Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil

Description

"A psychospiritual crisis is sweeping through our civilization like a contagion, infecting a growing number of people with insanity in the form of greed, egotism, and destructiveness." There is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus-which Native Americans have called "wetiko"-covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests. Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, author Paul Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is its own antidote, which once recognized can help us wake up and bring sanity back to our society.

In 1981, Paul Levyexperienced what his doctors considered to be a nervous breakdown. In actuality, it was a spiritual awakening, one that changed his life's path forever. Since 1993, he has been giving talks and facilitating groups to help others in the process of awakening from the collective dream. A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for more than thirty years, he has intimately studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma. The author lives in Portland, OR.

"This book brilliantly exposes how the very roots of the madness that is threatening life on earth are ultimately to be found within our own psyche. I love that Paul is taking seriously the profound implications of what it means that all of us are living in a mass, shared dream. His startlingly clear premise challenges me to reflect upon both the world and myself in radically mind-altering ways. Something important is coming through his imagination-filled musings; his visionary insight into the intrinsic genius of our species feels inspired by a truly creative, compassionate, and enlivening spirit. I always look forward to reading Paul's work; it stimulates me to greater heights of lucidity, disturbs me enough to awaken me out of my complacency, and encourages me to fly on the wings of the creative imagination. The world would be a better place if everyone read this book. His vision is a royal gift for all of us. It makes me want to sing. Bravo!" -Sting "Dispelling Wetiko is one of those rare, courageous books that leads us where we would prefer not to go: into the depths of our own shadow. Yet this is the most essential journey for our present time.... It is a must-read, without a doubt." -Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit "Paul Levy summons us by Wisdom's call to community, action, and our higher humanity. Truly initiatory, this book is inviting us to step through the looking glass and consciously participate in our own evolution. In exposing our psychic blindness, Levy is helping us to open our eyes and see." -Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight "When I read Dispelling Wetiko, I was unprepared for a work of such true brilliance and depth. Paul Levy should be congratulated on writing a seminal work." -Brad Steiger, author of Revelation: The Divine Fire "No one else writing in America today, in whatever genre, sees into the real nature of our crushing global endgame emergency more deeply, steadily, or wholly than Paul Levy." -Eric Larsen, author of A Nation Gone Blind and professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) "Paul Levy has broadened his hard-won personal insights into a trenchant diagnosis of the mass-mind psychosis afflicting our Western (and indeed now global) civilization. I honor Paul's courage and discernment in taking on this most elusive and treacherous of topics and showing the steps one can take to move toward liberation. Dispelling Wetiko deserves to be widely read and studied." -Ralph Metzner, PhD, professor emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies and author of The Unfolding Self "I very much recommend Paul Levy's writings. Synthesizing a deep understanding of Jungian psychology and spirituality, his work brilliantly illuminates the dreamlike nature of reality." -Dr. Arny Mindell, founder of process-oriented psychology and author of The Shaman's Body "The world is suffering from the globalization of selfishness, materialism, and militarism, and Paul Levy, in his magnum opus, Dispelling Wetiko, identifies their roots in a cancer of the soul.... An insightful and provocative manifesto on how to combat this global epidemic before it is too late." -Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, chair of the Interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, and author of The Left Hand of God "As a people, we seem to be seriously impaired. It is as if we have suffered a culture-wide stroke that has damaged the higher centers that control our ability to reason and act in rational ways. What will see us through? What will help us wake up from this slow suicide? Paul Levy's Dispelling Wetiko is a valuable step in the right direction. This desperately needed book not only sounds an alarm, but also points to a solution." - Larry Dossey, MD, author of The One Mind and executive editor of Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing "In these dire straits, many extraordinary people-in all walks of life, speaking in different tones and voices-envision the nondual experience of the nature of mind. Paul Levy is one of them. [He] evokes a clear and scintillating vision, resolving much of the incongruity of our existence." -Keith Dowman, author of Natural Perfection: Longchenpa's Radical Dzogchen "Paul Levy hits the archetypal nail on the head when he identifies debt pushers, consumption pushers, and GOD (gold, oil, and drug) pushers as the cannibalistic offenders in today's society.... I can't express how brilliant I find this book." -Iona Miller, coauthor of The Modern Alchemist: A Guide to Personal Transformation "This rich and fascinating book is full of original insights that challenge us to see the human predicament in a new way." -Timothy Freke, author of The Jesus Mysteries and The Mystery Experience "Paul Levy's provocative and insightful book Dispelling Wetiko shines a light on the darkness and exposes evil as an illusion-one that nonetheless impacts our reality. It is particularly important in these evolutionary times that those who see themselves as 'bringers of the light' understand the heart of darkness as well.... Kudos to Paul Levy for taking on this topic." -Steve Bhaerman, coauthor of Spontaneous Evolution "Paul Levy is a great social critic and public intellectual-his distinctive metaphysical idealism and experience-based mysticism gives his oeuvre a spiritual depth that is lacking even among our best critical theorists. Unlike many other spiritually informed political activists, Paul's spirituality is never saccharine or cliche, his politics never compromising. His profound psychological insights and treasure trove of metaphors and literary tropes enable him to advance a highly original theoretical perspective grounded in Jung's thought, quantum physics, Buddhism and his own transpersonal revelations. His message to social activists is that the alternative to neoliberal barbarism and the advent of ecological catastrophe is the willingness to cultivate the power of the communal imagination...Paul Levy represents the future." -Seth Farber, Ph.D., Assessing Editor, The Journal of Mind and Behavior and author of The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of The Mad Pride Movement "Paul Levy is one of the wisest, most spiritually-wide-awake people I've had the privilege of getting to know." -Kevin Barrett, Truth Jihad Radio "Paul Levy is one of our time's most original thinkers on the human condition." -Alan Steinfeld, NewRealities "Paul Levy's Dispelling Wetiko is among the very best books on the nature of evil that I have ever read, and because it offers a workable way out of the universal psychosis that native peoples call Wetiko, possibly the most important on the subject that I have had the pleasure of adding to my library. A real treasure." -Whitley Strieber, UnknownCountry.com, Dreamland radio show "This volume, like its predecessor, is not only fascinating, riveting, and, like all Levy's work, consistently crunchy and prickly with thought, but it is also, in two words, overwhelmingly revelatory... A guarantee: Neither while reading nor after reading Dispelling Wetiko will you again look at the world around you the same way as you might have before." -The Oliver Arts & Open Press "Paul Levy's book is the finest recent example of what Jungian or archetypal criticism has to offer in the diagnosis of contemporary culture and, specifically, the problem of evil and how to find a way out of its dominance in our world." -Walter Davis, author of Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche since 9-11, and Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Ohio State University "Every so often a book comes into one's possession that dramatically and radically decimates one's world view. For me reading 'Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil' has been one of them." -Peter Morris, LightoftheLogos.com, MysteriesofSirius.com "For millennia, humanity has struggled to understand the manifestation of evil in our world. In this regard Dispelling Wetiko is an extraordinary book, and author Paul Levy has made a great contribution to our understanding of the evil that is happening in our world today, as well as who and what we are." -Hank Wesselman PhD., anthropologist and author of The Bowl of Light, The Spiritwalker Trilogy, and the award-winning Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation with Sandra Ingerman "A true book of genius; one everybody should read." -Nailed magazine