part0030

Another quality of a wetiko-free psyche is its permeability and continuity between the conscious and the unconscious. There is no clear demarcation between the conscious and the unconscious, as they are integrated in an un-boundaried continuum, one beginning where the other leaves off. As the light of consciousness penetrates into the unconscious, it creates a bridge allowing the unconscious contents to cross over more easily into consciousness. Instead of the separate parts of the psyche being compartmentalized, we could say, in Jungian terminology, that there has become a genuine connection, dialogue, and relationship between the ego and the Self such that they fluidly and reciprocally affect and inform each other. It’s not that a wetiko-free person never falls asleep and acts out the unconscious, which would be impossible, as the ever-present unconscious nonlocally pervades the entire field of consciousness. We are always getting dreamed up to pick up and give embodied form and voice to the different marginalized and unconscious roles in the collective field. Becoming more conscious actually allows us, like the archetypal figure of the shaman, to give ourselves over to and submerge ourselves in the unconscious time and time again, enabling us to gain growing insight into its nature. Non-wetikoized psyches, however, do not stay stuck in and unconsciously identified with the roles they are incarnating, but at a certain point they are able to dis-identify from the role and to witness and reflect upon what is moving them. This is to say that they are able to experience the unconscious contents that they have just acted out from the inside, that is, subjectively (as they act it out), as well as from the outside, that is, objectively (as they contemplate what they have just acted out). This reciprocal going back and forth between the subjective and objective standpoints is a true shamanic journey between the worlds through which they are adding consciousness to and assimilating the unconscious in the field, as well as metabolizing the unconscious parts of themselves that have been activated. As they integrate their unconscious through this process, it nonlocally registers throughout the entire field, lightening the shadow in the collective unconscious of everyone ever so slightly. Due to their “standing” at the gateway between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the community, they are able to act as agents transforming and raising unconscious contents into conscious awareness and making these available to the community at large. Being able to step out of themselves and self-reflect upon what they have just given full-bodied shape and form to is the key that allows them to extract the hidden blessings encoded within the unconscious. Their ability to purposely dissociate, which is very different from the pathology of dissociative disorder, is a talent and skill that helps them to remember, to put together all the disparate parts of themselves, as well as to retrieve the split-off soul of the community. Their shamanic ability to dissociate and journey between the worlds is a real offering and gift of healing to the community in which they live.

In what can be considered to be “shamanic performance art,” this process oftentimes involves the participation of the entire community as reflecting mirrors, and results in the de-potentiating of wetiko’s malevolent effects upon the community. We’re all potential shamans-in-training. Wetiko is a relational disease, in that it happens between and among people. One of the implications of its being a pathology that doesn’t exist, ultimately speaking, in any one individual is that a way to get a handle on it is through a group or community of people who are turned onto wetiko’s nonlocal wiles. In a community which is unaware, for example, of the way wetiko plays itself out through its relationships with each other, wetiko has free rein to animate the unproductive and destructive activities of gossip, shadow projection, power plays, conflict, and endless unconscious acting out among its members. In contrast, in a community tuned into wetiko’s machinations, these same divisive processes become the very “stuff”—the alchemical prima materia—with which to work so as to increase their lucidity, the very doorway through which the community assimilates wetiko into its wholeness. When people come together with the intention to awaken, they are inviting a “guest” to appear, which is to say they are evoking the unconscious to act itself out through them so as to potentially be illumined and liberated. The unconscious, with all of its potential for creating conflict, misunderstanding, and separation, will play itself out through whoever is susceptible to falling asleep and becoming, through their unconscious reactions, its instrument of incarnation at any given moment. Instead of this person being labeled the “identified patient” (i.e., the one who has, and is, the problem), whatever is coming through them can be recognized as “belonging” to, and being a reflection of, all the members of the group, as everyone is dreaming up the person to manifest in this particular way. Being each other’s dream characters, we are all interconnected, expressions of the underlying unified and unifying field. Once this deeper, shared process is recognized, anchored to consciousness, and contained, however, the energy that was bound up in and literally feeding the unconscious, compulsive, and destructive acting out in the community then becomes available for creative expression and love. Related to the archetypal figure of the trickster and the divine fool, the non-wetikoized person is able to pick up, “make light of,” and “play” out this shamanic role of embodying the community’s unconscious—for the moment “catching” wetiko—thus becoming an oracle of divination for the community, de-potentiating wetiko’s hold on the community.

