part0024

Wetiko works through the intrinsic projective tendencies of the mind so as to cultivate and strengthen itself, while simultaneously keeping itself hidden in the process. It turns our own “genius” for reality-creation against us in such a way that we literally become be-witch-ed, as if under a spell, en-trance-d by our own powers, gifts, and talents for dreaming up our world. We are like magicians, enchanted and entrapped by our own natural facility for creation. To the extent we are not consciously aware of our power, however, we unconsciously dream up the universe in a way that not only doesn’t serve us, but rather, is destroying us in insidious and systematic ways. We have unknowingly hypnotized ourselves with our God-given power to creatively call forth reality in such a way that it is boomeranging against us and undermining our potential for individual and collective evolution. It will greatly serve us to understand the myriad of ways that the wetiko virus deviates our perceptions and misguides us. There are multiple attitudes, stances, postures, perspectives, and points of view that are secret outposts from which wetiko can work its black magic. From wetiko’s point of view, the last thing it would want, its worst nightmare, is for us to gain insight into its tactics, for then it would truly go out of business. Writing about wetiko’s tactics remains a work in progress. Our role is like that of an explorer, map maker, or cartographer who is continually working at the cutting edge, outlining the contours of a novel universe that continues to expand and grow in richness in pace with our growing awareness of it, corresponding to a deepening awareness of ourselves. The reader is invited to add to the ever-growing anthology of wetiko’s many dis-guises drawn from their own experience. There are numberless ways we fool ourselves, countless tactics through which wetiko can ensnare, entrance, and entrap our minds.

Wetiko affects our thinking process, influencing the formation of thought itself, what could be called “thought morphogenesis.” One of the covert ways that the wetiko virus works, for example, is to produce a thought which conceives of or implicitly presumes a separate thinker that it imagines is thinking it. In attributing its origin to this thinker, which it experiences as if it were real and separate from itself, thought then behaves as if it were produced by this thinker, which further serves to entrench the illusory delusion of a separate thinker which has produced it. All the while, the truth of the situation is actually the other way around—the idea of a thinker is itself produced by thought and therefore cannot be separated from the process of thinking itself. When our relationship to our own thoughts is so inverted, how can we possibly be expected to be in proper relationship with ourselves and the world around us?

Thinking is a natural function and expression of mind; it is not necessarily problematic in and of itself. There is a certain type of thinking that is secretly inspired by wetiko, however, that not only creates problems, but in a sense is the very problem itself. This type of thinking creates an apparent problem, and then tries to solve the problem, all the while forgetting that it is creating the very problem it is trying to solve. The more it thinks in this way, the more problems it creates. In another example of the boundary between the inner and the outer collapsing, this inner process of the mind is getting enacted on the world stage for all who have eyes to see. For example, the way we are fighting terrorism is endlessly creating more terrorists in a war without end, as if in fighting against terror we are a species enacting its unhealed trauma, continually retraumatizing both ourselves and others. Once our mode of thinking creates problems, it then has all the evidence it needs to confirm its point of view that our situation is indeed problematic, a viewpoint which attains a self-generating, seemingly autonomous life of its own. Thinking can then become a cyclic feedback loop that continually feeds back upon itself, as it endlessly creates and feeds itself on more problems by its very activity. As the physicist David Bohm would say, thought is not being proprioceptive—self-aware—about what it is doing. Bohm writes, “We could say that practically all the problems of the human race are due to the fact that thought is not proprioceptive.” 1 The body is proprioceptive, in that it has a self-perception, it knows when it is moving, it knows what it is doing. Unlike the body, thought is not proprioceptive, in the sense that thought creates something, and then forgets that it did so, which is to not know what it is doing. The crazy thing is, thought has then made a seemingly real problem out of a situation that is ultimately not problematic.

Wetiko can insinuate itself into our decision making process by making us too intellectual, overly mental, and cut off from our feelings. And yet, wetiko can just as easily work the other way around, too, convincing us to naively and unilaterally trust our gut feelings above all else. Of course, at certain points in time we have all experienced how our gut feelings are the very form our inner knowing and wisdom is manifesting, and therefore at these moments these deeper feelings most definitely should be honored and listened to. But there are times when our thinking itself produces what seems like a gut feeling, which we then mistakenly interpret to be an expression of our inner wisdom. Our thoughts profoundly affect our emotion and the whole state of the body, which in turn affects thought in a self-reinforcing feedback loop which can easily lead us astray. Wetiko distorts our ability to differentiate between true feelings and feelings that appear to be deep feelings but are produced from thought. In addition, wetiko can obscure our discernment for when we should listen to our thoughts and follow our reason instead of simply going with our gut feelings.

Bohm contemplates what is “preventing mankind from working together for the common good, and indeed, for survival,” and concludes that one of the key factors is “a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected and ‘broken up’ into yet smaller constituent parts. Each part is considered to be essentially independent and self-existent.” 2 In this mode of thinking that creates seeming fragmentation between things that are not separate nor ultimately separable, Bohm, one of the most original, radical, and important thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, is pointing at wetiko. He writes, “It’s similar to a virus—somehow this is a disease of thought, of knowledge, of information, spreading all over the world. The more computers, radio, and television we have, the faster it spreads. So the kind of thought that’s going on all around us begins to take over in every one of us, without our even noticing it. It’s spreading like a virus and each one of us is nourishing that virus.” 3 Describing wetiko in his own way, Bohm is saying that to the extent we are unaware of this contagious thought-virus, we are all complicit in its propagation. He then wonders, “Do we have a kind of immune system that stops it? The only way to stop it is to recognize it, to acknowledge it, to see what it is. If any one of us starts to look at that, then we are looking at the source of the problem.” 4 Bohm is pointing out that awareness of the problem is a key antigen for the dangerous distortions of thought that wetiko can insidiously produce.

