Meeting Wetiko: Projection, Possession, and Consciousness

We explore Wetiko as a collective mind virus and how it hides in projection, separation, and the parts of us we refuse to see. We connect Jungian shadow work, addiction as spiritual hunger, and the way awareness and embodiment help us reclaim life force and choose a different path. 
• defining wetiko through Paul Levy’s lens as a collective psycho-spiritual blindness 
• noticing transmission through projection, othering, scapegoating, and moral certainty 
• linking addiction and compulsive behaviour to disconnection and spiritual hunger 
• reclaiming creative energy by bringing shadow material into awareness 
• distinguishing judgement from discernment and staying protected through being 
• naming spiritual superiority, victim-perpetrator dynamics, and groupthink traps 
• understanding awakening as descent, not bypassing, with will and somatic healing 
• using triggers as information, including envy, resentment, fear, and reactivity 
• unpacking polarization, ideological possession, and consumer culture as wetiko fuel 
• practising the antidote through humility, curiosity, community, and conscious choice 

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Work With Alyssa:

Nervous System Mastery Masterclass May 20th With Dr. Jesse Hanson

The Calling —A 9 Month Initiation Into Your Soul's Assignment

In Service— 1:1 Soul-Led Leadership Mentorship

The Awaken Experience— 7 Day Retreat In Costa Rica with Alyssa & Dr. Jesse

Free Meditation —Positive Timeline Activation

Watch Alyssa's episode on Lead With Heart

Transcript

Welcome And The Bigger Moment

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Body Wisdom Rising. I'm your host, Alyssa. We're living at a profound turning point in humanity, a collective choice point where old systems are dissolving, and many of us are being called to wake up, heal, and step into deeper alignment with who we truly are. On this podcast, we explore consciousness, healing, ancestral wisdom, and the initiations that shape our lives. We also explore how to navigate times of great change and what it means when healing begins to open the door to deeper questions. Who am I really? Why am I here? And how am I being called to serve in this moment of history? Here we talk about the collective themes unfolding in our world and how each of us can learn to meet them with greater awareness, embodiment, and courage. Because real transformation doesn't just happen in the mind, it happens through the body. If you're on a path of awakening, healing, remembering, and perhaps stepping into service, you're in the right place. This is Body Wisdom Rising.

Defining Watiko As A Mind Virus

SPEAKER_01 1:44

And wow, I've never recorded an episode before where I experienced so much interference when it came to actually recording this episode. And once I get into it, you'll probably understand why. But today what we're going to explore is the concept of wotico. So it is a term that Paul Levy uses to describe a kind of collective psychological and spiritual blindness that can operate through individuals, relationships, institutions, and entire cultures. We'll talk about how to recognize where it may be showing up within ourselves and in the collective, how it often operates through our blind spots, our wounds and our projections, and how bringing it into awareness can become part of the path of healing and awakening. And so, first of all, I'll actually read right from the book, Paul Levy's book, Watiko, the introduction here, just to kind of get a feel of uh what Watiko is in a nutshell. So Watiko is a contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via an insidious collective psychosis of Titanic proportions, Levy says. So he says this mind virus, which Native Americans have called Watiko, 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. Watiko is a psychosis in the true sense of the word, a sickness of the spirit, an inner cancer of the soul. Wotiko covertly influences our perceptions so as to act itself self out through us while simultaneously hiding itself from being seen. Wotiko bewitches our consciousness so that we become blind to the underlying assumed viewpoint through which we perceive, conjure up, and give meaning to our experience of both the world and ourselves. This psychic virus can be thought of as the bug in the system that informs and animates the madness that is playing out in our lives, both individually and collectively on the world stage. So that's right from Paul Levy's book, Watiko, which I highly recommend reading. It's actually his second book on the topic. And so what we're gonna be diving into today, the themes that we're gonna be exploring is what is Watiko. So we're gonna explore the indigenous origins of the concept, how Paul Levy uses it as a psychological and spiritual metaphor, and why he calls it a mind virus or collective psychosis. We're gonna talk about how it shows up. So through projection, othering and scapegoating, addiction and compulsive behaviors, greed and endless craving, spiritual superior, victim perpetrator dynamics, collective groupthink. We're gonna be talking about Watiko and the shadow. So from the lens of Young's work, why what we repress often gains power, how disowned desires, anger, ambition, and grief can become distorted when unconscious. We'll talk about Watiko and awakening. So why awakening isn't just love and light, and the necessity of confronting what is unconscious, the difference between seeing Watiko everywhere, out there, versus recognizing it within ourselves, the gift hidden in the wound, how our triggers can become teachers, what envy, resentment, fear, and reactivity might be trying to reveal, and the idea that awareness itself is medicine. And we'll talk about the collective dimensions, so social media, polarization, ideological possession, consumer culture, why every side believes it's the good side. And we'll talk about the antidote. So consciousness, humility, curiosity, shadow work, relationship, and community.

Programs Mentorship And Retreat Offers

SPEAKER_01 5:53

And um, yeah, before we even get into this episode, I'll share with you the offerings that I currently have going on. Because if you are interested in what I'm talking about in these episodes, especially the last three episodes, so this one and the two previous, which have become extremely popular, um, just the feedback that I've been getting about the episodes has just been unlike anything I've received in the past. So a lot of this work is really resonating with many of you. And it is important, you know, more than ever, especially, you know, in the times that we're living in, it is really important to do this work. And you'll understand why even more by the end of this episode. But if you are interested in getting into this work even deeper, I highly recommend joining the calling in September. It is my nine-month program, nine-month initiation into your souls assignment. And we go deep into this work. So a lot of depth work, working on we'll dive into evolutionary astrology. We'll get into the psycho-spiritual dimensions. We go really, really deep. Um, a lot of what I'll be sharing in this episode is topics that we'll be touching on. And it is super powerful to actually do this work with a group of people who are also invested in doing the deeper psycho-spiritual work that is so needed in these times. So you can find that information in the show notes. We already have 15 people in the group already. I'm gonna max it at 40. Right now, I do have early bird pricing available. So that is available until August 1st. So definitely check out more information in the show notes. And then I also do have my one-on-one mentorship for any soul-led healers, practitioners, coaches, therapists, clinicians wanting to step into the virtual space and start to build out virtual offerings, very much like the work that I'm doing. So I help you uh create content. So social media, podcasts, that's something that you're feeling called to, um, and build out your offerings so that you can make a global impact and reach people from all over the world that you're meant to be working with. When I stepped into this space, um, I guess it was several years ago that I actually started. Um it wasn't until five years ago that I actually started to work with a business coach. It was really supportive because I didn't really know what I was doing when I initially stepped into the space. You may have been running your own practice locally for a very long time, but stepping into the virtual space, there's definitely a lot to learn and a lot to navigate. So I walk you through all of that. So if that's something that you're interested in, it's called in service. You can find that in the show notes as well. I'm taking a small group. They also get access to the calling for free as part of joining the program. And I did actually open up a few more uh spots for that one because it almost uh filled already. So if that's something you're interested in, definitely check that out. And then I do also have my Costa Rica retreat in January, January 17th to the 23rd with Dr. Jesse Hansen. It is a very intimate, deeply immersive experience, weaving in somatics, plant sacraments ceremony. We'll be having a traditional sweat lodge temascal ceremony there as well. It's an absolute luxury right in the heart of the jungle at Metamorphinca, is the retreat center. If you're wanting to find more information regarding that retreat, you can find that in the show notes. I believe we're about half full right now. So there are still some spots available. And um that is it. Let's get back into this episode. So a

How Watiko Spreads Through Separation

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Tiko is an indigenous teaching about a spiritual sickness rooted in greed and endless craving. But Paul Levy expanded the idea into a modern psychological and spiritual concept in two of his books, describing it as a collective unconscious force that feeds on fear, separation, and projection. So Paul Levy is a contemporary author, Jungian-oriented thinker and teacher in the spiritual emergence field. And he took the traditional indigenous concept of Wotiko and expanded it into a psychological and spiritual metaphor for what he sees as a collective human blindness. And I believe it's one of the most important books you can read, especially for the times that we are in and the times ahead. So according to Levy, Wotico is a mind virus. It is a collective psychosis, it is a force that operates through unconsciousness. It's something that feeds on separation, greed, domination, fear, and ego inflation. It is a tendency for people to unknowingly act against their own humanity and the well-being of others. And in his view, Watiko isn't a literal demon. It's a way of describing how destructive patterns can move through individuals, families, institutions, and even entire cultures. And he calls it a mind virus because it spreads through unconscious beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors. So just like a virus, it reproduces itself through people while remaining largely unseen. It influences how we perceive reality, it convinces us that separation is real, and it causes us to act in ways that ultimately harm ourselves and others. He calls it a collective psychosis because he believes entire societies can become organized around Watiko dynamics. So greed, exploitation, domination, endless consumption, scapegoating, and the dehumanization of others while considering those behaviors normal. And in his view, what appears to be individual pathology is often a reflection of a deeper collective sickness. I'm gonna read a part from his book here. So he says Watiko is a cannibalizing force driven by insatiable greed, appetite without satisfaction, consumption as an end in itself, and war for its own sake, against other tribes, species, and nature, and even against the individual's own humanity. It is a disease of the soul, and being a disease of the soul, we all potentially have Watiko as it pervades and informs the underlying field of consciousness. Any one of us at any moment can fall into our unconscious and unwittingly become an instrument for the evil of Watiko to act itself through us and incarnate in our world. If we see someone who seems to be taken over by Watiko and we think they have the disease and we don't, in seeing them as separate, we have fallen under the spell of the virus ourselves. Watiko induces in us a proclivity to see the source of our own pathology outside of ourselves existing in the other. Watiko feeds off polarization and fear and terror of the other. Seeing the world through a Watiko-inspired lens of separation, otherness enlivens what Young called the god of terror who dwells in the human soul and simultaneously plays itself out both within our soul and in the world at large. Witiko can be conceived of as being an evil, cannibalistic, vampiric spirit that inspires people under its sway to take and consume another's resources and life force energy solely for their own profit without giving anything of value back from their own lives. Watiko thus violates the sec the sacred law of reciprocity in both human affairs and the natural world as a whole. The Watiko virus isn't able to replicate itself through its own energy, however, so it's compelled to use us to propagate itself so that we can pass on and transmit the bug to others. The main channel of Watiko's transmission is relational. It exists through our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. Like a vampire that can't stand the light of day, the Watiko virus can't stand to be illumined. However, in seeing how it covertly operates through our own consciousness, we take away its seeming independence, autonomy, and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. The way the vampiric Watiko covertly operates within the human psyche is mirrored by the way it works in the outside world. Young never tired of warning us that the greatest danger threatening humanity today is the possibility that millions, even billions of us can fall into our unconscious together in a collective psychosis, reinforcing each other's madness in a way that we become unwittingly complicit in creating our own destruction. And so I'll end there. So Levi repeatedly argues that Watiko remains invisible because it causes us to see in others what we cannot see in ourselves. So if I carry unconscious greed, rage, envy, superiority, or powerlessness, I will tend to encounter those qualities out there, everywhere. And the more convinced I am that the problem exists entirely outside of me, the less likely I am to examine my own participation in it. So this is why Levi often returns to Young's shadow work. So the virus survives through our unconsciousness. And one of Watiko's primary strategies is division. So it convinces us that we are fundamentally separate. We are the good ones. They are the problem. And this can happen politically, spiritually, religiously, culturally, or even within healing communities. And the moment that we stop seeing another person's humanity and reduce them to an enemy, Watiko gains ground. So Levi would say that collective evil often begins with the refusal to recognize ourselves in the other.

