of itself which we are holding up to it.

The vampiric wetiko bug is a most elusive creature that is very hard to nail down. Because of my close encounters, I’ve always wanted to write something about vampires that would map my experience in a way that was helpful for others. In the introduction to my first book, I tell a dream I had where I was seeing Dracula and kept on trying to point him out to the other people in the dream, but no one else could see him. That dream has continued to incarnate and transform itself as time unfolds, yet it has been doing so in real waking life. This book is an outing, an unmasking, of the vampire in the field of our human world, and I feel that over time, as my creative fluency deepens, more and more people are seeing what I am pointing at. It is as if in writing this book I am actually enacting my dream, and am changing the ending, as if doing living active imagination . How the waking dream unfolds from here on is truly up to us.

I’ve been creating new articulations, such as these very words, to get across and share with others what I am seeing. The purpose of this book is to flood light on the insidious workings of this malevolent, vampiric figure that operates under the cover of darkness within the human psyche. As I’ve been progressively illuminating this malevolent entity out in the world, as well as within myself, it has become apparent that something deeper is revealing itself to me in and through the process. My personal encounter with wetiko has taught me something about the nature of evil—both human and supra-human—that I evidently could not have learned any other way. In coming to terms with evil, I’ve had to see my own stake in it. In seeing my own complicity in the darkness that is playing out in my life, I’ve had to confront my own capacity for evil. This has forced me to reckon with my own conscience, as well as to open my heart.

In another dream that felt so real that it didn’t feel like a dream at all, I am lying in bed next to Dracula, who this time I clearly recognize as a very dangerous vampire. Unlike the previous dreams, he is not trying to disguise himself at all. We both know what he wants. He’s salivating, simply thirsting for me. We both know that he’s not allowed to “have” me unless I somehow let him. It feels like we are in a battle of wills and of minds, as if my very soul is at stake. Similar to the archetypal myth of Jacob wrestling with the angel, I know I just have to make it to sunrise and then I will be okay. It feels like it is going to be a long and difficult night; the sun can’t come up soon enough. Then, as if remembering something, I have an idea: I start chanting the mantra of Padmasambhava, 9 who is the deity I invoke, pray to, and honor in my daily Buddhist practice. Padmasambhava’s mantra is OM AH HUNG VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUNG (I was doing the Tibetan pronunciation OM AH HUNG BEDZAR GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG in the dream). These twelve syllables are considered to be fully “blessed” by Padmasambhava himself, the emanation of his wisdom mind in the form of sound. Padmasambhava, considered the Buddha of this very age, is my guru, teacher, ally, and protector, my celestial guiding spirit and all-around cosmic superhero. Ultimately, Padmasambhava is my own true nature, my intrinsic wholeness, the part of me that’s always connected to what Jung calls the Self, defined as the wholeness and totality of our being. Symbolically speaking, Padmasambhava is the supreme exorcist and alchemist; the greater the negativity, the greater his power of transmutation. By “calling in” the archetypal figure of the exorcist, I am simultaneously “calling out” the devil. I am trembling and quaking in fear as I begin to chant Padmasambhava’s twelve-syllable mantra out loud in spoken word, waking up my girlfriend sleeping next to me, by the sound of my voice. (She then got to listen to the rest of the dream’s soundtrack in real time. It was interesting for me to hear upon awakening how the dream sounded from the perspective of someone outside the dream; she reflected that I sounded absolutely terrified.) It’s always interesting to me when I have a dream in which the two seemingly separate worlds intersect: the dream world and the seemingly “real” world.

As I chant the sacred syllables, my words are quivering with unbridled terror. Continuing to shake, I keep on repeating the mantra, the sound of which Dracula seems to absolutely hate. The vibration of the sound greatly affects him, as if hearing the mantra is painful for him. Like kryptonite to Superman, the very energetic presence of the mantra appears to be divesting him of his occult-like superpowers. Saying the twelve syllables is like holding up a crucifix or pouring holy water on the vampire, in that it repulses and repels him. Invoking Padmasambhava is tantamount to connecting with my intrinsic wholeness, the very state in which I’m protected from the deadly vampire. It is as if the vampire has revulsion and disgust for me when I am connected with my true nature, for then it has no power over me.

And then, just like that, the mantra transforms. I spontaneously begin chanting OM MANI PADMA HUNG (I was doing the Tibetan pronunciation OM MANI PEME HOONG in the dream) 10 —the six-syllable mantra of compassion—the archetypal quality of compassion embodied in the form of sound. As I continue chanting the six syllables, my fear begins to dissipate, my shaking lessens, and I feel more empowered. My attention shifts from solely focusing on the seemingly external figure of Dracula to connecting with my own heart. Slowly stepping out of the fear of being possessed by the evil vampire, I more and more experience being self-possessed, in possession of my self. Other people are now around, and the sense is that we are all taking part in a ritual preparing for Dracula’s demise. At one point, Dracula’s mouth opens incredibly wide like a lion yawning, and I instinctively thrust something into his mouth to block it from shutting. One of the people around Dracula is a very attractive woman, who for a moment catches my eye as well as my attention. I quickly bring myself back to chanting the six syllables, however, since I realize that she might be a nonlocal emanation of Dracula himself, meant to distract me from my task. I continue chanting the six syllables, which appear to be ever so slowly pulling the plug from Dracula, who looks truly down for the count. It reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West melting in the movie The Wizard of Oz . Before my operation is fully accomplished, however, I wake up. I look forward to seeing what happens as I actively imagine and dream this dream to completion in my waking dream, which, at least in my imagination, is what this book is about.