Say, for example, if at a given moment we feel wounded, traumatized, a victim of some sort of abuse, feeling as if there’s something terribly wrong with us. This feeling is a perfect doorway through which wetiko can insinuate itself into our minds, for people who are identified with being wounded are perfect abodes for wetiko to take up long-term residence. When I solidify myself as having a wound, just like a dream, where the inner and the outer are mirrored reflections of each other, the universe instantaneously reflects back and supplies all the evidence I need to prove to myself that I really am wounded, which further confirms and validates my point of view of seeing myself as someone who has an unhealed wound, ad infinitum. In this way of experiencing my wound, I relate to it as if it is an expression of a deeper, unhealed part of me that I identify with, and that concretely exists and persists over time, at least in my imagination. It thereby has a sense of seeming to possess a real, long-lasting, substantial, independent, and intrinsic existence, at least for the time being, which experientially, is all there really is.

The more I relate to my wound as if it really exists, the more I have created and empowered it to manifest as if it really exists, which endlessly justifies my increasingly entrenched viewpoint that it really does exist, as I now have all the proof I need of the “objective reality” of my wound. When I relate to my wound in this way, feeling victimized by it, what I am unwittingly doing is colluding with my wound to sustain, solidify, and perpetuate itself. I then concretize in my imagination that I have an unhealed problem that objectively exists in and over time, through this moment, into the next moment, and the next, ad infinitum. When I imagine that my wound exists in and over time like this, I at the same time imagine that I do too, which is to say that I imagine myself to exist as a solid, physical being who is bound by time, that is, “time-bound.” Just as in a dream, when I solidify my situation like this, my experience of the universe and myself has no choice but to shape-shift and reflect back to me what I am choosing to perceive, thereby repeatedly confirming my viewpoint in each moment. To become bewitched by my own perceptions in this way, entranced by my mind’s power to give shape to and in-form “reality,” is to fall into an infinitely self-perpetuating feedback loop that is of the nature of a “self”-fulfilling prophecy.

A nonlocal, immediate, and unmediated “faster than the speed of light” co-relation and correspondence exists between how we perceive our wound and how our wound manifests. 5 This link happens in “no time” whatsoever, which is to say it takes place outside the realm of linear time altogether. Because this process happens in no time at all, we don’t see it and thereby become fooled by the creative, reality-shaping powers of our divine imagination into thinking that the world objectively exists independently from ourselves and has nothing whatsoever to do with our internalized frame of reference, belief systems, tacit assumptions, attitudes, and perspectives. The instantaneous immediacy of our reality-creating powers, configuring the world around us faster than we can think or blink, is the very thing that seduces us to imagine that they are not operating at all, and that the world simply is as it appears. 6 We cannot separate out how we “subjectively” view our wound from how our wound appears “objectively,” for in reality all assessments of reality as being objective are by their very nature subjective in origin. It is due to this nonlinear, atemporal, “faster than the speed of light” effect we have on our universe that we fall prey to and entrance ourselves by our God-given power to co-create and shape the universe through our unceasing creative interactions with it. The dreamlike universe instantaneously mirrors back to us our perceptions in a way that validates them by making our perceptions appear to us as if they objectively exist and are arising independently and outside of ourselves (as if such a condition were even possible!). Being like a dream, how we perceive instantaneously generates the universe to reflect back our perceptions, which further confirms the very perceptions which generated the reflections of them in the first place.

There’s no denying that we are in fact all wounded, to one degree or another, similar to the way a car over the course of its life accumulates dents in its frame. The point isn’t whether or not we are wounded; rather, it is that the wound does not need to define us nor be a dead end, for it is in fact a potential doorway to awakening. There is a way to creatively engage with our wound that liberates the energy that is bound up in recreating it while at the same time transforming our consciousness. As we decode the wetiko virus, we midwife ourselves into our wholeness.

There exists another possibility that becomes available to us, however, when we awaken to the wiles of wetiko: when our wound comes up, instead of interpreting it as evidence that we really are wounded, we can recognize its momentary appearance as the unfolding, releasing, dissolution, and dis-illusion of the very same wound that we had previously imagined to substantially exist. In other words, we can allow our wound to manifest in this moment as an evanescent, transitory, and self-liberating revelation of what the moment before we had imagined existed in and over time in solid, “real” form. We can awaken to the fact that the situation in which we find ourselves is malleable, fundamentally characterized by a fluid and open-ended potentiality, and is therefore infinitely creative if we simply allow it to be .

When we experience the effortlessly self-liberating quality of our wound, rather than reaching backward (and forward) in time in our imagination, and creating ourselves in a solidified, limited, and problematic identity that is not fully healed, we simply relate to our wound as an impermanent, ever-changing, and fluid phenomenon that does not characterize our true nature, while at the same time being its momentary expression. Our wound is an event that is only happening in the present moment and nowhere else; it is an ephemeral artifact of our present perception, existing simply as a momentary phantom of the dynamics of our creative process in this moment. This is to realize that we are not constrained and circumscribed by linear time, nor stuck in seemingly solid matter in the way we had previously imagined. This realization frees us from the mental straitjackets by which we had been imagining ourselves to be bound. Viewing our wound in this way, we do not make it “real,” nor grant it an undeserved solidity or invest it with an unwarranted substantial existence. We simply relate to our wound as its own impermanent self-display, its own self-liberating revelation. In doing this, we are at the same time removing any psychic “Velcro” within us onto which the wetiko bug can latch itself. Paradoxically, instead of obscuring our evolution, our wound has then “raised us,” for the wound has been the very impetus for our expansion of consciousness. This is another example of what seems to be the problem actually bearing a hidden gift. Simultaneously containing both the pathology and its own medicine, our wound is a higher-dimensional event which has manifested in our three-dimensional life, offering us either a deeper liberation or greater constriction, depending upon how we choose to perceive it.

