Undreaming Wetiko

Book excerpt: Transform wetiko into its own antidote • Learn how ancestral trauma is at the root of wetiko and how the wounded healer/shaman archetype can help bring both individual and collective healing • Meet the inner guide--a daemon/angel that lives within us as an ally in our encounters with the daemonic energy of wetiko • Cultivate “symbolic awareness” as a path to creating meaning and transmute the poison of wetiko into medicine for healing The profound and radical Native American idea of “wetiko,” a virus of the mind, underlies the collective insanity and evil that is destructively playing out around the world. Yet, as Paul Levy reveals in depth, encoded within wetiko itself lies the very medicine needed to combat the mindvirus and heal both ourselves and our world. Levy begins by investigating how the process of becoming triggered, wounded, or falling into suffering can help us better understand the workings of wetiko in a way that transforms our struggles into opportunities for awakening. He reveals the source of wetiko: unhealed multigenerational ancestral trauma, which is acted out and propagated through the family. He highlights one of the primary archetypes currently activated in the collective unconscious of humanity—the wounded healer/shaman—and shows how recognizing this archetype can help us as we navigate a collective descent into the underworld of the unconscious, a true bardo realm between our past and future worlds. Drawing on the work of C. G. Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Henry Corbin, Wilhelm Reich, and Nicolas Berdyaev, the author introduces the inner guide—a daemon/angel that lives within us as an ally in our encounters with the daemonic energy of wetiko. He explores how to cultivate “symbolic awareness” (interpreting events in our lives symbolically—like a dream) as a path to creating meaning, which alchemically transmutes the poison of wetiko into medicine for healing the psyche. Ultimately, the author reveals that the best protection and medicine for wetiko is to connect with the light of our true nature by becoming who we truly are.