Respect for vs Rape of The Earth

History in the Making at Standing Rock


The following was originally published on Awaken the Dream.

Every now and then an event happens in our world that captures my imagination, touching something really deep within me. The Native American protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) at Standing Rock, North Dakota is just such an event. This has the feeling of a truly seminal, historic event in which we are all invited to participate. The peaceful protests by what are known as the “water protectors” against a multi-billion dollar corporation putting an oil pipeline through what the Native Americans consider sacred land, endangering the source of their water—i.e., of life itself—is a deeply symbolic event with real life consequences. In a very real sense, the protest is itself a sacred ceremony being performed on the world stage, being done on behalf of all of humanity – which is to say, all of us.

As if a formless archetypal process is taking on form and materializing in front of our eyes, a deeper universal conflict that exists within the unconscious psyche of humanity is becoming visible at Standing Rock. At these protests there is a meeting—a confrontation—of two opposite edges of the universe, an encounter of two completely polarized world-views and ways of life. On the one hand, there is the indigenous perspective that honors all life, living in conscious relationship with the earth. On the other hand is industrial civilization, which sees the earth as some “thing”—an inanimate object—to be used for profit, a perspective which is actually destroying the biosphere, the very life support system of the planet. Two more opposed world-views are hard to imagine.

At Standing Rock, a dissociation and fragmentation that exists deep within the soul of humanity is, both literally and symbolically, playing out on the world stage. Seen symbolically, the image of this primordial conflict is quite striking: The “weapons” of the indigenous perspective are love, compassion, prayer, ceremony and truth. The weapons of industrial civilization are guns, clubs, pepper spray, mace, tear gas, tasers, attack dogs and the like. By viewing what is taking place in this conflict symbolically, something profoundly important is being revealed to us that has to do with all of us. Symbols are the language of dreams, which is to say that symbols reflect something within the dreamer, which in this case is us. Once we recognize—as if looking in a mirror—the reflective nature of what is symbolically playing out, a potential doorway opens in our minds. What is playing out at Standing Rock is all of our business.

The conflict at Standing Rock is an iteration of a seemingly endless fractal that is happening in different guises not only all over the world, but all throughout history as well. It is the current re-creation of the countless scenarios where those in power abuse their power over the less powerful (often taking their land and resources).The pipeline was originally going to be close to the city of Bismarck, until there was pushback from the city’s (mostly white) population, who were understandably scared of the inevitable leakage from the pipeline contaminating their water; it was then re-routed to its present location.For the Native American people, it is a modern-day repetition of the original trauma of when the Europeans came over and not only forcibly took over their land, but committed racial and cultural genocide.

In bulldozing the Native American’s sacred burial grounds, it is as if the indigenous blood that was spilled across this continent by the US Cavalry—cloaked under the charade of “discovery”—is awakening the spirits of the native ancestors, who were slaughtered mercilessly in the name of  “Manifest Destiny.” Animated by this sacred spirit, at Standing Rock the Native Americans are courageously fighting the same demonic force that has for centuries ravaged their people, lands, and sacred heritage.

How we look at things determines what we see. How we view the conflict at Standing Rock depends upon how far back we go in time, i.e., where we start in the story. The argument of Big Oil is that the protesters are trespassing on private property, i.e., breaking the law. But way back when, this land was the Native Americans’ land (it didn’t “belong” to them, any more than the sun and the sky belonged to them – they simply lived there). Their land was then forcibly—violently—taken from them by our European ancestors. At a certain point the US Government gave back to the Native Americans the very land that’s in question in a treaty. Later, whenever many of these treaties became “inconvenient” (i.e., stood in the way of private profiteering), the government broke their promises (illegally, I might add) by simply ignoring them, pretending as if they never existed. And now Big Oil, backed by a militarized response from both our government and private contractors, is fabricating a false collective narrative that the Native Americans—who, let us not forget, are living on land stolen from them—are the ones who are breaking the law. This is totally upside-down crazy – a reflection of a madness that afflicts industrial civilization world-wide. To say that this madness borders on being criminal is an understatement – it IS nothing other than criminal.

There is a systemic psycho-spiritual disease—a true madness—that pervades the body politic of humanity, and what is happening at Standing Rock is an acute localized outbreak of this disease. The Native Americans have a word—“wetiko”—which signifies this illness of the soul—a truly demonic force—that informs such acts of unmitigated evil. As stated by one Native American source, “Native tribes, in general, have a story they tell about Wendigo [another name for wetiko], the spirit of cannibalism. This Black Snake [like an oil pipeline] that is being protested by the Standing Rock Sioux is the spirit of Wendigo, and yes the ‘White Man’ does eat everything, including Mother Earth.”