Interestingly, the role of the shaman in indigenous communities was not a role that existed in isolation, but a role that the community cooperatively dreamed up for the shaman to play out for the health of the community. The figure of the shaman is like a healing enzyme and awareness nutrient that is specifically crafted to address the unique needs and imbalances of the particular human community in which they live and operate. It is a wonderful thing for a community to dream up one person to play this role, but it is even better for the community to realize that the figure of the shaman is simply a role in the field that anyone can potentially pick up and play out. It is ideal when the role of the shaman is not monopolized by one member of the community, but is a role that is equally shared by all members of the community. In a family system, when one person is always cast in the same role, for example, this is an expression that the dreaming of the community has a blockage. In a genuinely healthy and functional (as compared to dysfunctional) community, the roles are very fluid and get picked up and played out at various times by each of its members. This is a form of “collective shamanism” which can serve as a model for the way we can refigure and reconstitute ourselves communally so as to channel our collective genius in the most optimal of ways that serves everyone. Instead of the intrinsic projective tendencies of our minds being used, or more accurately, using us, to create separation, this is a way of working with the projective, dreaming tendencies of our minds so as to deepen our intimate connections with each other and further increase our lucidity. It should be noted that for this process to be successfully accomplished requires both the person and the community in which they are a member to have developed a safe “container” which allows for the unfoldment of this process. This alchemical container is literally conjured up by the meta-awareness of its members.

As I wrote the Appendix, I realized I was describing the Awakening in the Dream groups that I facilitate each week in Portland. These groups are based on our life being a dream; to be more specific, they are based on how we are all dreaming up our life moment by moment. The same dreaming mind that is dreaming our dreams at night is dreaming our life. In a sense, in these groups we are doing a radical experiment, as we are imagining, taking seriously, and stepping into the premise that our life is indeed a dream, and following where this leads us. Seeing our life as a waking dream, we can realize that we are all collaboratively evoking the field in which we are contained, while concurrently, we are being evoked by it in a circular and acausal (as compared to linear and causal) process. In this shared waking dream, we are all conjuring up what is happening moment by moment, as we are getting cast to pick up roles in each other’s dreaming process, as if figures inside each other’s minds. This is what is happening all the time, 24/7; the groups are an alchemical container in which we simply add consciousness to what is usually happening unconsciously. The groups are based on and work with the projective tendencies of our mind, the way we are in essence connecting the dots on the waking inkblot so as to dream up our life in a way that’s similar to how we dream at night; just like a dream, our inner process is getting materialized as our waking life itself. When we step into the unconscious, we become like psychic flypaper, like an inkblot that immediately attracts people’s unconscious projections. We unconsciously react to and amplify in our waking dream exactly what needs to be played out so as to express in embodied form our inner process. The groups and the relationships in the group themselves become the vehicle for this realization, as over time, our psyches intermingle, pushing each other’s buttons, triggering projections, touching and affecting each other’s unconscious.

This is not some sort of elaborate visualization practice, but is simply seeing and engaging with the truth of our situation. When something in us gets triggered by someone in the group, rather than thinking that they are the problem, as if the problem exists outside of ourselves, we immediately try to self-reflect and look upon what within ourselves has been touched. When everyone is training in seeing the dreamlike nature of our situation, a field gets conjured up that is lubricated for healing. The groups function as an alchemical container that allows for this collectively shared healing to happen. When any one of us gets healed of something in the group, we all do, as being dream characters in each other’s dream, we are not separate. There is a healing energy that becomes available when we come together and get “in sync” with each other that is simply not available by our lonesome selves. There is a way of configuring ourselves such that we can activate and access our collective genius that can help all of us to heal and wake up. For more information, please go to my website, www.awakeninthedream.com .