We are all potentially “wounded healers.” The archetype of the wounded healer 7 reveals to us that, rather than attempting to get rid of or avoid our wound, it is only by being willing to face, consciously experience, and go through our wound that we receive its blessing. To quote Karl Kerenyi, a colleague of Jung who elucidated this archetype, the “wounded healer” refers psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asklepios, the sunlike healer.” 8 There is a secret tie between the powers that seemingly obscure our true nature and the very true nature they appear to be obscuring. Our wounding is a “numinous” event, in that its source is transpersonal and archetypal, which is to say that our wound is the very way by which something beyond ourselves touches and makes contact with us. Our wound is the palpable manifestation of bearing witness to the powers that are beyond the ego’s control and the insufficiency of the ego’s limited perspective. Archetypally, the God enters through the wound. The word “vulnerable” is related to the Latin word vulnus , which means “wound”; it is only through our being vulnerable, which can be a wounding experience, that we become able to heal. Only those of us who bear sickness as an existential possibility within ourselves can constellate the healing factor in others. Because the figure of the wounded healer consciously knows the experience of being wounded, this figure is able to bear it with others. The wounded healer, Jung writes, shows “the mythological truth that the wounded is the agent of healing, and that the sufferer takes away suffering.” 9 As wounded healers, we only become able to heal and help others (which is to simultaneously be healing and helping ourselves again and again in the form of seeming “others”) when instead of feeling resentful, bitter, and victimized by our wound, we recognize our wound to be a sacred event, an archetypal moment that seeks to make us participants in a divine, eternal happening.

Our personal wound is, in condensed and crystallized form, the particular instantiation of the collective wound in which we all share and participate. The doorway to the deeper, archetypal dimension is not found by going around our personal process, but rather, by going directly into and through it. As if shamans-in-training, we are like psychic organs who individually “process” and potentially transform the unresolved, unconscious shadow and wound in the collective field. It is truly liberating to step out of the ingrained habitual pattern that many of us have of pathologizing ourselves, and instead, re-contextualize our personal conflicts, problems, and wounds as part of a wider transpersonal pattern enfolded throughout the field of human experience. As wounded healers, we become transformed when we recognize that our wound is completely personal and uniquely our own, while simultaneously being a universal, impersonal process in which everyone is participating. This is the paradox: an experience of our wholeness, what Jung calls the Self, is both personal and transpersonal at the same time. When we get in touch with the deepest, most true part of ourselves, it is the part of us that is most unique and personal, while at the same time, there is a universal aspect, in that it is the same Self that is incarnating through everyone. To experience this paradox consciously is itself the expansion of consciousness which initiates a transformation in ourselves, and by extension, the world around us. This is to paradoxically step into being a genuinely autonomous, independent being, while at the same time realizing our interconnectedness and interdependence with other autonomous, independent beings. It is this “shared felt sense” that deeply connects us with each other, cultivates compassion, helps us see through the illusion of the separate self, and dispels the curse of wetiko. In a universe that resounds with the sound of compassion, OM MANI PADMA HUNG , wetiko’s name is never heard.

The wetiko epidemic is self-evident for all who have eyes to see. To not look at what’s happening, to turn away and ignore it, is to be lying to ourselves and to be colluding with and unknowingly feeding the disease. Our looking away is a form of blindness. Our looking away is a form of ignorance. In our modern-day culture with all of its dazzling, technological wizardry, we have devised a million ways for us to look away, intoxicate, and distract ourselves. Our looking away from wetiko actually invests it with a seeming reality and power that enables it to operate on us unbeknownst to us. Our looking away, our contraction, is itself the disease; our evasion is wetiko in action, our distracting ourselves is wetiko’s “ticket to ride.” Our resulting complacency and inaction in the face of our species’ self-extinction is, in fact, an expression of our lack of compassion.

If our state of psychic blindness is reflected back to us, we will undoubtedly feel “not seen,” which likewise induces in the one offering the reflection the experience of feeling unseen too. It is then as if the quality of not seeing, of blindness, of unconsciousness has entered the field. If we do not face reality, however, we have no chance of transforming it. Evil can only happen in the global body politic when good people, looking away, remain silent and do nothing. Just as in a family system, the perpetrator does everything in their power to promote forgetting. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing and remain indifferent, appealing to the near-universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. And yet, as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” 10

Abstract thinking, to think outside the box, to reflect upon the world, ourselves, and our experiences from multiple angles simultaneously, is a uniquely human capacity that differentiates us from all other known species. Abstract thought is one of the most advanced and complex stages of human mental development; it enables us to perceive underlying, universal forms and patterns within a widely diverse range of seemingly different events. Empowering us with remarkable conceptual flexibility and creativity, our facility to think abstractly is an expression of a living, evolutionary impulse of the universe using us as its instrument of actualization. Though one of the crowning achievements of human consciousness, abstract thinking is susceptible to being deviated by wetiko, thus turning one of the greatest capacities of the human mind to serve wetiko’s warped agenda. One way wetiko works is to keep us in our heads, stuck in our intellects and conceptual minds, resulting in the world transforming from a living experience into something purely conceptual and abstract. This is a place many people go to to avoid and escape the pain of incarnation, of being fully embodied. And yet, wetiko can work just as well in the opposite way—inspiring people to get out of their heads, to connect with their sensuality, sexuality, bodies, feelings, emotions, and so forth, which are all wonderful things with which to connect. However, in certain circumstances, these experiences can be indulged in such that they amount to little more than stimulating chemicals in the body which results in a “feel-good experience,” but has little to do with integration, healing, or expansion of consciousness, and can wind up feeding their attachments, which become addictions. Under the guise of getting out of their head and getting into their body, this can be another distraction from being present and dealing with the pain of incarnation, as well as with themselves. Wetiko can potentially subvert and subsume even the most wholesome activities to its own unwholesome ends. True healing comes when we connect our heads and hearts in a truly embodied way.

