There is a Native American concept of a seemingly malignant spirit called wetiko and it’s known by many other names in many other traditions. It’s a psychological force within the unconscious mind that predisposes us toward unwholesome impulses such as the thirst for power and control, greed, and jealousy. It can manifest itself in selfishness and a lack of empathy. And, in a materialistic culture such as the US, where there is a deep denial of the nonlocal quality of consciousness, we often get blindsided by it. It feeds off of polarization, fear, and terror of others. It cripples our evolutionary potential and has a vampire-like spirit that will take energy for its own profit without giving anything of value back. It’s like a collective nightmare whose roots are found in the human psyche. The good news is that the cure is also found within us. Levy describes wetiko in this way, “It offer us a version of ourselves as limited and wounded and then can manipulate and control us. But it can’t touch us, as long as we remember who we actually are. Wetiko can’t steal our soul but it tricks us into giving it away so that we disconnect from our creative agency. Wetiko is a collective psychosis and the origin of it is to be found within the psyche. It’s at the bottom of the madness that we’re playing out.”