Those aligned with and taken over by the Black Snake – i.e., wendigo/wetiko endlessly “consume,” like an insatiable cannibal, the life force of others—human and nonhuman—for private purpose or profit, without giving back anything of value from their own lives. At the collective level, this perverse inner process is mirrored by the consumer society in which we live, a culture that continually fans the flames of never-ending desires, conditioning us to always want more. As if starving, we are in an endless feeding frenzy, trying to fill a bottomless void. This process of rabid, obsessive-compulsive consumption is a reflection of a deep, inner shared sense of spiritual starvation that is endemic to industrial civilization.

To quote Native American scholar Jack Forbes, “This disease, this wetiko (cannibal) psychosis, is the greatest epidemic sickness known to man.” Wetiko is a collective psychosis that can be likened to a virus of the psyche that deranges our mind, thereby giving us the wrong orientation towards life and what is truly important. A true case of moral insanity, wetiko is the root cause of humanity’s inhumanity to itself, of the self-and-other destruction that our species is acting out all over the world. Wetiko disease is a self-devouring operating system, a living death sentence that, if left unchecked, destroys everything within its dominion, including itself.

It is significant when a deeper, mythic archetypal process becomes embodied and acted out (i.e., “dreamed up”) like it is at Standing Rock, for this is an expression that this heretofore unconscious process is emerging into consciousness so as to be potentially integrated. Seen symbolically, the deeper archetypal—and primordial—process of good vs. evil is getting played out at Standing Rock. To give a sense of the evil we are up against, the company constructing the pipeline—Energy Transfer Partners—exploiting the chaos of the recent Presidential election as a distraction, announced on Election Day that it would defy President Obama’s request to stand down and would begin the drilling of the most contentious portion of the pipeline in just two weeks.

Splitting the world into good and evil (and being identified with the good) is a slippery slope, oftentimes quite dangerous (as many millions of innocent people have been killed as a result of this process), but if there was ever a situation that lends itself to clear-cut good vs. evil, Standing Rock is it. A war between life and death is, both literally and symbolically, playing out at Standing Rock. When the opposites appear in bold relief like this, it is an expression that something “beyond the opposites” is beginning to emerge into view – we should be on the lookout for this. This is to say that encoded in the conflict is a potential blessing, just like hidden within a poison is its own medicine.

On the one hand there is the fossil fuel industry—“Big Oil”—backed by, and in collusion with our legal system, the police and the government. Because of its power, Big Oil has managed to have public funds being used to protect its very private interests (i.e., its profits); this is to say that taxpayers are footing the bill on behalf of the super-wealthy. Add to this mix the mainstream media (the propaganda organ of the prevailing powers-that-be), which, when it is not putting out disinformation about what is taking place, is barely covering what is happening—some independent journalists have been violently brutalized and even arrested as they report on the protests.

Due to the mainstream news blackout, we are being left “in the dark” – which is to say that many people aren’t even aware of what’s taking place at Standing Rock. This is by design, for as more people find out about the evil that is being perpetrated in their name, the more power becomes available to us – the people. Only in coming together can people and communities create the conditions for the regeneration of life and overcome the very powerful forces that would extract the last barrel of oil from the earth. In this case, knowledge is truly power – this is why the powers-that-be, and the mainstream media they control, are heavily invested in keeping us in the dark. The seeming entity that enlivens, sponsors and supplies cover for this sinister project is what the Native American wisdom holders are pointing at when they use the word wetiko.

The Bible refers to one aspect of the multi-faceted wetiko pathogen as Mammon(the god, or demon, of the love of money), and it makes the point that we can’t serve two masters; we either serve God (and the good) or Mammon. Those who serve Mammon are driven by nothing other than power, control, greed and money—truly the powers of darkness. As if something is riding them, they are taken over by something other than themselves – they aren’t able to help themselves in the compulsive acting out of their money-lust. The incredible destruction that they cause, be it of the environment, communities or the lives of individual human beings, are considered to be nothing more than collateral damage, merely the price of doing business. Human beings are “objectified,” either seen as pawns, obstacles, commodities or consumers.