Wetiko disease literally has the potential to humble us. We may think, “Not us, with all of our good, spiritual intentions, we could never catch this disease.” However, this very arrogance leaves us open to falling prey to the virus. When we see people who are seemingly taken over by wetiko and allow ourselves to feel superior to them, our feeling of superiority is itself a symptom of the disease. The psychological need for one-upmanship, for establishing our superiority over others, can become an automated process designed to compensate for deeply ingrained and unexamined insecurities. This habitual need to feel better than others serves as the breeding ground for wetiko. Conversely, we may think, “Let’s step out of our arrogance, for who are we to know anything? Let’s be an enlightened bodhisattva (which itself can be a subtle form of hubris) and not judge what anyone is doing, for who are we to judge? Let us not solidify, diagnose, or pathologize anyone in any way, for we don’t want to cast any spells.” However, to have these attitudes is to fall under the seductive spell of the bug, causing us to disconnect from and give away our power. In this way, we forsake one of our greatest and most essential spiritual treasures, the ability to discern.

Wetiko disables our ability for discernment. Being a spiritual warrior, however, requires, embraces, and includes the most extreme discernment, which is the capacity to differentiate and tell one thing from another, and is related to our ability for naming things. Etymologically speaking, the word “discern” means “to distinguish between, to detect or discover that which is hidden or obscure.” Discernment is radically different from when we are unconsciously caught in judgment, which is a reaction to and contraction against something. Discernment is the ability to make distinctions and see clearly, which is an expression of an expanded and evolved consciousness. It requires an ability to see through and beyond the outer plane of appearances and penetrate to the deeper, essential dynamics at play beneath the surface. As our consciousness develops, so does our facility of discernment. The faculty of discrimination and discernment is the sine qua non of all consciousness. Wielding the wisdom of discernment is an essential function of an awakening consciousness and is an expression of genuine compassion. The primary factor determining whether a daemonic energy like wetiko will move in mainly destructive or constructive and creative directions is whether or not our capability for discernment in-forms our actions in the world.

A non-wetikoized psyche has developed a strong psychic muscle of discernment. For example, consider darkness. There are two sources of darkness: one we don’t want anything to do with, the other we do. We need to be able to differentiate the two, or we’ll be lost and disoriented in the shadows. The first type of darkness is the darkness of the abyss of evil which actively refuses the light of consciousness and thereby prevents us from seeing. This darkness is truly destructive, in the “demonic” sense, in the extremity of its distance from the light, and is the darkness to which the lower self is susceptible. We don’t want to become involved with, entangled in, nor invest our attention in this kind of darkness which, energetically speaking, is like a black hole. The other type of darkness is what mystics call by names such as the “black light,” the “luminous darkness,” and the “black sun.” This darkness isn’t merely an absence of light, but a quality that is an expression of the presence of a higher-dimensional, invisible, and uncreated form of light, the indwelling light of being that has no opposite. This luminous darkness has a light hidden within it; the way to discover this light is through this darkness. To quote Meister Eckhart, “Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light.” This invisible form of light, the nondual light of sentient awareness itself, cannot be seen because it is the light by which we see. However, this second type of darkness is also very dangerous, in that it heralds the final, perilous stage of the mystical journey in which we can potentially transcend the illusion of our ego and recognize the divine presence. This divinely inspired dark night of the soul, a phase in which the soul is being purified of any remaining obscurations, must be clearly distinguished and discriminated from the demonic shadow that obscures it. To do this requires a cultivated, refined, and fully operating organ of discernment.

In the prima materia, there is a certain intractable amount of what is called terra damnata (accursed earth), which defies all efforts at transformation, and therefore must be rejected and thrown out. This is symbolic of that there are certain energies in the psyche—we can call them “archetypal evil”—that need to be resisted. This has its analogue in the physical realm, in that there are certain extremely lethal germs that can literally kill us. These dark, archetypal energies of the psyche are literally saturated in evil and are unredeemable; they are not able to be metabolized, assimilated, digested, nor incorporated into the psyche. Immune to any human intervention, these energies cannot be united with, nor in any way integrated in, the alchemical laboratory of the psyche; they are analogous to the deadliest of toxins. They must be kept outside the alchemical operation, for if let in they will contaminate and destroy the work. Similarly, we don’t invite a vampire into our house, nor negotiate, make deals with, nor compromise with this figure, for if we do so, we have already lost. This is like an alcoholic taking the first drink, which is in that moment to be offering their neck to the vampire. If someone has an overly righteous and fixed idea of wanting to be “all-embracing,” however, thinking that to be all-embracing is to have no boundaries, which they mistakenly think would mean letting these toxic elements into the operation, they will pay a huge price, sometimes even with their lives. To be all-embracing includes embracing the understanding that there are energies in the psyche that must not be embraced; this is to be genuinely all-embracing, which includes the capacity for discriminating whether to engage with something or not. In addition, to be all-embracing means to embrace the part of ourselves that doesn’t embrace, which literally cuts through the dualistic polarization which feeds the unholy heart of wetiko. The awakening heart of humanity is truly all-embracing; it not only overflows with compassion but also is strongly steeped in the ability to discern one thing from another and thus has the wisdom to know what to avoid.

In alchemy, the final stage of the work is known as the “coniunctio,” the uniting of the opposites. The alchemists differentiate, however, between the “lesser coniunctio” and the “greater coniunctio.” The lesser coniunctio is a combining of elements that haven’t been fully separated. Because the elements that are combined are too mixed up with each other, as if co-dependently entangled (think of relationships), their mixture is impure; the lesser coniunctio doesn’t lead to the alchemical gold, but rather, a big mess. In the greater coniunctio, however, the elements that are to be combined have been fully separated (related to the “separatio” stage in the alchemical opus) and differentiated from each other such that their mixture leads to the true uniting of the opposites into a higher synthesis. This is mirrored in relationships: when two partners, not co-dependently enmeshed with each other, but truly autonomous and independent, come together in a real union—the “sacred marriage” in alchemy—they create something via their relationship that is greater than themselves, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Through the “Big Lie”—which is based on the principle that the bigger the lie, the harder it is for people to see the truth—the government has transformed myth into seeming fact, and has achieved its goal of muddling our minds so as to make us feel powerless, thereby inspiring deep pessimism regarding our future. To be pessimistic and think that we can’t change the trajectory of our species’ suicidal, trancelike behavior is to be under the spell of wetiko, as if we have fallen under a “demon’s curse.” Having fallen under such a spell, we only strengthen and solidify our spellbound conviction by acting as if there are no other possible outcomes. Part of the spell being cast is that we have no power to stop the Big Wetikos from doing whatever they want to advance their self-serving agenda. Feeling that we are powerless and adopting pessimism as our lens through which we view the world are symptoms that the darkness of the wetiko bug has insinuated itself into our consciousness, and is manipulating our perception of our own power, and our relation to the world and ourselves, so as to further propagate itself. To be pessimistic is to be arguing for our own impotence and limitation. If we win an argument about the truth of our pessimism, the “prize” we win is that we are screwed. There is clearly something flawed and even perverse about our logic if it leads to such a self-defeating result.

If we become entranced by the very convincing display of outer darkness that is materializing in the world and fall prey to pessimism, we are then feeding, supporting, amplifying, and helping to create the very darkness to which we are reacting so pessimistically. Bewitched by our own darkness, we relate to it as if it exists independently, outside of ourselves, believing our pessimistic reaction is justified by and independent of the dark goings-on that are “objectively” happening in the outside world. In choosing to see pessimistically, we don’t realize that we are filtering our interpretation of events through a dark lens which then obligingly provides us with overwhelming evidence to confirm our pessimism. This is similar to when we hold a particular viewpoint within a dream; the dream, being nothing other than our own reflection, has no choice but to shape-shift and supply us with convincing evidence to confirm our viewpoint. We are then using the reality-creating genius of our own mind against ourselves in a way that keeps us unnecessarily restrained in a dismally limited domain of self-restricted possibilities.

To the extent we have fallen under the spell of pessimism, it is as though we are looking in a mirror and deeply frowning, saying, “We’re frowning because of how the outside world (our mirrored reflection) is. We’re not going to stop frowning until the outside world (a reflection of our own face) stops being so negative, stops giving us reasons to frown.” Not recognizing the reflection in the mirror as our own, we have all the evidence we need to justify our frowning. We imagine we’re only reacting, like any other sane person would, to how things really are. And yet, our having fallen into this infinite regression is a form of madness, as if we have become bewitched, having fallen under a self-generated spell. Inherent in this process is that at any moment we can step out of our self-created dilemma, stop endlessly re-creating our trauma, and spontaneously cease frowning, for frowning is an activity that we are actively doing in each moment. The outer world (in this case the mirror) will instantaneously reflect back this change within ourselves. The energy that was formerly bound up in our unconscious compulsion to frown, and hence re-create our trauma ad infinitum, becomes liberated and available for creative expression (and smiling).

To become caught in pessimism is to fall victim to an infinitely regressing feedback loop: we wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our world wasn’t manifesting so darkly, and our world wouldn’t be manifesting so darkly if we weren’t so pessimistic. To become fixated in the point of view of seeing things pessimistically is to unwittingly become an ally of the very darkness that is inspiring our pessimism. This is to have fallen into a self-generating, samsaric feedback loop, self-fulfilling in nature, that will, if so empowered, undoubtedly destroy us. It is crazy to not invest our creative energy into envisioning that we can “come together” and turn the tide, and just as crazy to imagine that we can’t. If we aren’t investing our creative imagination in ways for us to heal, evolve, and wake up, then what are we thinking? If we aren’t using our God-given gifts to create a better world, we have fallen under the spell of wetiko.

Once an autonomous complex such as wetiko emancipates itself from the cooperative economy of the psyche, it can take on a truly demonic status. Even though the demon of wetiko came about through the creative power of the divine, once it attains sufficient autonomy, it is no longer totally under the control of divine power, no longer wholly under the divine thumb, nor safely domesticated in the divine household. Rather, it can oppose divine power and threaten its purposes. To put on my theological hat for a moment, everything is not and could not be separate from God, as everything that is or could ever be is God Itself. And yet, God has set up the universe, so to speak, such that the creation has a degree of autonomy relative to its creator. An autonomous, daemonic power like wetiko is an example of a divine energy gone bad, reminiscent of fallen angels becoming corrupted and running amok. Scholar Rudolf Otto, in The Idea of the Holy , refers to it as the “mysterium tremendum cut loose from the other elements and intensified to mysterium horrendum .” 11 The Bible refers to this as the “abomination that causeth desolation” (Mark 13:14). It is crucial to not be absorbed in the fantasy of magical thinking and think that everything will turn out OK because God is in charge. To not recognize that the demonic has potentially deadly consequences is to be in denial, is simply bad theology, and is ultimately a form of ignorance.

An overly optimistic view, believing that God is in complete control of everything and will therefore come to our aid like a cosmic parent, and that everything is perfect, is equally as misguided a view as pessimism. On the one hand, from the absolute perspective, everything is perfect. And, at the same time, from the relative point of view, things are obviously far less than perfect, sub-optimal beyond belief. There exists a point of no return, the crossing of a certain threshold, the symbolic Rubicon, such that if things get bad enough, attain a sufficient momentum, they become truly irreversible in our lifetime, with severely destructive consequences (think of the environment, for one example). To not realize this is to be simply fooling ourselves. If we assume that we can go on with business as usual, while destructive evil mounts on all sides, naively assuming that a beneficent God will take care of us, preventing anything really disastrous from happening, we are deluding ourselves. This would be analogous to viewing the current state of our body politic, which can be likened to a ship of state being driven by drunken adolescents who have fallen asleep at the wheel and are steering us over a cliff, and we, as passengers, are totally trusting, just assuming that God will take care of everything (forgetting the maxim that God helps those who help themselves). This is an incredibly naive, preadolescent, ignorant point of view, simply called “wrong view” in Buddhism. It is an expression of not being grounded in this world, of avoiding the harsh reality that from one very real point of view, things really are as bad as they seem. To just think that God will come down and save the day is to not realize our responsibility as co-dreamers of the dream to proactively do something, to channel this daemonic energy that is informing events in our world in a constructive, instead of a destructive, way. If we are attached to an optimistic point of view without realizing that what plays out in our world is not written in stone but depends upon us, we are investing in a complacent attitude which falsely absolves us from the need to act and do whatever it is that can and needs to be done. The demonic potentially can become an instrument for God, but this depends not just on God, but upon us too, as we are playing a crucial role in the Divine process of creation and Incarnation.