In the dream, the figure of Dracula was the materialization of the vampiric wetiko pathogen in personified form. The incarnation of the bug of wetiko in full drag, Dracula was at the same time the revelation of this pathology in full-bodied form. Being informed by wetiko disease, the Dracula figure was encoded with information; he himself was a cipher of information (in need of being de-ciphered). This is to say that through Dracula’s appearance in my bed, something was being shown to me. The dream was a reflection of a process happening deep within the psyche—my personal psyche as well as the collective psyche—in which I was struggling with my own inner vampire, as well as the archetypal figure of the vampire itself that exists in potential throughout the whole field. I was literally being forced to come to terms with evil. Or else.

In the first part of the dream, I needed to relate and come to terms with the relative, dualistic level of reality, a realm where good and evil very definitely exist. In the figure of Padmasambhava, I am invoking the supreme exorcist to alchemically transmute and subdue these dark, destructive forces. Unlike the first dream, in this dream it wouldn’t have been right for me to run away; it was clear that I needed to have it out with the vampire. I was at the place of initiation; my situation couldn’t be postponed. The evil figure couldn’t be wished or visualized out of existence. We were in a fight to the death. If I had tried to prematurely cultivate compassion at this early point in the dream, it would have been a “spiritual bypass” (something I see many well-intentioned spiritual practitioners doing), a strategy to evade responsibly dealing with the evil that was right in front of me. This prefabricated compassion, what some call “idiot compassion,” would not have had the all-embracing quality of genuine compassion, but rather, it would have had an underlying, fear-based agenda—“Let me send this monster some compassion so that he will go away.” I imagine if I had done this in the dream, Dracula would have mocked me for my transparent, superficial pretense of being a good spiritual practitioner. To not avoid the confrontation with the very evil that I was “in bed with,” I was forced to look at my own complicity in evil. There was no getting around this. Going through and into my fear of confronting the very thing I’m afraid of—my own fear and darkness—and not letting it stop me was a portal which allowed me to enter a more expansive and grace-filled realm. It’s interesting to note that the very presence of evil in my dream was related to my becoming lucid. I wonder how the same process is operative in our shared waking dream.

The six syllables are an expression of a lucid compassion which knows no separation. Once I began chanting OM MANI PADMA HUNG , my “lucidity”—the awareness that I was dreaming—more and more kicked in. As my lucidity stabilized, I began to recognize that there was no external vampire, that the whole experience was taking place inside of my own mind. There was no Dracula separate from myself. As if I were going through an initiation, this dream was helping me to realize the figure of Dracula in myself—a part within all of us, in potential, that can be like a vampire, energetically speaking. Seeing myself in the mirror of the vampire is what this seemingly external dream figure came to show me.

Instead of staying stuck and being fixated on Dracula—something seemingly outside of myself that I am afraid of—the point of reference within myself, through which I relate to who I am, had shifted as the dream unfolded. Instead of having my attention drawn outside of myself, I became in touch with and connected to myself. Over the course of the dream, the whole focus of my attention had changed; in the language of Carlos Castaneda, author of books on Yaqui shamanism, my “assemblage point,” which can be thought of as the locus within myself through which I organize my perceptions of the world, had shifted. Snapping out of inhabiting a dream in which I existed as a separate self who was vulnerable and needed protection, I stepped into a more expansive dream as I stepped through and out of my fear. At a certain point in the dream I entered the safety of the open heart of compassion, the ultimate refuge and protection.

I first became intimately acquainted and connected with the mantra of compassion when I spontaneously began chanting it the very first time I became lucid in a dream many years ago; or rather, it was as if the mantra began chanting me. Chanting OM MANI PADMA HUNG is what I do in my dreams when I know I’m dreaming. When I recognize the dreamlike nature of the situation I am in, I concurrently recognize that all beings in the dream are “dream characters,” embodied, reflective aspects of myself. And what better thing to do upon recognizing this than to send all the different parts of myself compassion? Lucidity and compassion simultaneously co-arise, which is to say that the natural, effortless, energetic expression of recognizing the dreamlike nature of reality is compassion. Chanting the mantra of compassion is an expression of lucidity while simultaneously being a prompt and reminder of lucidity, what I call a “lucidity stimulator.” What this means is simple: the way to deepen our lucidity is to cultivate compassion. OM MANI PADMA HUNG . These very words, or anything for that matter, can be seen as a lucidity stimulator, reminders and expressions of the dreamlike nature of this very moment. Getting to the heart of the matter, cultivating such fierce compassion that we’re even willing to confront our deepest fears is the very act that puts a stake through the heart of the archetypal figure of the vampire.