One of the ways wetiko takes on corporeal embodied form is by incorporating itself through multinational corporations like Big Oil (which, like a multi-headed hydra, is only one of wetiko’s appendages). These multinational corporations have ever-increasing influence over governments worldwide, which serves to further wetiko’s propagation. Like a Frankenstein monster, as wetiko entrenches itself in our global system of doing business, it practically assumes an autonomous life and will of its own. This sinister life-form feeds on life and the living, as if it is a form of death taking on life. Endlessly draining the earth’s resources, the vampiric wetiko entity is, like an addict, only interested in its next fix. It is solely concerned with short-term profits, having little or no meta-awareness of, or concern for, the deleterious long-term effects of its rapacious actions.

And yet, in its full-bodied incarnation at Standing Rock, the formless entity of wetiko is revealing itself, which is to say that what is playing out at Standing Rock is a symbolic out-picturing—a living flesh and blood revelation of something within us—that is crucially important for us to bring into consciousness. Standing Rock is a looking-glass, helping us to get into focus and see—in a case where the micro mirrors the macro and vice versa—that wetiko is not just a localized phenomenon appearing solely in North Dakota, but is informing the evil that is playing out all over the world. Because wetiko acts itself out through our unconscious blind-spots, the way to dispel wetiko’s pernicious effects is to see it, to bring consciousness to how it operates both out in the world (via our unconscious collusion) as well as within our own mind (please see my book Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil).

On the other hand are the Native American people who have been oppressed for so long and are finally saying “enough, no more,” as they stand up to their oppressors. More than three hundred Native American tribes have come together and are on the ground at Standing Rock standing as one, which itself is unprecedented, as some of these tribes have been enemies from time immemorial. Stepping out of the illusion of being powerless, these tribes are recognizing the incredible power that becomes available when we see through the illusion of our being separate from each other, and in the spirit of peace, come together in solidarity and join forces – this itself can serve as a mirror and inspiration for all the rest of us. Waking up to our intrinsic power as we stand together as one is the powers-that-be’s worst nightmare.

In their sacred activism, the Native American protestors consider themselves to be the guardians and protectors of the water, of the land, of the earth as a whole system. This is a job that we shouldn’t out-source to indigenous people: we are all the custodians of the earth—protectors of life itself—which bears with it a great responsibility. There is no greater honor.

We are all in this together. Let us hear the call of the indigenous soul within us and spread the word about Standing Rock.

 

Standing Rock Sioux Nation website

http://standingrock.org

 

Sacred Stone Camp, to go literally “stand” at SR physically

http://sacredstonecamp.org

 

Red Warrior Camp

https://nodaplsolidarity.org

 

Medical/Healers Council – donate/volunteer

https://medichealercouncil.com

 

The Indigenous Peoples website

http://theindigenouspeoples.com

 

How You Can Support Standing Rock

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/24/how-you-can-support-standing-rock

 

How You Can Help

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/help-stop-dakota-acess-pipeline/

from:    http://realitysandwich.com/320972/history-in-the-making-at-standing-rock/

On WETIKO

The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity


 

The following is Part One in a series. Read Part Two here.

In the book Columbus and other Cannibals, indigenous author Jack D. Forbes lucidly explores a psychological disease that has been informing human self-destructive behavior that Native American people have known about for years. After reading his book, it was clear to me that he was describing the same psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that I wrote about in my book, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis. I introduce the idea that from the dawn of human history our species has fallen prey to a collective psychosis which I call malignant egophrenia. Speaking about this very same psychic epidemic, Forbes writes, “For several thousands of years human beings have suffered from a plague, a disease worse than leprosy, a sickness worse than malaria, a malady much more terrible than smallpox.”[i] Indigenous people have been tracking the same “psychic”[ii] virus that I call malignant egophrenia for many centuries and calling it “wetiko,” a Cree term which refers to a diabolically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes others. Professor Forbes, who was one of the founders of the Native American movement during the early sixties, says, “Tragically, the history of the world for the past 2,000 years is, in great part, the story of the epidemiology of the wetiko disease.”[iii] Wetiko/malignant egophrenia is a “psychosis” in the true sense of the word as being a “sickness of the soul or spirit.” Though calling it by different names, Forbes and I are both pointing at the same illness of the psyche, soul and spirit that has been at the root of humanity’s inhumanity to itself.

As if performing a magic ritual, in exploring the entity of wetiko, we first have to invoke its spirit and enter into relationship with it. We must contemplate and engage wetiko as objectively as we are able, as if it exists outside of ourselves, lest we get too “mixed up” with the object of our contemplation. Due to its unique psychic origin, the epidemiology of wetiko is different than any other disease. An intrinsic challenge to our investigation of the wetiko virus is that it is incarnating in the very psyche which itself is the means of our investigation. Aware of this conundrum, Forbes explains that he is attempting to examine the disease, “from a perspective as free as possible from assumptions created by the very disease being studied.”[iv] If we are not aware of the frame of reference through which we are examining the wetiko virus, our investigation will be tainted by the disease, obscuring the clear vision needed to start the healing process. Studying how wetiko disease manifests in others, as well as in the “other” part of ourselves, will help us to see “it” more objectively. Seeing this psychological disease manifesting in the world is the looking glass through which we can potentially recognize this same illness as it arises subjectively within our own minds.

