Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil
Jan 2013 · North Atlantic Books
5.0star
4 reviewsreport
Ebook
376
Pages
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About this ebook
Why do we keep destroying what we need to survive? Indigenous wisdom has a name for the madness—and shows us the way out.
You see it everywhere. Smart people making destructive choices. Companies poisoning their own customers. Nations spending trillions on war while their people suffer. Social media that was supposed to connect us instead drives us apart. We're the only species that consciously destroys its own habitat.
Why do we keep acting against our own survival?
Native Americans have tracked this self-destructive pattern for centuries. They call it "wetiko"—which they describe as a cannibalistic spirit that drives humans to consume one another's life force. Whether understood as metaphor, psychological complex, or spiritual phenomenon, it names something we all recognize: the madness that makes us destroy what we need to survive.
In Dispelling Wetiko, Paul Levy explores this Indigenous concept through the lens of Jungian psychology, showing how it operates as a parasite of the mind that spreads through our psychological blind spots. Call it a mental virus, a collective complex, or a spiritual disease—the label matters less than recognizing the pattern and how it operates through our unconscious participation.
Drawing on Indigenous wisdom, depth psychology, and his own harrowing encounters with these dynamics, Levy reveals how wetiko manifests as "ME disease"—Malignant Egophrenia—a pathological self-centeredness that mistakes the ego for the whole self. Like a vampire that can't see its own reflection, wetiko hides in the very way we perceive reality, making us unable to recognize our own madness.
But here's the crucial insight: the moment we clearly see wetiko is the moment it begins to lose its power over us. The parasite's greatest weakness is being recognized for what it is. The cure doesn't require fighting evil or waiting for others to wake up. It starts with recognizing how we unknowingly feed the very patterns we oppose.
Dispelling Wetiko offers the framework we've been missing—one that finally explains why humans sabotage themselves and how we can stop. It provides a diagnosis of humanity's core dysfunction and a pathway to healing that begins with seeing clearly.
You see it everywhere. Smart people making destructive choices. Companies poisoning their own customers. Nations spending trillions on war while their people suffer. Social media that was supposed to connect us instead drives us apart. We're the only species that consciously destroys its own habitat.
Why do we keep acting against our own survival?
Native Americans have tracked this self-destructive pattern for centuries. They call it "wetiko"—which they describe as a cannibalistic spirit that drives humans to consume one another's life force. Whether understood as metaphor, psychological complex, or spiritual phenomenon, it names something we all recognize: the madness that makes us destroy what we need to survive.
In Dispelling Wetiko, Paul Levy explores this Indigenous concept through the lens of Jungian psychology, showing how it operates as a parasite of the mind that spreads through our psychological blind spots. Call it a mental virus, a collective complex, or a spiritual disease—the label matters less than recognizing the pattern and how it operates through our unconscious participation.
Drawing on Indigenous wisdom, depth psychology, and his own harrowing encounters with these dynamics, Levy reveals how wetiko manifests as "ME disease"—Malignant Egophrenia—a pathological self-centeredness that mistakes the ego for the whole self. Like a vampire that can't see its own reflection, wetiko hides in the very way we perceive reality, making us unable to recognize our own madness.
But here's the crucial insight: the moment we clearly see wetiko is the moment it begins to lose its power over us. The parasite's greatest weakness is being recognized for what it is. The cure doesn't require fighting evil or waiting for others to wake up. It starts with recognizing how we unknowingly feed the very patterns we oppose.
Dispelling Wetiko offers the framework we've been missing—one that finally explains why humans sabotage themselves and how we can stop. It provides a diagnosis of humanity's core dysfunction and a pathway to healing that begins with seeing clearly.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
4 reviews
About the author
In 1981, Paul Levy experienced 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.
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