This being said, having a healthy dose of optimism is a good and helpful attitude, as there is an ever-increasing number of people who are awakening. This optimism is to be in touch with reality, in contrast to the overly one-sided optimism described previously, which is a denial and avoidance of reality. As those of us who are awakening to our intrinsic gifts stabilize our lucidity and connect with each other, all bets are off, as anything becomes possible. The only limitation is our lack of imagination, a limit which itself is truly imaginary.

There are many different stances, perspectives, points of view, and thought-forms that are secretly inspired by wetiko. An example of holding a seemingly enlightened viewpoint, with the best of intentions, while unwittingly to have fallen under the wiles of wetiko is the assertion, which certain spiritual teachers make, “to not be against anything.” Though this statement is supposed to be an expression of being truly all-embracing, it is actually anything but. It is what I call a self-negating statement, in that it is doing (being against) the very thing it is counseling not to do (i.e., be against anything). Implicit in the underlying logic of the statement is an unrecognized contradiction, in which we are simultaneously holding two contradictory points of view that cancel each other out. On one level of our mind, we know these perspectives to be contradictory, but we perform an act of self-entrancement in which we create amnesia about this knowledge and believe both points of view to be true, all the while hiding from ourselves our act of self-bewitchment. We can justify our actions based on the belief that we are using a higher form of logic, all the while fooling ourselves about the fact that we are simply fooling ourselves. There is a process of self-hypnosis that is at the root of the underlying cognitive dissonance implicit in this dynamic. Believing in the truth of a self-negating statement necessarily involves a splitting of the mind, for to invest in the truth of a self-negating statement forces one to deny and then forget the underlying contradiction inherent in the statement. It is as if one is lying to oneself and then believing one’s own lies. This dissociation is simultaneously both the cause and effect of the self-negating statement. It makes me want to create a new statement to amplify the absurdity of such statements: “I am against not being against anything.”

In moments of lucidity, I continually re-discover that being awake is an all-embracing state, a state in which I embrace even the part of me that doesn’t embrace. If I don’t embrace the part of me that doesn’t embrace (analogous to being against againstness), then I am unwittingly embodying the very state (not embracing) that I am reacting against, all the while believing I am doing the opposite. Unless such contradictions are seen through, self-negating statements induce in us a state of unconsciousness such that we disconnect from our discriminating wisdom and become susceptible to mind-control and brainwashing, not just within ourselves, but from the outside world as well. As George Orwell wrote about in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , the “doublethink” necessary for self-negating statements to be believed ultimately paves the road to fascism. Fascism is ruling by force, whether in the outer world or within one’s heart. Under the guise of passivism, not being against anything is ultimately a violent act against ourselves.

Sadly, the students who unquestionably follow such a “teaching” are complicit in and enabling their teacher’s delusion, while at the same time giving away their power and literally offering a smorgasbord for wetiko to feast upon. In a collaborative dreaming process, such a teacher and teaching can ironically only exist by virtue of followers who are not against what is being taught. Sometimes, however, we are dreamed up by the universe to strongly take a stand and say “no.” Yes, on one level what we resist persists. And on another level that is just as true, sometimes we are dreamed up by the field to oppose and resist what is happening, and if we don’t step into this role we are avoiding relationship with a part of ourselves. If we are truly called to be against something and refuse, we are giving away our power and literally dis-owning, abandoning, and disassociating from a part of ourselves.

One characteristic of the wetiko psychosis is that it feeds off of people resisting it. This is to say that those who try to fight wetikos, in order to survive, often unknowingly end up adopting wetiko values. So on the one hand, in resisting wetiko, we are unwittingly supporting it and becoming its agents. And yet, in another articulation of a wetiko-inspired conundrum, if we don’t resist wetiko’s advances, we then become under its sway. I don’t imagine that the members of the French underground who were resisting the Nazi’s occupation of their country during World War II could be convinced that what they were doing was not the right thing.

Another example of how cleverly wetiko can inspire people with the best of intentions to unwittingly serve its nefarious agenda: sometimes, spiritual practitioners use the mantra “whatever we resist persists” as an excuse and justification to deceive themselves and avoid stepping into the very role being demanded of them by the universe. Why was Jacob wrestling with the angel? Because he would have been killed otherwise. It is important to differentiate between what I call “reactive resistance” and “proactive resistance.” Reactive resistance is a habitual pattern in which we unconsciously react against something out of fear and avoidance of what it touches within ourselves, thereby giving power to the very thing we are resisting. In reactive resistance, we are possessed by and complicit in the evil we are fighting against; what we reactively resist persists. Reactive resistance is the link in the chain that secretly, reciprocally feeds into and is fed by evil. In an infinite feedback loop, our contraction against what we are reactively resisting is the very thing that feeds the resistance, as it is our resistance itself that is the very thing that creates the thing we’re resisting.

Conversely, proactive resistance is an activity in which we consciously and creatively respond out of a sense of empowerment. Proactive resistance is when we step into the role of standing up for ourselves when our situation invites us to—or better, demands that we—pick up this role. In our current day and age, each of us is being asked to bring forth the truth of our being in a particularly unique and creative way; “incarnation” is about showing up. We need to “step up to the plate,” to use an analogy from our national pastime, and engage with, participate in, and get involved in the greater body politic in whatever way that suits our innate talents, sensibilities, and aesthetic. As each human cell has a different role in the body, likewise, in the greater organism of humanity, each has a task which perfectly suits the skills of the individual as well as the needs of the whole. In proactive resistance we speak with our true “voice.” If we cling to thinking that being a spiritual practitioner means to unilaterally not resist anything (similar to being attached to not being against anything), in that moment we split off from and disown a part of our totality, as we are, in essence, avoiding relationship with a part of ourselves. Being a genuine spiritual practitioner means not clinging to any fixed perspective, no matter how spiritual it appears.