After evoking an entity like wetiko, in order to study it as objectively as possible, we have to hermetically seal it within an alchemical container. This ensures that its mercurial spirit doesn’t vaporize back into the invisibility of the unconscious, where it would act itself out through us. Jung continually emphasized the importance of developing a container or vessel in which to catch troublesome spirits like wetiko. He writes, “Therefore, if anything is wrong, take it out of its place and put it in the vessel that is between your neighbor and yourself…For love of mankind, create a vessel into which you can catch all that damned poison. For it must be somewhere — it is always somewhere — and not to catch it, to say it doesn’t exist, gives the best chance to any germ.”[v] Wetiko is an elusive spirit that is challenging to pin down and say it is “this” or “that.” At the same time, it is critical that we attempt to delineate its properties. Unlike a physical virus, the wetiko bug can not be isolated materially, but its characteristic signature can be detected and seen in the peculiar operations of a psyche that is under its spell. To not recognize the existence of the wetiko germ — “to say it doesn’t exist” — allows the psychic infection to act itself out unrestrained. Being “always somewhere” is to be nonlocal, which means that it is always around, even potentially, or especially, within ourselves. In calling forth the wetiko spirit, we are simultaneously creating, through our inquiry itself, the container in which we can study this bug so as to understand what in fact we are dealing with, see how it operates out in the world, in others, and subjectively, within ourselves. In order to come full circle in our contemplative exercise/exorcise, we have to homeopathically take our contemplation back within ourselves. As if in a dream where the inner is the outer, we can recognize that the wetiko virus that we have been tracking “out there,” outside of ourselves, is a reflection of and co-related to the same process within ourselves. Encoded in wetiko’s symptomology is a revelation, something that is most important for us to know.

A Disease of Civilization

Wetiko/malignant egophrenia is a disease of civilization, or lack thereof. To quote Forbes, “To a considerable degree, the development of the wetiko disease corresponds to the rise of what Europeans choose to call civilization. This is no mere coincidence.”[vi] The unsustainable nature of industrial civilization is based on, and increasingly requires violence to maintain itself. Genuine “civilization,” in essence, means not killing people. Referring to the lack of “civility” in modern society, Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization and responded by saying, “I think it would be a good idea.” It makes sense that native people would know about malignant egophrenia, as they were both oppressed by, but weren’t, at least initially, under the “curse” of modern civilization. Being under the sway of modern civilization can feel like something foreign to our nature is being imposed upon us, as if we are living in an occupied land. Modern civilization suffers from the overly one-sided dominance of the rational, intellectual mind, a one-sidedness that seemingly dis-connects us from nature, from empathy, and from ourselves. Due to its disassociation from the whole, wetiko is a disturber of the peace of humanity and the natural world, a sickness which spawns aggression and is capable of inciting violence amongst living beings. The wetiko virus is the root cause of the inhumanity in human nature, or shall we say, our seemingly inhuman nature. This “psychic virus,” a “bug” in “the system,” in-forms and animates the madness of so-called civilization, which, in a self-perpetuating feedback loop feeds the madness within ourselves.

Forbes continues, “this disease, this wetiko (cannibal) psychosis, is the greatest epidemic sickness known to man.”[vii] We, as a species, are in the midst of a massive psychic epidemic, a virulent collective psychosis that has been brewing in the cauldron of humanity’s psyche from the beginning of time. Like a fractal, wetiko operates on multiple dimensions simultaneously — intra-personally (within individuals), inter-personally (between ourselves), as well as collectively (as a species). “Cannibalism,” in Forbes’s words, “is the consuming of another’s life for one’s own private purpose or profit.”[viii] Those afflicted with wetiko, like a cannibal, consume the life-force of others — human and nonhuman — for private purpose or profit, and do so without giving back something from their own lives. One example that symbolizes our self-destructive, collective madness is the oil companies’ destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, the lungs of our planet. This is literally a full-bodied revelation showing us what we are doing to ourselves. Another literal example that is symbolically illustrating the wetiko complex in action is Monsanto genetically engineering terminator seeds that do not reproduce a second generation, thus forcing farmers to buy new seeds from Monsanto for each year’s new crop. This makes survival for many poor farmers impossible, which has triggered a wave of suicides among farmers, as Monsanto grows richer from the process.