Addiction As Spiritual Hunger And Energy

SPEAKER_01 15:34

And when it comes to addiction and compulsion, so Levy often described addiction as a symptom of a deeper spiritual hunger. And this is Jung's work too. This is actually where I initially came across Carl Jung's work when I started really diving deep into it was in recovery at a 12-step meeting. Carl Jung greatly influenced the 12-step program. A lot of people don't realize that. So the addictive impulse isn't simply wanting a substance. It's a deeper spiritual hunger. It's an attempt to fill a perceived emptiness. And the substance, behavior, relationship, gambling, work, social media, approval or achievement becomes a substitute for connection. So in Levy's framework, Watiko feeds on unconscious repetition. So the more unconscious the behavior becomes, the more life force gets consumed. So we can also see addiction as, you know, not just this craving for a substance, but a craving to escape ourselves. So the substance becomes the vehicle for that and it drains our creative life force. So Watiko doesn't just destroy, it consumes. It feeds on energy that could otherwise become creativity, purpose, intimacy, service, art, love, spiritual development. So when someone is trapped in compulsive loops, enormous amounts of psychic energy become tied up in maintaining those patterns. So when recovery begins, people often discover that they suddenly have access to energy they didn't know that they possessed. It's like the deeper we go on our healing journey, and this is one of the my favorite parts of the healing journey, it's like we start to uncover so much creative potential within ourselves that used to be tied up in survival or in addictive behaviors, right? For me, even like during my healing journey, even when I stepped away from substances, a lot of my life was still spent stuck in survival, like healing a lot of wounds around scarcity, a lot of past trauma. And so so much energy was tied up into that. So as I started to heal, I began to uncover more of my own creative potential. That's why many people describe feeling more creative, intuitive, and alive the more that they're on uh this healing journey. And in symbolic language, it's as though the energy that was feeding the addiction is reclaimed and becomes available for life. One thing that's also pointed out in his book is that the darker the impulse, the greater the potential. So the psychic energy is actually neutral. So what matters is whether it remains unconscious or becomes conscious. So the same energy that can become addiction, obsession, rage, domination, destruction can also become creativity, devotion, transformation, leadership, healing when it is brought into awareness. So the energy trapped inside the shadow often contains the very life force needed for awakening. You know, this is why if you hit rock bottom, it often leads to a spiritual awakening. That was my case. That was my experience when I struggled with addiction for many years, many, many years. I've shared that story, but it just goes to show all that energy that I had been putting into addiction, which very much felt like I had an entity attachment. Like it really felt like something had completely taken over my body. And anyone else that I know that I've spoken to who has experienced addiction has said the exact same thing. It's like this parasitic energy that takes over us. But when I started to actually heal, I was able to free up all that life force energy and direct it into my purpose. That is like honestly, why I believe that I've been able to be so successful with the work that I'm doing today, is I was able to use that impulse into creativity, devotion, service. So the energy-driving addiction often contains a gift. And what Tiko has no creativity on its own. Instead, it feeds on our unconscious creativity. So if we don't consciously direct our creative force, our psychic energy gets recruited into compulsions, projections, addictions, and repetitive suffering. The energy doesn't disappear, it just simply gets used unconsciously. The magnitude of the darkness often reveals the magnitude of the light trying to emerge. The deeper the wound, the greater the potential gift. The stronger the possession, the greater the potential awakening. The greater the unconscious energy, the greater the creative force available when it becomes conscious. When we connect to our true nature, we discover that it is inherently creative. And that if we don't express that creativity consciously, Watiko will effectively use our unexpressed creative energy for its own purposes. Wherever awareness diminishes, unconscious patterns gain influence. So in this sense, anything that repeatedly pulls us away from ourselves can become a vehicle for Watiko. So just even examples, you know, just even from like an energy leak perspective is the way that I look at it, ways that we leak our energy, and a major one for many of us is social media, doom scrolling, or other ways too, is like tying up our energy in fantasy, obsession, um, compulsive consumption, people pleasing, resentment, fear consumes our energy too. Think of it as anything that's really tying up our life force energy, where we're directing our focus, our awareness. We got to reclaim back our life force where our attention goes, our energy follows. We have to use our will to direct our attention. So it's really just about cultivating enough awareness that you can recognize when your energy is being unconsciously recruited into a pattern that is no longer serving life. You know, it's this ongoing practice of returning our attention, our agency, and our life force to what we consciously want to create in this world. What do we

Entities Protection And Discernment

SPEAKER_01 21:20

want to serve? And just speaking to this idea of like entity attachments through the lens of like indigenous and shamanic perspective, because I've had this conversation with many of my spiritual mentors as well, because they do differ, you know, somewhat from modern psychology. Many traditional healers would not necessarily say that it's only a projection. They may describe spirits, energies, ancestors, or entities as having a degree of objective reality. But at the same time, many traditions also recognize that these forces gain influence through our wounds, through imbalance, through trauma, through addiction, through fear or loss of connection. So the dist. Distinction between internal and external is often less rigid than in Western thinking. So whether you view an entity as psychological, archetypal, energetic, or spiritual, the doorway through which it operates is usually within the person still. So I was speaking with a friend of mine that is a shaman. And he was talking about entities and how people get entity attachments. And he did share that we often get these attachments through addictions is a big one. Sex addiction, porn, drug addiction, many other addictions. And also I learned as well from my lodgekeeper, he was sharing with me how we have this auric field of protection around us. And one of the ways that this auric field around us can actually start to become like porous. So as if we're getting holes poked on them, which allows space for things to enter, which we can consider, you know, these entities or Watiko mind viruses to come in, uh definitely through negative thinking. And it doesn't mean think positive all the time, love and light and spiritual bypassing, but being stuck in, you know, chronic negativity. Um victim consciousness is a big one, right? Like when we're stuck in um scarcity or lack or blame or resentment, uh, other ways he said is through gossip, is through judgment, and is through even the our body um behavior, um, even like giving off this feeling of like get away from me. And uh it's one thing to be aware of when we're talking about how Watiko isn't just out there, and when we're pointing and seeing the evil out there, like that person has Watiko or that person has this entity attachment, we're actually making ourselves more porous by doing that. So when we other others, when we point the finger, when we judge others and give off this feeling of like, get away from me, like you have this evil entity or um the evil is within you and not me. Ironically, that's actually opening ourselves up to these interferences, right? So our being is the best form of protection, was how it was described to me for my lodge keeper. So the best way that we can protect ourselves against any negative interferences is through our being, right? How we actually show up. And we don't want to feed fear into it. So I've been in ceremonies where someone there had an attachment, an entity attachment, if that's what you want to call it. But if we give fear to it, we feed it and we open ourselves up to the same forces, right? So it's not about judging. It is discernment, though. And there's a difference between judgment and discernment. So the way that I describe the difference between judgment and discernment. So judgment is this feeling of like exactly what I said, that feeling of like, ugh, get away from me, and like pushing something away and thinking something is evil and something is separate from ourselves. And discernment is like maybe noticing something that we don't want a part of, that we don't want to have any influence over us, but not sending any negative energy, sending love and compassion and just affirm no. Like I see that, but I don't want that in my energy field, right? So that is uh discerning. It's just like a no thank you. And Lev even talks about in the book how we actually strengthen evil by believing that it doesn't exist at all. But what we want to do is we want to acknowledge it, but not give it our energy, right? It's really important to direct our life force energy into creating things that we're wanting to in this world, not focusing on all the negativity and the evil that's happening in the world.

Spiritual Superiority And Groupthink

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah, and like reading with Tiko, I've actually been drawn to uh watch, re-watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm not sure if you guys have ever watched that, but I loved it when I was younger. And I totally understand why. And it reminds me so much of this. I just see it as from like a mythological perspective, such a powerful mirror for our own inner lives. Like Buffy is the conscious self-awakening to the responsibility and power. And being the slayer is her unique calling and gift, the destiny that she can't avoid. And then Helmut is the unconscious psyche where all the hidden material lives. The vampires and demons are the shadow material, trauma, fears, compulsions, destructive patterns. And the battle is this lifelong work of becoming conscious. And the town of Sunnydale like represents, you know, all these people who are asleep to what's happening. They prefer the comfort of normality over confronting reality. So symbolically, it really represents this collective unconsciousness and group think and refusing to see the shadow. And the vampires, I see, symbolically like represent our unconscious drives, our addiction, our compulsive behaviors, parasitic patterns, life force-draining relationships, aspects of ourselves that consume without creating, feeding on life, but don't generate life. Super helpful to like watch shows like that or read books, watch movies, you know, on stories that speak the language of the unconscious. It can actually help us see these patterns directly when we can actually see them reflected in a story. And so then another way that Watiko shows up for us is through spiritual superiority. And I talked about this in the previous episode too. It's like we're believing that we're more awake than everyone else, that we've transcended the ego, that we are one of the few chosen ones, and that we are the ones who actually can really see what's happening in the world. And that ego can become attached to awakening itself. And ironically, it's the it often manifests as this belief that we have become immune to wit ego. And that's actually one of the ways that it can operate most effectively through a person. Another way, too, is the victim and perpetrator dynamics. And one of the things that I actually learned in a 12-step meeting when we were studying uh Young's work was actually that the ego, it goes both ways. So many people, when they hear of like the ego, they think of like inflation, right? So grandios think that they're better than, but it also shows up as I am less than. It's either deflated or inflated. It's still the ego. It's very much operating from not enough, from scarcity. So it can show up as like the perpetrator, it could show up as the victim, stuck in victim conscious in scarcity. And I was there for a really long time. And hearing that actually really, really helped me um pull myself out of that. And I'm looking outside my window right now as I record this. There's this beautiful, perfect rainbow right outside my window. And then so another way that Witiko shows up is through this collective hive mind, like the group think. Entire groups can become possessed by a worldview. And when enough people share the same unconscious assumptions, the worldview begins to look normal. So people stop questioning it. And history is full of examples where large groups participated in harmful systems while sincerely believing that they were doing the right thing. So working

Jungian Shadow Work And Repression

SPEAKER_01 28:54

with our shadow is one of the most effective ways that we can work with fatiko. So from a Jungian perspective, the shadow is everything about ourselves that we cannot or will not consciously acknowledge. It's not just the bad parts of ourselves or the parts that we would consider bad. It can include anger, it can include ambition, sexuality, power, grief, creativity, assertiveness, desire, confidence, sensitivity. Anything that wasn't welcomed by our family, culture, religion, or identity can get pushed into the shadow. But what we repress actually just gains power. What we resist persists. So when we repress something, we don't actually eliminate it. We just simply make it unconscious. The energy remains alive beneath the surface. And because we're no longer consciously relating to it, it begins to influence us indirectly. And Watiko loves unconsciousness. It loves blind spots, it loves what we refuse to look at. So a person who believes that good people don't get angry may suppress their anger for many years, but the anger doesn't vanish. Instead, it may emerge as resentment, passive aggressiveness, bitterness, judgment, chronic frustration, or physical symptoms as well. And eventually the person may find themselves exploding over something seemingly small because the anger has been building unconsciously for many years. But the issue is never the anger itself. The issue was the relationship to the anger. Disowned ambition is a really big one, especially in spiritual communities. So someone may secretly desire success, money, influence, recognition, but they believe might believe that those desires are not spiritual, so that they suppress them. Then they begin judging others who have those things, or they sabotage their own success, or they unconsciously compete while pretending they aren't. And one of Young's greatest insights was that what we judge most intensely in others often points towards something disowned within ourselves. So grief is another thing that many people disown as well. It's another powerful example. When our grief isn't felt, it often transforms into numbness, depression, cynicism, anxiety, addiction, emotional shutdown. Many addictions are an attempt to avoid grief because grief can be very overwhelming when we don't know how to feel it. Another one is disown desire. Desire is life force, but many people learn early that desire is dangerous. So they disconnect from it. So the result can be lack of purpose, chronic confusion, low vitality, feeling disconnected from life, or the desire may emerge indirectly through compulsions and addictions. Again, the problem isn't the desire. So the problem is when these energies become split off from awareness, when they become distorted. The energy starts running us instead of us consciously relating to it. And our shadow also contains gold. Many people spend years trying to heal their wounds only to discover that hidden underneath those wounds are our creativity, our intuition, our leadership, our courage, our passion, our purpose. So Watiko survives by keeping us unconscious of what we are carrying. And the more unconscious a wound is, the more influence it has. Conscious it becomes, the more choice we have. So awareness is the first step. Awareness transforms a blind fate into something that we can actually consciously engage with and start to actually work with. And then we have to direct our will, our life force into actually changing, making the changes, right? Breaking these patterns. It's important to mention that doing the inner work, like actually breaking a pattern that we've had our whole lives, does actually require a lot of will, a lot of life force, a lot of effort. And many people don't want to do that, right? Or they they try for a little bit and then they go back into old patterns just shortly after. So it does require effort. And Watiko actually does have a purpose. Like

Awakening Without Bypassing The Dark

SPEAKER_01 32:43

it actually can lead us to a deeper awakening if we become conscious of it. An awakening isn't, you know, just peace and transcendence and enlightenment. A true, genuine awakening eventually forces us to encounter what has been hidden. So the fear, the shame, the grief, the envy, the rage, the powerlessness, the narcissism, our unmet needs, our unresolved trauma. Our ego often wants this awakening without confrontation. It wants the light without having to descend into the underworld. But most transformational traditions involve some version of death, descent, dismemberment, chaos, void, rebirth. You know, Watiko cannot be healed through avoidance. Whatever remains unconscious continues to operate. This is why spiritual practices alone aren't enough. Like someone can meditate for years while still being driven by unconscious fear, unprocessed trauma, unresolved shame, superiority. The unconscious doesn't disappear because we become spiritual. In fact, many times spirituality actually becomes another way to avoid it. This is what is known as spiritual bypassing, where just everything happens for a reason and just stay positive and love and light, and I'm beyond anger, I've transcended my ego, those sort of things. And sometimes these statements are true, but sometimes they could become defenses against feeling what is actually present. You know, many awakening journeys include a period where the structures of identity begin to dissolve, where we lose certainty about who we are, what we believe, where we're going, what what gives life meaning. It can feel terrifying. But what is actually collapsing and dissolving is our false self, the identities, the defenses and unconscious patterns that once organized our reality. And this is why awakening frequently feels more like more disorienting than like bliss and enlightenment, right? And there's periods of that, of course. But um, yeah, it's it's a spiral, right? It's not a straight line, that's for sure. It's not a straight ascent into enlightenment, it's more like a descent into the parts of yourself that you've kept hidden your whole life. And um another trap that we can fall into is seeing Watiko everywhere except within ourselves. This is um another thing that um, you know, Levy warns about. Because this can become its own trap, right? A person starting to see Watiko in politics and in stu institutions, in corporations, in family members and society, where of course it does exist. But um if all of our attention goes outward, something important is really missing. We have to bring that focus back inward, focusing on ourselves, not going into analysis paralysis either, right? Like, and there often is a phase of that. I think we've all gone through that. Anyone can relate to like overanalyzing everything and maybe becoming too aware of our shadows and our wounds. That can definitely be a phase as well. And how we work through that is starting to take action and starting to create things, right? Like we we got to pull ourselves out of that. There's times to go into the shadow, and then there's times to come out and actually start to create. And we can do both at the same time. You know, a trap that many people fall into is thinking that they have to be completely healed before they actually start creating something or stepping into their purpose or getting into a relationship. And um, that is where the work is done, right? Like inevitably, when we actually start to step towards the things that we desire, all of our stuff starts to resurface. Even all the work that we do privately on our own is going to resurface when we enter into relationships or step into our purpose or our calling. And so the paradox here really is that the more clearly we see our own capacity for unconsciousness, the less likely we are to become possessed by it. And that's so important to mention, you know. Um, I think of even an example of like, so addiction, which is was one that I really struggled with, right? So, like addiction and really, really unhealthy relationship patterns for most of my life. And um, for me, even though I've been out of that for so long, like that's been um, you know, coming up on nine years that I've stepped away from all of that and I've done a lot of work, but I know my potential for destruction, right? I know my potential for self-destruction. I know that that could still exist within me if I feed that part of myself. So I I always have to be consciously, you know, focusing my attention and my energy elsewhere into creating good in the world. I know my potential for darkness. I know that it still exists within me. I'm never gonna fully transcend that. I don't feed that part, so I don't experience it right like I used to. I'm not um overwhelmed or overcome by addictive impulses, compulsive behaviors anymore, like I used to. But do I still have the potential for that? Absolutely, I have the potential for that. That's why I have to consciously every single day choose to uh use my will and direct my will and my life force energy, my creativity elsewhere into service, into what I want to put out in this world. So that is what it means by being aware that we do have the capacity for destruction. We all do, right? Every single one of us. It's like if you're in an environment with many people who struggle with addictive behaviors, whatever it is, or if they're um negative thought patterns, eventually that's going to transfer to you, right? With Tico, we can transfer it to other people. So, you know, being conscious of our environment is really important as well, because it can take over entire groups of people.

Triggers Envy Fear As Teachers

SPEAKER_01 38:13

And our wounds are often carrying information. So, you know, not all suffering is meaningful. Not all trauma contains a gift in itself, but our relationship to the wound can reveal something important. You know, most people experience our trigger as like evidence that something is wrong. But if we approach it with curiosity, it often reveals to us an unresolved wound, a disowned part of ourselves, a belief we carry unconsciously, a place, you know, where our freedom has been limited. And the trigger isn't the wound, the trigger points toward the wound. So it's like a flashlight illuminating something that was already there. And without awareness, we can react, but with awareness, we can approach with curiosity. And envy is often actually one of the most misunderstood emotions. So most people immediately judge it. Like we don't want to feel it, we ignore it, we push it away. But envy often points towards something that we secretly desire. So if we resent someone's success, we criticize their visibility, we dismiss their competence. Yet underneath the envy may be a part of us longing for expression, creativity, recognition, freedom, impact. So the envy itself actually isn't the gift, but the gift is discovering what part of ourselves that we've abandoned. You know, resentment often signals a boundary that wasn't honored, sometimes by other people and sometimes by ourselves. Many people who struggle with resentment are overgiving, people pleasing, self-abandoning. The resentment becomes a messenger. Something here needs attention. And the medicine isn't, you know, getting rid of the resentment. It's listening to what it's trying to communicate. You know, sometimes fear can appear precisely when growth is about to occur. You know, many people feel fear before speaking their truth, setting boundaries, launching a business, creating art, leaving unhealthy relationships, stepping into leadership. You know, fear isn't always something bad is going to happen and I shouldn't do this. Sometimes it's just it's because it matters so much to us. And we often fear the things that we desire the most, more often than not, because they were either, you know, they could have been dangerous or unavailable to us in the past, right? Like we might have a wound around um speaking up and speaking our truth because maybe that wasn't safe. Or maybe we um have a fear of intimacy because maybe we really never actually experienced intimacy, deep intimacy in our lives before. You know, and our reactivity often reveals a lot to us as well, right? So, like if we're highly reactive, our reactions may be carrying, you know, old wounds, childhood experiences, ancestral patterns, unmet needs, unprocessed grief. This is why often, you know, the intensity of our reactions don't actually match the current situation. Our nervous system is responding to more than what's happening right now. And without gains power when we react unconsciously. So when we become aware of the reaction, the reaction itself becomes a doorway. So awareness is medicine. And it's not about fearing Watiko, because fear feeds it, right? It's just becoming aware. It loses its power. It starts to weaken the moment that we're able to shine a light on it. You know, the more conscious we become, the more choice becomes available. We still have to do the work with it. And working through the body, the somatics piece is super important. Like actually doing the deep trauma recovery work is really, really important. Um, you know, finding a practitioner to do, to do that work with. Come to our retreat, because we're gonna be deep diving into all that work in Costa Rica with Dr. Jesse Hansen. So, yeah, we're not awareness is the first step, right? Um, but we still actually have to do the deeper trauma processing work to actually uh heal these wounds and integrate them and different choices going forward, right? Like um actually using our will to create change and disrupt these patterns, pattern um interruption.

Social Media Polarization And Ideology

SPEAKER_01 42:12

And of course, what is not merely an individual phenomenon, it is collective. But one of the core questions um Levi asks is what if the dysfunction we see in the world is not simply political, economic, or social? What if it reflects something happening in the collective psyche? So Watiko operates through groups, institutions, movements, and cultures. Actually, social media could become a powerful vehicle for unconsciousness because many of these platforms they reward um outrage, like rage bait content, right? Reactivity, also certainty, certainty addiction, wanting more information constantly, consuming, constant, constantly consuming more content and not actually doing anything with it. So the more emotionally charged something is, the more likely it's actually going to spread, right? That's why people post so much polarizing content on social media. It creates an environment where people react before they reflect. And Wotico thrives in reactivity. One of Wotico's favorite strategies is division. Says, we are right, they are wrong. We are the good ones, they are bad, they are dangerous. And once people are identified with a side, they often stop seeing nuance. The world becomes us versus them, good versus evil, enlightened versus ignorant, awake versus asleep. So the more polarized a group becomes, the harder it becomes to see its own shadow, and then it becomes a breeding ground for a witiko. And then there's ideological possession. And this is what happens when people become possessed by an idea. So the person no longer has the belief, the belief has the person. This is when curiosity disappears, complexity disappears, uncertainty disappears, everything becomes filtered through a single worldview. The individual stops thinking for themselves. And the ideology thinks for them. This is one of Utiko's most powerful expressions. Unconscious identification with any ideology can become a form of possession. And then there's consumer culture, the never-ending cycle of buy this, achieve this, become this. Um, even constantly consuming content, right? Like scrolling through social media or constantly consuming things and not actually creating yourself. The cycle never ends. You know, taking without reciprocity. The craving remains alive because the system depends on it remaining alive. This appetite can never be satisfied, no matter how much is consumed. We always need more, more, more, more, more is needed, more is desired, more is pursued. This hunger becomes endless. And very few people wake up in the morning intending to be the villain. Most people sincerely believe they are acting for justice, truth, safety, freedom, morality, the greater good. Many people don't, like even the whole disclosure movement, which is a whole other episode, a whole other topic that I'll get to at some point, the whole um alien phenomenon that's going on right now. We see this with remote viewers right now, um, which is becoming a very popular topic uh channeling aliens and remote mute viewers on um social media. I'm not even gonna get into that today, but um, you know, it many, and I'm not pointing to any specific people, um, not anyone specifically, but there are going to, and we're gonna see this, there's going to be people in that space that we're gonna look at, that, you know, many people are gonna start to look at as like gurus and actually really believe what they're what they're saying and what they're channeling, and because they believe it, right? Like they actually truly believe the information that they're receiving. But keep in mind we only need to feed someone um like a small percentage of poison, right? Like 95% truth, 5% poison. So a lot of the stuff that they might be receiving might be true and there might be a little bit of false in there, and a little bit of falsehood is what really leads people astray. So just be really conscious of like who you are listening to. They should always lead you back to yourself. Like you are a channel of God, of source, of divine. Like you don't need any intermediaries, right? Like you have that power within yourself. Always trust your own intuition. Of course, we're gonna have to, you know, navigate life and learn through our own experiences, but don't ever give your power away and um, you know, look for an external savior outside of yourself and put all of your faith and your trust into someone else that we believe that has all the answers. Because there are gonna be a lot of people that um, yeah, they themselves, a lot of these gurus and these teachers and these channelers, truly believe that they are um they are, you know, channeling for the good of humanity. They really truly do believe that. And um, yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about here is um if we aren't aware that we also have the potential for these, you know, influences, these more negative forces to be acting through us, we all have that potential. We all have to learn discernment, right? When it comes to um, you know, working within the spiritual realms, um, discernment is really, really important. So, yeah, and and really the danger arises when people are so convinced that, you know, their side is the virtuous one. The more a group identifies itself as purely good, the more likely its shadow will emerge unconsciously. The moment we become incapable of examining our own assumptions, we are vulnerable to the very thing we believe we're fighting.

The Antidote And Closing Requests

SPEAKER_01 47:49

And so the antidote is not neutrality, it's not passivity, it's not pretending harmful things don't exist. The antidote is consciousness. It's the willingness to ask, what am I not seeing? Where might I be projecting? What assumptions am I carrying? How is fear influencing my perception? What part of the shadow belongs to me? It is discernment. It is humility. It is knowing that you are always going to be a student on this path of life and learning. We all are, right? And we're all gonna get pulled off center, every single one of us. I'm myself included, right? In all of this. I'm always speaking to myself. One of the things that um many people don't realize is even the content that I post on social media, it's very interesting, triggering a lot of people right now for whatever reason. I've never experienced so much negativity in my life on social media as I have over the past um few weeks, actually. And um as my social media is growing, right? It triggers people, right? When you start to actually um, when you're when your message is getting out there and it's being received by people, you inevitably will receive a lot of negative interference. And um, what I receive a lot is I guess people get triggered by my content, right? Because it can feel confronting. The content I create, I'm actually speaking to my younger self. So every piece of content that I ever write or create, I'm speaking to younger Alyssa. Um, you know, whether it was years ago or even a few months ago, younger Alyssa. So that is who I'm writing it for. And of course, just people resonate with it because um they see themselves in it. So any of you who are here listening to my podcast, you can relate because you're conscious and you're on this path and um you're working, you know, with that type of material. It resonates with you. You see yourselves in it too, like we're on a similar journey. But other people, they read that and they feel like I'm speaking to them or calling them out and they get defensive and they'll actually like I've had people send me messages saying, like, um, you know, you're the one that actually needs these messages. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. Like, I'm writing it for me. That is who I'm writing it for. Um, and it's kind of funny because it's yeah, they just don't realize that. And I've had good conversations. I've actually had um conversations with people where because I know how to navigate when people come at me like that, because I know it's a projection, so I never take it personal. And I've had really beautiful conversations with people, like explaining where I'm coming from, and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I totally came at you and projected that onto you. So a lot of times these conversations can end up really beautiful. But yeah, it's very interesting. Social media is very interesting. Um, when you start to share content and information like this, either people are going to really resonate with it and see themselves in it, the ones who are consciously doing this work and engaging in this work, or they won't see it at all because they're just not there. Um, they haven't really stepped into this realm of doing this work, or they'll be super triggered because they're coming up against, you know, some truth within themselves that they're not ready to see. So fascinating stuff. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Uh and yeah, reach out to me. If these episodes are uh resonating with you, reach out to me on Instagram. Let me know what you want to hear more of. I know some of you reached out mentioning that you want to hear more of um young and individuation work. So I'll definitely share more on that. And yeah, anything else that you're finding supportive that you want me to go deeper on, we just want to provide content that you guys are are resonating with. So thank you so much for your support. Thank you so much for being here. And if you haven't already, please take a quick moment to leave a review as really helps this podcast grow and reach more people. And again, if this work is interesting, um, if you're finding this work interesting and you want to go deeper, then definitely start to explore some of my offerings I have available. All right. Until next time, love you guys.