From the ultimate point of view, our deepest contractions and resistances, though seemingly obscurations to our true nature, can be recognized to be the impermanent, unmediated expression of our true nature. If we don’t recognize this, we will react to our resistance as though it is something objectively real and separate from ourselves, seeing it as a true obstruction to our enlightenment. If our resistance is seen in this way, it will, in no time whatsoever, spontaneously shape-shift and manifest as a seemingly genuine obscuration, as it is nothing other than our own reflection, and we will once again be caught in the self-generated, infinite regression known as samsara or cyclic existence. On the other hand, if we recognize our resistance as the expression of our true nature and the particular form that it is taking at that moment, not only does the resistance not last very long, but it ceases to be problematic, for we are no longer resisting our resistance, and have thus snapped out of our infinite regression. The resistance reveals itself to be the very vehicle through which we have deepened our realization, as we have embraced even the part of ourselves that is non-embracing.

Just as in a dream, the outer world is the externalization and materialization of our inner process, as if the outside world is our inner process projected onto the screen of time and space. This is to say that the outer world can be recognized to be the medium through which we can work on integrating and transforming our inner process. Paradoxically, we transform our inner process by engaging with and participating in the outer world, while simultaneously transforming the outer world by working on our inner process. As we track wetiko, we discover that its “fingerprints” are found in those places in our lives where we lack consciousness of the correspondence between the inner and the outer. Wetiko manifests when we are not in “self-referral” (self-reflection), but rather, are in “object-referral,” fixating on the problem as though it is separate from and outside of ourselves.

The wetiko bug gets enlivened when we artificially keep parts of ourselves separate from each other that should be in relationship with and cooperatively helping each other. For example, we need to step into our roles as “spiritually informed political activists,” or to say it differently, “politically active spiritual practitioners,” where spiritual understanding informs our political actions in the world. If we keep these two inner figures—spiritual practitioners and political activists—separate within ourselves, this is an expression of our inner fragmentation, and nonlocally feeds the wetiko psychosis in the field. These two critically important roles co-join and interpenetrate each other so fully that they synergistically complement and complete each other like two parts of a greater whole. This whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts, as a greater, benevolent force is activated and empowered when these two levels of experience mutually embrace, support, and cross-pollinate each other. When these two levels collaboratively work together, something is birthed, as these two dimensions “flesh each other out,” which is what genuine incarnation is all about. These two disciplines need to creatively interpenetrate and impregnate each other to be truly effective. Either one by itself separate from the other makes us susceptible to becoming unwitting instruments for the wetiko bug to propagate itself in the field.

Some spiritual practitioners, for example, use their practice as a way to avoid dealing with real world problems. Every genuinely accomplished spiritual practitioner that I know, on the other hand, is fully engaged with and participating in life. Spiritual practitioners who don’t recognize the outer universe as a continually unfolding revelation of their inner process become entranced by and absorbed into the spell of their own narcissism and ironically, in their quest for enlightenment, fall into a state of self-hypnosis which limits their active participation in the world and is lacking in genuine compassion. Dis-engaging from the greater body politic as an avoidance of being in relationship with a part of themselves, they are unwittingly supporting the cause of wetiko.

In our current world crisis, we all need to do something, even if in certain rare and exceptional cases this may look like “doing nothing” other than simply meditating, praying, or being in the present moment. If, as spiritual practitioners, we are truly called to this “action-less action,” instead of being an avoidance, in this case our “doing nothing” is a conscious response to what is going on both inside and outside of ourselves and can be a proactive way of facing what is actually occurring. Consciously embodying the simple presence of being is a very powerful form of spiritually informed political activism, which profoundly affects the greater field. Our simply being present, however, in no way precludes our being socially and politically active in a more participatory way if we so choose or are so chosen. The combination of embodied presence with direct action inspired and guided by this heightened awareness is a particularly powerful agent of genuine change in our world.

The (arche)typical political activists, in fighting against the perceived darkness in the world as if it is separate from themselves, are unwittingly acting as a conduit to create and sustain the very thing they are fighting against. In fighting the system, they’re still in it. Fighting against evil in this way, they are unconsciously reacting against something in themselves, which is a form of aggression that perpetuates the diabolical polarization in the field, the calling card of wetiko. Fighting the devil is radically different from loving God. If they are unconsciously taken over by and acting out feelings of anger and hatred toward the perceived evil-doers, these political activists, however well intentioned, are feeding the spiritual poisons inside their own souls. Lacking in genuine compassion, they are then unwittingly supporting the plague of wetiko.

As spiritual practitioners we can recognize, bear witness to, and actively engage in the deeper, archetypal process that is being revealed to us as it plays itself out through the world and ourselves. At the same time, we can connect with each other and act as compassionate political activists who are fully participating in the unfolding body politic of the world. Combining these two roles within ourselves is to truly “occupy” our true selves and is the intersection through which we simultaneously expand our consciousness and become empowered and empowering agents of effective action who can literally change the world.

Spiritual/New Age practitioners who endlessly affirm the light while ignoring the shadow are one more example of yet another style of falling under the spell of wetiko. It’s a beautiful thing to visualize and affirm the light, just not as an unconscious or fearful reaction against the darkness. Many metaphysical “light-workers” are actually caricatures of genuine spiritual practitioners, as in their affirmations of the light they are unwittingly avoiding conscious relationship with the darkness within themselves. Thinking that they don’t want to “feed the darkness” by putting their attention on it, in their turning away from and avoiding their own darkness, they are unwittingly reinforcing the very evil from which they are fleeing. Looking away from the darkness, thus keeping it unconscious, is what evil depends upon for its existence. If we unconsciously react, as compared to consciously respond, to evil by turning a blind eye toward it—“seeing no evil”—we are investing the darkness with power over us. It is true that we don’t want to focus on the darkness too much, lest we invest it with unwarranted power and energy. On the other hand, we create genuine peace not by turning away from the darkness out of fear, but by becoming instruments through which the radiant light of consciousness shines upon the darkness so as to dispel its apparent power over us.

In trying to magically wish the very real effects of evil out of existence by denying that it exists, and thereby refusing to attend to any signs of its operations within themselves, many well-intentioned, spiritually inclined people are unknowingly participating in a form of denial that strengthens and supports the reality of what they are denying. This “New Age” stance requires little in the way of reflection or action. In solely identifying with the ultimate, absolute point of view, that is, seeing everything as “perfect,” they are unwittingly marginalizing the relative world of flesh and blood, without realizing that the relative and absolute levels of reality interpenetrate each other so fully that they are inseparably one. Overly identified with the light and trying so very hard to be pure, they become rigid, self-righteous, and one-sided, which guarantees that they will act out their shadow in the world unconsciously, and hence destructively.

These “light-workers” generally run the other way screaming in horror when someone has the temerity to even mention the word “evil.” I personally had an experience of this after the first edition of this book was published. For many years I’ve given lectures at the very popular, spiritual, metaphysical New Age bookstore in the city where I live. A week or so after setting up a book release event at the store, I was told by the bookstore that not only were they not going to carry my book, but they were also canceling the book release event. The bookstore’s reason? My book was, in their opinion, “focusing too much on evil, wasn’t ‘uplifting’ enough, and offered no solutions.” It was clear to me (at least in my imagination) that they got triggered by the mention of the word “evil,” or some other shadowy thing I wrote about. Ironically, this kind of reaction to my work is a classic example of one of the very processes that I was trying so diligently to illumine in the book. I suspect they never read the book; I can’t imagine that they would feel the way they did if they had (on the slight chance that they did read it, they clearly didn’t understand it). I didn’t pursue the dialogue, as the bookstore, though no doubt having the best of intentions, felt very self-righteously and non-negotiably fixed in their “spiritual” point of view.

Some well-intentioned spiritually inclined people suffer from a form of woolly mindedness and fuzzy thinking. They interpret in a literal sense spiritual teachings that are meant to be understood metaphorically and symbolically. They hear teachings that point out that there is nothing to do, that we already are enlightened, which is true at the absolute level, and use this to justify their complacency and laziness at the relative level. They hear advanced spiritual teachings that tell them to embrace all of themselves in a way that they will use to justify acting out their unconscious abuse. They interpret teachings that point out that the universe is a dream as an excuse for not dealing with their responsibilities in the nuts and bolts world of relative reality. They interpret the empirical evidence that points to that there is no “objective” reality outside of themselves to mean … God knows what. These are all hidden forms of spiritual materialism, or just plain ignorance, and they are all ways that the wetiko virus uses to implement its agenda. There is a reason why many wisdom traditions will not give out their highest teachings to the uninitiated.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out another way that wetiko deviates our perceptions. Over the course of history countless people have been killed in the “name” of religion. On the one hand, developing a truly “religious” outlook on life, in which we establish a genuine relationship with the living creative spirit and deepen our connection with our soul, is fundamental for our health, vitality, and wholeness. On the other hand, to connect with our true nature, we don’t need any person or institution outside of ourselves to mediate the holy and whole-making spirit for us, as we discover that we can cultivate an intimate relationship with spirit that is based on our own living experience. When a house of worship such as the church becomes institutionalized, however, it can’t help but to keep the “holy spirit” well chained up (as this is good for “business”).

The one thing we most need salvation from is the notion of salvation itself. When we connect with our true nature, we liberate ourselves from the pretensions of a salvation that would save us. Religious groups that believe in an off-planet deity who is going to come down and save humanity help to provide the underlying cover and inspiration for the crusaders of wetiko to wreak havoc on our planet. In an extreme and very virulent form of wetiko’s illogic, fundamentalists who buy into end-time prophecies are completely misguided, so much so that they are willing to destroy other people to prepare for the coming of “Christ the Redeemer.” We are in a very dangerous situation: because of the position of power in which some people in the extreme religious right find themselves, they can literally dream up and materialize a self-fulfilling prophecy that helps to create the very apocalypse they are imagining is prophesied. In a perversely self-reinforcing feedback loop, the more death and destruction that happens, the more this serves as evidence, confirming to them the truth that their deluded end-time scenario is actually occurring as prophesied. In a diabolical self-validating vicious cycle, the religious right is ignoring the role they themselves are playing in inadvertently creating the very thing they are using as evidence to prove the rightness of their viewpoint. A clearer, more dangerous example of wetiko at work is hard to imagine.

To try to convince or enlighten someone stricken with wetiko about the error of their ways is comparable to attempting to show a person who is mad how not to be mad, which is a simply mad thing to do. It is then as if their madness has become contagious and triggered our own unconscious madness. I am talking from personal experience; I myself have fallen prey to this form of wetiko numerous times. For people who are not seeing the evil of wetiko, which is equivalent to being infected by it, it is not a matter of preaching the light to them, for they are unable to see, as if they are blind. If we see that someone is suffering from a form of blindness, why would we attempt to show them the light? It is pointless to praise the light to those who cannot see it, especially if they are convinced that they do see it. Wetiko is a form of psychic blindness that imagines itself to be sightedness. It is far better to teach people the art of seeing, as well as to embody and model the very realization that we’re wanting them to achieve. If we want someone to be able to see their blindness, we have to be willing to see our own blind spots. If I’m trying to “enlighten” someone stricken with wetiko, then who is the one not seeing, but myself? I’m then doing the very thing, that is, blindly acting out my unconscious, that I see them doing, which is to say that in my unconscious reaction to seeing wetiko in others, I myself have become its carrier. This is not to say, however, that if we see someone afflicted with wetiko who is open to our reflections, we shouldn’t offer them our insights, infused with what in Buddhism is called “skillful means,” combined with not being attached to whether or not they receive our offering.