Forbes writes, “The overriding characteristic of the wetiko is that he consumes other human beings, that is, he is a predator and a cannibal. This is the central essence of the disease.”[ix] Predators, “full-blown” wetikos are not in touch with their own humanity, and therefore can’t see the humanity in others. Instead, they relate to others either as potential prey or as a threat to their dominance. As if a different breed who is more animal-like predator than ordinary human being, someone fully taken over by the wetiko psychosis consumes others’ lives, physically, emotionally, psychically and meta-physically, beyond just the material body and physical possessions to the level of meaning itself. Wetikos are the “anti-artists” of our culture, embodying the opposite of what creative artists do. Unlike an artist (please see my article “The Artist as Healer of the World”), who creates life-enhancing meaning and enriches the world without robbing others, a wetiko takes and consumes without giving anything back, continually draining and impoverishing the planet of resources.

We are currently in the midst of “the greatest epidemic sickness known to man” (please see my article “Diagnosis: Psychic Epidemic”). Many of us don’t even realize this, as our collective insanity is so pervasive that it has become normalized. Our collective madness has become transparent to us, as we see and interpret the world through it, rendering our madness invisible, thereby unwittingly colluding with the collective psychosis that is wreaking incredible death and destruction on our planet. Being “trans-parent,” our madness is beyond its mere appearance, which is to say, “beyond being apparent,” i.e., not visible. Our collective psychosis is invisible to us, as it expresses itself both in the very way we are looking, as well as all of the unspoken ways we have been conditioned not to perceive. Due to its cloak of invisibility, we don’t see our madness, a psychic blindness which makes us complicit in the creation of our madness.

Many of us can’t fathom the level of evil to which full-blown wetikos have fallen prey, and of which they are capable. Our lack of imagination of the evil existing in potential in humanity is a direct reflection of a lack of intimacy with our own potential evil, which enables the malevolence of wetiko to have nearly free rein in our world (please see my article “Shedding Light on Evil”). In our psychic blindness we are complicit in the spreading of the evil of the wetiko psychosis, a systematic evil whose depth is beyond the capacity of words to fully describe. Evil paralyzes the ability to language our experience, creating a seemingly unbridgeable gap between language and the event it is supposed to describe. Finding that place of no words, we simultaneously discover and create a new language, a language which is universal and transcends language itself, a language known as art.

 

A Parasite of a Different Order 

When people are infected by the wetiko virus, Forbes writes, they are “the host for the wetiko parasites.”[x] The wetiko germ is a psychic tapeworm, a parasite of the mind. Just like certain computer viruses or malware infect and program a computer to self-destruct, mind-viruses like wetiko can program the human bio-computer to think, believe and behave in ways that result in our self-destruction. Wetiko is a virulent, psychic pathogen that insinuates thought-forms into our mind which, when unconsciously en-acted, feed it, and ultimately kills its host (us). It doesn’t want to kill us too quickly however, for to successfully implement its agenda of reproducing and propagating itself throughout the field, it must let the host live long enough to spread the virus. If the host dies too soon, the bug would be prematurely evicted and would suffer the inconvenience of having to find a new residence.

Like a cancer of the mind that metastasizes, in wetiko disease, a pathological part of the psyche co-opts and subsumes all of the healthy parts of the psyche into itself so as to serve its pathology. The personality then self-organizes an outer display of coherence around this pathogenic core, which “masks” the inner dysfunction, making it hard to recognize. In a psychic coup d’etat, the wetiko bug can usurp and displace the person, who becomes its puppet and marionette. Like a parasite, the wetiko virus can take over the will of an animal more evolved than itself, enlisting that creature into serving its nefarious agenda. Once the parasite becomes sufficiently entrenched within the psyche, the prime directive coordinating a person’s behavior comes from the disease, as it is now the one calling the shots. Just as someone infected with the rabies virus will resist drinking water, which would flush out the infection, someone taken over by the wetiko parasite will have nothing to do with anything that will help them get rid of the disease. Wetikos are phobic towards the light of truth, which they avoid like the plague. In advanced stages, this process takes over the person so completely that we could rightfully say the person is no longer there; they are just an empty shell carrying the disease. In a sense there is just the disease, operating through what appears to be a human being. The person becomes fully identified with their mask, their persona, but it is as if there is no one behind the mask.

To read the rest of Part 1 and link to Part 2, go to: