191 Paul Levy - Undreaming Wetiko === Monica: Welcome dear listener to another episode of the revelation project podcast. This podcast is all about disrupting the trance of unworthiness and lifting the veils of personal illusion and cultural deception that keep us from remembering the truth of who we are. The Revelation Project explores alternative narratives to traditional patriarchal influences that awaken, liberate, and activate awareness. Monica: And today we're doing just that with my guest, Paul Levy, who is the author of many books on the subject of Whetako. Before I introduce Paul in a bigger way, I want to remind my listener of two things. One is if you haven't yet joined the list for the monthly giveaway, please do so by going to jointherevelation. Monica: com and get yourself on the list to win amazing gifts. 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So what is Wetiko, what is Wetiko's origin, and why is this such an important conversation? Well, today you're going to meet my guest, Paul Levy. I have been familiar with Paul's work for quite some time. I came across his work during COVID and it kind of stopped me in my tracks because It illuminated something that I feel like intuitively I had been sensing and what he describes it at it. Monica: As is a mind virus that plagues our world, but it's actually a term that was used by Native Americans. They called wet echo, an unconscious blind spot in the human psyche that rendered the colonizers and others oblivious to their own madness. And it compelled them to act out. against their own best interests and to dehumanize basically, and other others in order to obtain more, more, more, right? Monica: So it's kind of this voracious appetite for conquering for more. It's what you could consider a sickness of the spirit. And it actually is a disease. Dis ease that covertly influences our perceptions. And Paul says, we all have this. And part of having it is thinking that you don't, interestingly enough. Monica: So it actually bewitches our consciousness so that we become blind. To the underlying and assumed viewpoint through which we perceive conjure up and give meaning to our experience of both the world and ourselves. He says that 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. Monica: And before we're able to treat this sickness that has infected us all, we have to snap out of our denial, see the disease for what it is, acknowledge it, name it, and try to understand how it operates so that we can actually deal with it and. This is what this episode is all about. So I'm going to just read a little bit of bio on Paul. Monica: Paul Levy is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence. He's a wounded healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to what he calls the dreamlike nature of our reality. He's authored three books on the Wetiko mind virus. And the most recent is the one that we're going to be talking about today called Undreaming Wetiko, Breaking the Spell of the Nightmare Mind Virus. Monica: He's the founder of Awaken in the Dream, a community in Portland, Oregon. He's an artist deeply steeped in the work of C. G. Young, and has been a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for almost 40 years. You can learn more about him at awakeninginthedream. com. And of course, we will include his links in the show notes. Monica: So I love this part, breaking the spell of the nightmare mind virus sounds so much to me like breaking the spell of the trans of unworthiness. And actually, I have found so many parallels between what he speaks of and what I recognize. And I think it shows up differently. It's one of the things I'm discerning maybe for women than it does for men. Monica: And so I said what I said and let that be, let me just rest that there in the space as we head into this interview with my incredible guest, Paul, please join me in welcoming him. Hi, Paul. Paul: Hey, hi. Yeah. I'm so glad to be here with you. Thank you so much for the invite. Monica: Oh my goodness. I mean, I know that you just heard me telling about this experience, but I would say that it really became clear to me during the whole COVID experience. Right. What I would have called this, it felt like a mass psychosis that we were in. Monica: And I also, Paul, I have to tell you that the more I read in your book, the more I saw similarities and parallels to what I call the trance of unworthiness. And so we might thread that through a little bit today, but I would love to just start by asking where Whetako met you in your own awareness. Sure. Monica: And how you became so passionate about this subject. Paul: Yeah, no, totally. I appreciate the question. And it, you know, I had a personal encounter with what wetiko is how I pronounce it, but there's no right way to pronounce it. And, you know, in my family. And through the person of my father, really, and the story isn't important, you know, like so many parents, he just didn't deal with his own stuff and just projected out his stuff and acted out his abuse and being the only child who was also really sensitive. Paul: Like all kids are. I was the recipient of his, you know, him acting out. His unconscious unhealed abuse to the point where, you know, I went from being a happy, healthy kid to particularly when I was in college and I was individuating and separating and more connecting with who I was instead of the version my father. Paul: Wanted me to be that catalyzed him, you know, just acting out this incredible abuse on to me, emotional abuse that changed my life. I went from a very happy, healthy, accomplished young person to not being able to live my life. And so we're talking, I was, you know, 22. When really the full effect hit me and, you know, one other way of describing it was I was in overwhelming trauma at, you know, encountering this incredible violent energy that came through my father and he was just the instrument and so I actually dealt with it by going deep inwards and, you know, just assuming the position of the witness. Paul: Really just meditating for hours a day with a teacher, you know, just doing Vipassana insight meditation. And then after almost a couple years, I had a life transforming spiritual awakening. I got hit by a bolt of lightning in meditation, just in my brain. And went into an extreme altered state in which I was beginning to realize, Oh my God, we're having a collective dream. Paul: This is, you know, we're all each other's dream characters. It was like I was snapping out of the spell of the separate self. And I was so excited. At that point, I was 24 and from people who knew me, it was like I had had a radical personality change overnight because I was just so enthusiastic of what I was realizing that within the day I got thrown in a mental hospital and pathologized and told, Oh, you have this mental illness, manic depression, you'll have it for the rest of your life. Paul: And you know, they had no clue that I was actually having, you know, a deeper spiritual awakening. But then for the next couple of years, I was interfacing with psychiatry because I kept on. My awakening kept on expanding, but I was a free agent. I wasn't in an ashram or a monastery. So, I had this incredible propensity to get myself hospitalized and diagnosed, and at some times even medicated. Paul: And I began to realize that this same sort of evil energy that was coming through the person of my father was now coming through the system. Of psychiatry. In other words, it was non local. I began to have the first animations. Oh, my God, there's something that pervades the field of consciousness, you know, on all scales. Paul: That seems to be the way it appears is this malevolent energy that seemingly is stopping us from evolving. But what I began to realize it's actually helping us to evolve. It's catalyzing our evolution if we have the eyes to see. And then finally, I began to realize that same deeper, darker energy That was coming through my father coming through the system of psychiatry was informing and giving shape to the body politic of our world. Paul: And it was like, actually at the bottom of the collective madness, because what he co is a collective psychosis. And that's when I began to realize like iterations of refractory. Oh my God, there is something, the seeming malevolent energy. Which is to be found inside the human psyche, which is the source and the solution of all of the myriad crises that we're facing. Paul: And that's exactly what Forbes was writing that book about, Columbus and Other Cannibals. And that was, that's the classic book. Which, when I read that book, my head exploded. Because I realized, oh my god, what he is pointing at and what the indigenous People have been pointing out for centuries, this is what I was just had fallen into and it destroyed my entire family. Paul: I mean, I, it was like having a pathogen enter the Petri dish of my family and it consumed my entire family. You know, I was the one in the role of pointing out the evil that was playing out and the more I did that, I was seen as the one who was evil and I was seen as the problem, the problem was, Oh, if only I would just shut up, then there would, everything would be solved. Paul: And of course, that was part of the revelation, because what I'm pointing at is that Watiko, it's a revelation, even though it's the source of the greatest darkness, and it's a collective psychosis that encoded within it, it's actually catalyzing our evolution. It's helping us to wake up. It's a living revelation, and it's a revelation coming through the dark, coming through the shadow instead of coming down from the heavens through the light. Paul: But if we don't recognize it, it'll kill us. Yeah, that's a little bit Monica: Well, first of all, I love that you're pointing to that it's a revelation coming through the darkness because I think a lot of people tend to think that a revelation is always coming from on high and yet there's just as there's God in the lowest of the low, there's also revelations in this low, dense, dark Areas of our existence that come through. Monica: And I love what you're pointing to because it's the paradox. It's the good news. And the bad news is all wrapped in one. I also love that you called it the spell of the separate self, right? I just want to really go back to this fact that encoded within it is. Our liberation, or at least by becoming aware of it. Monica: It's also, I've come to understand through your writing. It's one thing to see it, but it's a sneaky bastard. This thing, the wet echo that you speak of, it's very similar to how I talk about the trans of unworthiness. It's shape shifts. It can change faces. It can for one second there. It's like. being projected upon you and suddenly it can change form and change position to the person who is being projected upon is now actually the one who's infected with it. Monica: So I wondered if you could give us some, a couple of examples of how. Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. Well, first off, like the idea that we think of that when we become enlightened and, or like have illumination. It's seeing the light, which is true, but seeing the darkness is also a form of illumination. And I'm pointing out in my work, there's no way, there's no way around, I mean, even Shantideva, who, you know, wrote the classic treatise on the way of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, and people think, oh, he's all love and light. Paul: And he's pointing out, there's something in my psyche that's putting me under a spell, and that's numbing me, and that's disconnecting me from What is that? And every Bodhisattva Is pointing out the importance of, we need to like, see the seeming malevolent force that's stopping us from awakening, because it's not just like our species is asleep. Paul: No, it's as if in quotes, there's some sort of malevolent energy that's invested in keeping us asleep. And what my work is really about is, is, you know, sort of shedding light on that. And so to get to your question, the wetiko mind virus, it's very elusive. As soon as you see it, or if you think, oh, there it is, and it looks like this, well, it's formless, which means it can take on any form. Paul: And if you think it has a particular form, then you've fallen under its spell. So it's a trickster, it's elusive, it's shape shifting, and it works through the projective tendencies of the mind. So, you know, when we're unconscious of something, Like Jung, the great psychiatrist says, the unconscious always approaches us from outside. Paul: In other words, we project it because we can't see it because we're identical with it. So we project it out, it gets dreamed up out there in the waking dream. And then, you know, if we're asleep, we think that whatever we're seeing out there, whatever content or the person embodying the content or the group, that they objectively exist separate from us. Paul: And then we react to our projection to become conditioned by it. And that feeds what he go because then that's feeding the separation because a simple way of describing what he go it's all about the separate self it's about identifying with a particular limited separate self that actually doesn't exist. Paul: And then we spend the whole rest of our lives defending and protecting and all of our creative energy gets funneled into that project and it's an illusion. It's completely an illusion, but we're colluding with the illusion. So, you know, what I'm describing gets played out in relationships all over the place. Paul: Where we project the shadow and then, you know, projecting the shadow isn't just a passive act. When you're around somebody who's projecting the shadow on you, if you're sensitive, you'll notice it makes it more likely that you might tend to manifest shadow elements. And as soon as you do, that confirms to the other person, Oh, you see, they really are a darker person. Paul: shadowy way, which makes you more likely to manifest the shadow. And you're probably doing the same to them. So we're all dreaming up our unhealed, unconscious shadow and wounds and abuse. And then we have all the evidence that it's out there and then we're just innocent because that's the way shadow projection works, you know, Oh, I'm just a good enlightened person and I'm identified with the light and the evil is out there. Paul: And, and what wetiko is having a feast, that's the way it works is in, so it literally entrances us by our own creative genius. And if I can give a specific example, in a dream, if you're in a nightdream and you're holding a viewpoint. The dream, which is nothing other than a reflection of your mind, will completely instantaneously reflect back the very viewpoint you're holding, and then as soon as it does that, then you have evidence that what you're seeing is objectively true, because the dream is completely, like, offering you all the proof that your point of view is actually out there, so then you become even more fixed in your viewpoint, the more fixed in your viewpoint, The more the dream will just reflect that fixed viewpoint, giving, confirming and giving you all the evidence of that it's objectively true. Paul: And that's a self perpetuating self reinforcing feedback loop, you know, in which you've entranced yourself, you've hypnotized yourself. And that's what wetiko it plugs in to the creative genius that all of us have inside of us. But to the extent we're not like consciously. Accessing that because whawetikico has no creativity, it plugs into that creative genius, our own creative genius, and turns it against us in a way that limits us. Paul: And that's in essence, I'm trying to illumine with all my work that particular process. Monica: Wow, Paul, what I mean, I just want to segue now into just, you know, this is one of those subjects that. I too could get really, really passionate about, because it's one of those things I call like it's hiding in plain sight. Monica: Right. So actually trying to put language around it and articulate it. And even though it was articulated in many times in the past, I also feel this almost energetic in you. This is so important for people to see. In our current day, this continues to actually be the thing that keeps playing out. And it keeps us from our own awakening, actually. Paul: Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, you know, in the Costa native books, the Carlos Costa native books in one of them, Carlos's teacher talks about what he go. He doesn't have the name. He calls it the predator, but he says for shamans, this is the topic of topics. There is nothing more important, and that's totally true, there's nothing more important in the world, absolutely positively, than like understanding Watiko. Paul: Because it's a quantum phenomena, it's a superposition of states, it contains the deepest evil. It's at the root of all the madness and the evil playing out in the world, and it contains its own vaccine, its own medicine, its own cure. It's actually helping us to awaken. And just like in quantum physics, well, how does light manifest as a wave or a particle? Paul: Depends how it's observed. Well, how is Watiko going to manifest, or is it going to take us down, or is it going to awaken us? That depends on nothing else other than if we recognize what it's revealing to us. You see, the thing about Watiko, every spiritual tradition. Throughout history and all these visionary artists and thinkers and philosophers, they're all pointing out Watiko just in different languages. Paul: For example, the apocryphal text calls it the counterfeiting spirit. You know, the way they describe it, it's precisely word for word Watiko. They say it has no creativity on its own. So it plugs into our creative genius and turns it against us, but it has no creativity, but it's a master mime. It's a master impersonator. Paul: So it puts us on. And putting us on has a double meaning. It fools us, but it like puts us on like a suit of clothes so that we identify with it. So the way it works. Is that what wetiko offers us this limited fictitious version of ourselves? Oh, I'm traumatized. I'm wounded. I don't have any creativity. I'm stuck. Paul: And if we're not in touch with our self or their nature, and we then identify with what wetiko version of ourselves. Then it has us, then it can manipulate us and control us. But if we're in touch with our true nature, then it has no currency over us at all. And think about what I'm just describing. So here, so Watiko, it can't steal our soul. Paul: It has no power to do that, but it tricks us into giving in a way so that's a major piece that we're colluding with our own victimization. Then what Watiko does, it actually, we identify with who we're not with the false version, with Watiko's version of ourselves. Then we forget who we actually are. Then we disassociate from our creative agency. Paul: That's a recipe for madness. And that's how Watiko works and in an individual, but then when that gets played out writ large on the world stage, then you have a collective psychosis in which we're destroying ourselves, and that's exactly what's happening. And I'm just pointing out, oh, the origin of the map. Paul: People think of mind virus is such a woo woo new agey out there term. All that it means in essence is that the origin and the solution of the collective madness that our species is playing out. Current moment in time is to be found within the psyche and that's a no brainer. Where else can it be found? Monica: So Paul, let me see if I've got this right When you talk about how it turns our creativity against us, I make up over here, and this is for my listener to I want to make sure that we're clear that instead of, for example, using my authentic self expression in the out in the world. I end up conforming to consensus culture and creatively using these masks to hide my true self in order to get by in order to not have to feel my own discomfort or to look at my own shadows. Monica: I would prefer to wear a mask or pretend to have it all handled and numb out on Netflix and ice cream or whatever, versus actually sit in the tension of my own. Projections or my own stuff and kind of get through it and continue to forge my growth at this growing edge, which would then feed my creativity versus suck from it. Monica: Is that is that right? Paul: That's exactly right. That's a beautiful articulation because when we were kids, we all had to assume certain personas and masks. You know, you're a good boy or you're smart or you're like, whatever. And, you know, at that point, for a lot of us, we had to assume that persona for our own survival. Paul: But here we are adults and the utility of that is expired. It's antiquated. It's not serving us. And so that's one of the ways that I describe Otiko. It's like this misidentification of who we think we are. We identify with a particular role or with a particular mask, and then it gets rendered unconscious. Paul: We don't even know we're doing that. And so then we're just playing this role. Oh, I'm a good person. Oh, I'm a father. I'm a son. I'm a this, I'm a that. And it's no problem at all to play a role, but you just don't want to like identify with it and get stuck in it. And you know, what you need to do is just see it as a role. Paul: That, Oh yeah, I'm getting dreamed up in this role in this moment in time in the world theater in whatever arena with my family or whatever, but then to step out of the role, you know, and to realize that's not you, but you know, our species in a sense is suffering from an unconscious inflation. And what I mean by that is that they're unconsciously identified with the self instead of con with the wholeness. Paul: Of our nature instead of consciously having the realization of it. And this is exactly why I keep on talking about one way of describing the medicine for what wetiko is to connect with our creative spirit, because, you know, people hear, Oh, we just need to wake up and, you know, remember our true nature. Paul: Well, what does that mean? That's such a cliche. What is our true nature? Well, our true nature by its very nature is creative. That's right. So to the extent that we have realization of our nature, we embody and express ourselves creatively. And the more we do that, the more we deepen our realization, you know, the realization of our nature in a self reinforcing positive feedback loop. Paul: That creates light upon light endlessly. So that's why the profound importance of expressing ourselves creatively for sure. You know? Monica: I love this because I go to the myth right now of Psyche and Eros and Eros being that creative energy. When I think, for example, about the trance of unworthiness, as I was telling you about, one of the, the distinctions that I've made is that there is a point at which, at least in When I talk about this phenomenon in women, it's a point where we evacuate our bodies because it's become emotionally uninhabitable to be here in a world that is, you know, shaming and blaming women since the garden of Eden, let's say so we explode up into our heads or into our psyche. Monica: In that house of mirrors, I call it, it's like a very fracturing experience. And in my work, Paul, a lot of what I'm doing is trying to get women to re inhabit themselves, actually. And it's through the re inhabiting that they reconnect with that creative. Potential, right? Because we can create, we have a womb, we can create, we have sperm as men, right? Monica: Like there's that type of creation, but it's not what I'm talking about here is an embodied, intentional, present, creative energy. That's different than a disassociated energy. And actually the disassociated creativity is wet to co, is that correct? Paul: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, no, I, I love what you're saying because I think of, there's a beautiful quote, Jung talks about that individuation, you know, the act of becoming whole is incarnation. Paul: So it's, it's actually not getting out of the body, but it's actually incarnating into the body. But the problem is for many people, not just women, but you know, a lot of men too, that's where the pain is. Yes. Yes. And then what do we do? You see, so, Jung, who really was so switched on to Watiko, he didn't have the name, but you know, he was continually referencing it by different names, and I talk about that in my work. Paul: I mean, he was saying that the sickness of humanity right now is the sickness of disassociation, that we were split. We, uh, we are disassociated such that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and then that creates this neuroses, you know, individually, collectively, you know, it explicates itself through the fragmentation and the polarization in the greater body politic, but he points out. Paul: That the sickness of this association is actually potentially like the higher process is a pregnancy that something is being birthed through our species and it all depends like you had said a little while ago of if we're consciously able to hold the, you know, the tension of the opposites is his phrase. Paul: that creative tension. Instead of splitting and identifying with one of the opposites and repressing the other, he says that creates this dis ease in the soul. But if we're able to hold that creative tension, and any creative artist knows that, with integrity, and it's very painful. And he brings up that Christ seen symbolically, Christ event and the crucifixion is symbolically representing this very process that I'm articulating. Paul: of Jung's, you know, that then we're actually, in a sense, enacting symbolically the very myth that Christ was modeling for us. You know, the symbol of him on the cross is holding the tension of the opposites. And out of that comes what? The resurrected body. But before that can happen, there's the descent into Hades, into the underworld. Paul: And I point out in my work, yeah, we're, we're all shamans in training. And we as a species, both individually and collectively. have gotten drafted into a deeper shamanic initiatory process where we're descending into the underworld of the unconscious, and we're needing to come to terms with the darkness. Paul: There's no way around that. But the archetype of the shaman is that the shaman doesn't get stuck in that. That's the danger. But they actually, at a certain point, come back to the world. And as a result of that initiatory ordeal, have gifts. Have creative gifts. I think the, in the new book, the undreaming what to go, the biggest chapter is on how we're all shamans because, you know, there are two dangers to the shamanic archetype, because that's the major archetype that's activated in the psyche right now. Paul: The two dangers is one person could have like a little bit of an experience of being some sort of. Healer or shaman and the shaman is the wounded a killer I can talk more about that too But if they all of a sudden have a little experience and they put up a shingle going Oh, I'm a shaman and I'm gonna I'm good I could help you and they can create enormous destruction for other people and hurt and harm other people That's one danger. Paul: The other great danger of the whole shamanic archetype is for people who are Keeping that their shamanic gifts unconscious that creates poison Because just remember, the shaman is the creative artist, and the greatest poison in the human psyche is repressed and unexpressed creativity. Monica: Yes, I actually, I loved that you made that parallel as well with Jesus as a shaman, as an artist. Monica: Yes, very much so. Paul: Oh, totally. Monica: Okay. So why don't we continue down this path of the shaman? Because I do think that I was reading this chapter in your book. I was really resonating with what you were saying that this archetype is so activated, I think, in the psyche of The collective in many ways, and I just wanted to at least go over some of those core principles. Paul: Yeah. Yeah. And keep in mind, you know, I'm, I tell people right out, I'm no shaman only in my wildest dreams. Am I a shaman type of thing, you know, but when I had my awakening 40 years ago, unbeknownst to me, the shamanic archetype got super activated in me. And I found myself enacting this deeper. archetypal patterning that shamans go through. Paul: And so the first thing, what initiates the shamanic archetype is some sort of trauma or wounding. Trauma is an overwhelming experience, so we split, we dissociate. And, you know, and that's potentially problematic if we stay in that disassociated state. But the idea is From the shamanic point of view, the disassociation constellates another part of us to go in search of our soul that's got lost. Paul: When we're in trauma, that part of our soul gets frozen back in the amber of time. And then another part of us just, you know, naturally progresses and evolves. But then there's this part that's imprisoned back in time. So the shamanic journey is really going back and connecting with that part, finding it like to remember. Paul: Members are like parts of our body. We're like remembering. We're putting ourselves like Humpty Dumpty back together again as we actually find these split off parts of ourselves and retrieve them back into the wholeness of our psyche. But here's another thing about the shamanic trip that's so interesting. Paul: The shaman. They're, you know, completely empathic. So say if they're working with a client or with a community, they will take on. Quote, unquote, take on the illness of the person they're working with and take on taking on as a double meaning. In other words, they take it on, they have it out with, they wrestle with it, but taking it on means they take it within themselves. Paul: So the shaman falls ill, they take on the illness and they fall ill, but then they experienced the illness that the client is suffering from. Inside themselves and because the shaman, then what they do, they take that occasion of falling ill as a way to deepen their realization and reconnect with their wholeness even deeper by doing that. Paul: They're like slowly metabolizing the illness that they've taken on such that they, at a certain point, they even become more in touch with their wholeness and that energetic, that dynamic energetically non locally gets transmitted to the client. And makes it more likely now that the shaman has modeled that has imprinted in the quantum field, that potentiality, then all of a sudden that's more available for the client or for the community. Paul: So what I'm pointing out is that we, each one of us are getting enlisted and drafted into this deeper shamanic archetype, which is the major archetype, you know, activated in the collective psyche to the extent we're able to connect with our creative voice because the artists. A shaman is the creative artist, and the shaman is the wounded healer, instead of, Oh, let me just go around my wound or like avoid it or compartmentalize it. Paul: No. The idea of the wounded healer is somebody who has an incurable wound. But instead of seeing that as problematic, they're able to see that wound as a portal, as a doorway. They're able to carry that wound as the doorway to their creative gifts. And that's what even in the resurrected body of Christ, all the paintings are showing him in his body of glory, and he's, he has the wounds. Paul: Right here. The wounds haven't gone away, but instead of them obscuring his deeper gifts No, they're like actually like I'm saying the the doorway into them. Monica: That's so beautifully articulated Paul I just thank you so much. I want to now go back to kind of what you're pointing to with The collective and this being a real invitation for this shamanic archetype to really reveal itself in all of our lives right now. Monica: Because what I'm hearing you say is that all of us are experiencing this collective descent, that there's actually an invitation at this time to go right into the wound as the place or the portal to remembering. Paul: And can I write into a couple of things about that? Because, you know, and this I think is helpful, hopefully, is that say, you know, like, I'll talk about myself, say, I'm sitting in meditation, I'm all good, enlightened, Zen, harmonic, and boom, all of a sudden, for whatever reason, in a moment, my wound comes up, right? Monica: And now, Paul, that could look like irritation, that could look like Yeah. Paul: Or like a negative, a negative emotion, or trauma, or a memory of abuse, or I feel it in my body, or I feel obscured, or stuck, or anything other than just being fully open and in my nature. So it has, uh, infinite forms. But say my wound comes up. Paul: That's not problematic at all. That's not Wetiko. But then, where Wetiko can potentially come in is the next moment. How do we hold that wound? For example, if we like think, Oh, well the fact that my wound is coming up is evidence that I'm a wounded person. So then we're identifying with being a wounded person. Paul: Well, then what wetiko has us, then we've like, you know, limited ourselves in this limited what wetiko inspired identity is being wounded all based on how we're interpreting the momentary experience of our wound coming up, but a whole other way of interpreting that our wound comes up. And what if we're awake in that moment and we realize, oh, this is the ephemeral impermanent display of awareness that's actually manifesting as it's releasing. Paul: As it's just an expression of the emptiness of my nature, then all of a sudden, instead of that wound becoming real and obscuring our nature, it's revealing our nature. You see, it all depends on how we observe it. And then one other thing that you said, I want to point out. From the shamanic point of view, we are, like, there's a, there's an archetypal motif or theme in Gnosticism shamanism and every spiritual tradition, and what it is, is that the light gets swallowed by the darkness and disappears. Paul: And it seems like the darkness has vanquished the light, but there's an aspect of the light that's invulnerable. So the light literally transforms, it literally transforms the darkness from within the darkness, and then at a certain point it emerges, the light does. And I feel that that's both an individual process and a collective process, and actually that, in a way, I think creates context for what's happening in our world. Monica: I want to also just give a quick example, maybe for our listener of how I'm interpreting this for myself. So the other day I had a big completion call with a client and it was unexpected, actually, it was, it was just a. There, you know, it's, I've been working with this particular client for several years and afterwards I felt grief, you know, it was like the grief came out of nowhere and suddenly I realized that I had this opportunity in that moment to like, sit with the grief and get really clear about what the grief was about for me. Monica: And. It was so interesting because I could have in the past, I might've gone down this rabbit hole of abandonment, or I might've gone down this rabbit hole of fear because, you know, what am I going to do now or whatever the thing is. But again, the more I kind of sat with the grief, the more I found gratitude in the grief, the more I saw this child part of myself. Monica: That doesn't know what to do with the void that actually, when there's a big change, a big shift that I wasn't expecting, I can get kind of that inner child activated that was in an alcoholic home growing up. And if there was a big change, it suddenly spelled abandonment or some kind of future problem for me. Monica: And so I began to identify with. big changes in that way. Is that an example? Paul: Yeah. Well, no, that, that's, that's great because, you know, um, I have a friend who he's, he teaches or his whole thing is helping people through grieving and he's convinced that the source of what you go is on assimilated, unexpressed grief. Paul: And I point out in my new book, I think the first chapter is I, You know, because I've been thinking for years, what is the origin of what wetiko? And there's all these theories about, Oh, was it like negative ETS or a collective trauma or who knows? But one of the things I point out is that it actually regenerates itself over the generations. Paul: In the present moment. It's a present moment energy or phenomena that literally gets dreamed up in each and every moment. And what that means is that I think about in the work of young, he talks about that evil regenerates itself over the generations and the same thing with our wounds and our abuse, like coming from an alcoholic family. Paul: And then you conflate things in a way that might not be serving you. And point out in my new book, I'm convinced the origin of wetiko is unhealed, multi generational ancestral trauma. That to the extent that one generation doesn't integrate it, then they are compelled to just act it out onto the next of kin, who then get the transmission and they then play it out with their kids until somebody. Paul: And, you know, and I would point out us are then in the role of breaking that chain and doing our own inner work and assimilating that unhealed trauma that's both ours personally, and our ancestors, because we are a part of a family tree. We don't exist separate, you know, we've all inherited, like we've inherited our physical DNA. Paul: This is our, our psychic DNA. And To the extent we're just not doing our work, and in Jung's words, staying artificially unconscious, then we're offering ourselves to be a minion for Watiko to play itself out, you know, with our close people in our lives. But, like I'm presenting, that if any of us do our inner work and really integrate and assimilate and metabolize that unhealed ancestral trauma, I don't understand this, but I intuitively feel the truth of it, that it extends both backwards in time and forwards in time. Paul: And heals the generations in both directions as well as ourselves. And instead of feeling like, Oh, how unfair that I'm in the role of needing to metabolize my ancestral trauma. No, the, I would say the point of view that's really serving is to take it as an honor that what a gift that you're in that role. Monica: I love that you brought this up, Paul, because that actually was in my own dark night. Experience my kind of choice point was, and I had this moment, almost this holographic moment show up in my family. I had my, my daughter watching in this moment, let's call it a generational pattern that was at play in my own marriage, you know, as I was raising my family. Monica: And I realized that in this particular moment, that if I didn't break the chain, that I would continue to tolerate what was happening in order to stay the way that my culture taught me, like no divorce. I was raised in a Catholic home. The woman just takes it basically and keeps the peace. And I had this revelation in that moment between peacemaking and peacekeeping. Monica: What the revelation was, was that peacemakers sometimes have to make noise. They have to do something different than. The way it's ever been done before and peacekeepers keep the status quo in place. So it's kind of like a misnomer. Well, yeah. And it was the kind of this momentary understanding of this is a pattern that will continue to play out. Monica: And obviously there was more involved, but the point was in that moment, I didn't feel I look back and I think maybe I would have had the strength to do it for myself, but it was actually my children that actually inspired me to break that chain in that moment, you know, at all costs. So it's, it's really interesting because yes, I too was the, the black sheep in the family, the one that was constantly pointing at the elephant in the room or the emperor's got no clothes and always in trouble in some way, shape or form. Monica: And I would think that my listener could relate to that as well. You know, that in some way, shape or form, they were the disruptor. So I think it's really interesting how we can have that experience in our original families, but also how we see it play out collectively out in the world too. Paul: Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting what you say, because the peacemaker, a lot of times. Paul: The peacemaker has to create noise to wake up the sleepers, you know, so I want to say that, but then also one of the things, what you were just saying, it brings up for me. So I was the one who was seeing the evil that was playing out through the instrument of my father. Now, I'm not saying my father was evil because that would be the conflate. Paul: He's just an ignorant human being. That would be the conflate, the personal with the archetypal. No, but I, I'm saying though, he was so taken over or possessed. By these unconscious darker forces totally. Oh, he was oblivious to it such that he then became a conduit for this higher dimensional, darker force evil to come through him and to just destroy the whole landscape of the family. Paul: And, and what I began to realize. Was that the more like it sounds like with you, I was in the role of the identified patient, but I was in the role of the one trying to point out the darkness and I couldn't believe at first how the field, how my mother and the relatives and even my friends and then when psychiatry got brought in, they all shape shifted and configure themselves to protect the abuser and I realized, Oh my God, there's a non local protection record whenever somebody is actually like shining light on the darkness. Paul: Yeah. The darkness that is informing, you know, almost like the higher dimensional non local field will configure itself to protect the abuser. And it's funny, I've, you know, in my new book, in the one you have on Dreaming Wetiko, I've, I've created all, all these acronyms because I'm pointing out we need. Paul: Create new language to name these processes that all of us are experiencing, but we don't have names for them. There's something about finding the name that empowers us. And one of the acronyms I created, it's actually RTSE. Revelation Through Suppressing Exposure. And what that means is that, you know, say if somebody's playing out something evil and another person is like shedding light on the evil. Paul: Well, the evil people, if they're in a position of power, will try to suppress that voice. And by them doing that, they're trying to protect their darkness. But by doing that, they're actually revealing the darkness that they're embodying. Monica: And there's that trickster. Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally. And no, so it's, um, you know, you see, the thing is people hear this Watiko thing and they think it's just an idea or an abstract. Monica: It is until you see it. Yeah. But it's kind of like that game of, you know, the coconut shell and the ball under the coconut and you have to kind of keep your eye on it because it's, it's really fascinating. Paul: But even, even if you think, Oh, I'm keeping my eye on it, that thought form is itself what Wetiko, because he was that I, you know, and, and, you know, it's, it's such a, a, a potentially crazy making thing. Paul: But, you know, people who think it's just an abstract idea, I would point out, well, just, you know, go, we all have to navigate through, you know, our own addictions, whether it's to a substance, to a behavior, to a sense of self or to our suffering, you know, whatever the addiction is and underlying the addictive process or underlying trauma. Paul: Is what wetiko, because if you think about it for a second, say we're traumatized and we're all collectively individually and collectively suffering from PTSD, well, if I have PTSD, the way I'm trying to heal from the PTSD is the very thing that's invoking and creating the PTSD in an infinite regress in a self perpetuating, self reinforcing, self generating feedback loop without end, but encoded in that, What is trauma? Paul: Trauma is unexperienced experience at the moment of trauma. It's so overwhelming. We couldn't consciously experience it. We couldn't consciously symbolize or express it. So we dissociate and that split off part. If we don't assimilate it, that develops a seeming autonomy, you know, seemingly independent life and will of its own. Paul: In psychology speak, they call that an autonomous complex. The indigenous people call that a demon and that demon or autonomous complex has a seeming adversarial will towards us, towards our conscious intentions. And that's a way of describing what wetiko, but then what I'm pointing out with trauma and addiction encoded in. Paul: The trauma, so the way we're trying to heal, it is creating the very thing we're trying to heal, but like the point is, is that encoded in the trauma in the repetition compulsion, which is the symptomology, the pathology of trauma is we've compelled to recreate it and repeat it. Well, we're actually trying to re experience it consciously so that we can discharge it. Paul: Right. That's important because what, that's the way Watiko works is that encoded in the pathology, it's the source of evil is it's actually helping us potentially to awaken. So encoded in the mind virus, because the way to think of Watiko, it's a mind virus encoded in the pathology. It's actually helping us to heal it and to heal us, but we have, it's a participatory Thing we have to recognize that or if we don't then we're just faded to compel will be compelled to discontinue to destroy ourselves Like we see what's happening in Monica: the world Yeah and my listener is so very familiar with me talking about this process of Remembering and in some worlds you could call this parts work it very much Yeah, but I also want to get curious about the, how you see the differences play out. Monica: I completely kind of get this idea of each human being is projecting upon the world and how they see the world is oftentimes through their own unhealed parts. The lens is fractured. And so how I see an experience, the world is oftentimes, if not always a projection of what's going on with me here, right. Monica: And there's this outside world experience that we're all witnessing play out. I also. So here we are on this collective dissent and we're, I feel like, again, some of us feel invited. Many people feel kind of forced to look at the things that they don't want to look at. It's just fascinating to me how it plays out in the field, how, how this looks. Monica: On a very human level. Paul: Yeah. Well, what you're saying is so right on because you see what wetiko it's an inner disease of the soul that has a magical ability to extend itself out in the world and synchronistically configure events in our world. So as to reflect and reveal and express what's happening in the state of the psyche of somebody under its thrall. Paul: Now, just think about what I just said. That's amazing. That's an expression of a dream. Where our inner process actually is getting expressed via the medium of the outside world. You see, that's one of the ways of seeing Watiko. Because Watiko will do everything in its power to like, stop us from seeing it. Paul: Because Watiko, it's a form of blindness. You know, it works through the projective tendencies of the mind, so we entrance ourselves. But it's a, it's a peculiar form of blindness that actually believes it's sighted. And not only that, it believes it's more sighted than people who actually see. And so, you know, yeah, we are projecting onto the inkblot of our world. Paul: And then if we don't recognize that. What we're doing, we become entranced and conditioned by our projections, and that's a way of describing what wetiko, but when you recognize that the outer world, how it's synchronistically like expressing what's going on inside of us. That's to begin to see the dreamlike nature and seeing the dreamlike nature, you know, and what I mean by that is that, yeah, we're having a collective dream where dream characters in each other's dream. Paul: We're all dreaming up moment by moment. We're dreaming up what you go. We're dreaming up what's happening in the world. And to see that is to actually begin to connect. With our agency. It's like, Oh, I get it. I'm where we're I'm I'm dreaming. I'm the one interpreting and placing meaning on the inkblot. You see quantum physics. Paul: That's why I wrote a book on quantum physics. You know, it was saying, Oh, yeah, there's no objective world. You know, before quantum physics came on the scene, scientists were thinking, Oh, we're just passive observers trying to understand this outside world. And then quantum physics came into the world and into our minds and they empirically proved though, there's no, that's a nonsensical idea that there's an objective world that there's no carlet in reality. Paul: That's, it's only an idea in the mind, on the contrary, the act of observing this universe actually is influencing the very universe we're observing, which is to say that the act of observation is creative. You see, and this is the rabbit hole, because this is pointing at each one of us have this Unimaginably vast creative agency, you see, we've all to the extent we phone under the spell and it's like we're in a fairytale and our species has fallen under the spell. Paul: And I'm trying one of my roles to the extent that I've awakened to whatever degree I have is trying to like help. I'm always trying to figure out. How do I like help break the spell for other people? Because part of the spell is that, Oh, I'm helpless. And I'm only there's 8 billion of us. And I have no power with what's happening in the world. Paul: Well, that's on one superficial level. That might be true, but on a deeper level, that's a complete lie. Each one of us have this. Unimaginably vast creative power and to tap into that individually. That's the very way we could be of benefit for the world, because as each one of us does that, and particularly when we connect with other people who are also awakening to their creative genius, we discover, you know, Oh, we can hang out together. Paul: We can get in sync with each other and we can change the dream. And that's not new age rule. That's actually consciously realize we can step in to our evolution. And that's, that's what this is all Monica: about. Well, I've often shared with my listeners that a story of Lynn Twist, who founded, co founded the Pachamama Alliance, and one of their symposiums and one of their more popular programs initially was called, I think, Awaken the Dreamer. Monica: And it was this whole idea of helping people of the modern world kind of understand this concept of a dream culture, but also to awaken from the dream. Because to awaken is to, is to become intentional and present and conscious of what you're creating. And so, as we've talked about throughout this podcast episode, our unconscious is the one doing the creating in so many of these cases, our collective consciousness, our collective fears have created the world that we're living in. Monica: And so by kind of going in. And this is where things kind of really get interesting for me, Paul, because there's that exterior or what I would call just in my own terms, that exterior is that very kind of masculine world, that outwardly focused journey, the feminine journey being the inward journey, the descent, the experience into the underworld. Monica: And so this is where this whole idea makes so much sense to me when. We talk about the feminine returning and that actually the feminine being the medicine for an, and again, it's that a very basic other, right? Is this separation between the masculine and feminine that we've continued to. Perpetuate because those energies live within us, but if we've only ever focused on the outward journey, if we have never gotten still and quiet and distract ourselves all day long with the outside world and never go in and do that inner work, we are contributing to the nightmare, not the dream. Paul: Yeah, no, totally. I mean, one of the ways, one of the major ways what wetiko works, it distracts us to put our attention outside and to think the problem is outside or the solution is outside and that might have superficial truth to it, but the real, you know, solution, you know, and the source of the problem is inside of us. Paul: And what wetiko will do everything it can to make sure we don't look within. And I think one of my teachers, this great llama one morning we were having breakfast and he says to me, he goes, yeah, my whole, yeah. Practice is to just is to not get distracted and I knew exactly what he meant when he said it because yeah, in this tradition, you get introduced to your nature, you know, to your true nature, which they say is spacious like the sky, or it's like a mirror that's always available. Paul: It never tainted by the reflections and all that. And, you know, the student gets Introduced to their nature and they more and more become familiar with that and they more and more stabilize that to the point where then anything that comes up that seemingly a wound or an obscuration gets assimilated into the nature and seen as an expression of the nature instead of obscuring us from our nature. Paul: And so you just become so familiar with your nature that you just don't get distracted. That's the practice. And there are so many distractions in our world and so many people are like putting their attention outside of ourselves and what he go feasts off of that. Monica: Well, and this is probably a great time in our conversation to actually get to what is the cure for what wetiko. Paul: And I can talk about that. So on the one hand, the cure is to see it because it operates through the blind spots, through a projective tendencies. It's a form of blindness and to see. How it operates in the world through events in the world, but also to see how it operates through our unconscious reactions. Paul: In other words, to see how it operates in our mind, because if we think, oh, that person has Watiko and we don't, that point of view is an expression that you've fallen under Watiko's spell. Because the other way, there are a lot of different ways of saying the same thing. Another way of healing Watiko is to step out of the spell of the separate self, you know, because for example, so quantum physics has proven there's no objective universe. Paul: But if we don't take that online and we still are unconsciously thinking there's an objective universe, well, there's another half of that process and the other half is that we then dream ourselves up as a subject as an ego that's in relationship to the objective world and those two experiences. Our imagination of the objective world and our subjective experience of existing as a reference point in space and time reinforce each other. Paul: They mutually reinforce each other. It's like one illusion generating the other and it just continues ad infinitum. But when you recognize what quantum physics is offering us, that, oh, there's no objective universe, And you really take that in, you realize, well wait a second, what happened to the subject that I'm imagining I am? Paul: I as a subject need an object to be in relationship to in order to be a subject. If there's no object, who am I? So quantum physics has promoted itself to be a spiritual path. But the point is, it's, it's like actually bringing into real question. The nature of who are we? The point is, one of the ways of healing Watiko is to see through the illusion of a separate self and realize we're all interconnected, we're all like cells in a greater organism, we're interdependent. Paul: So that's another way of describing the solution. A third way is to say, Oh, to the extent we're cultivating compassion. You know, real compassion, which comes out of the realization that we're not separate. The energetic expression of that is compassion. So seeing the dreamlike nature, seeing through the separate self, connecting with great compassion. Paul: And the fourth one is being creative. Because creativity is our nature. Like I point out, I think in the new book that you have, there's this great Russian philosopher, Berdyev, who actually points out he's very into the second coming. of Christ. But he says, yeah, if we're just passively waiting for the second coming and we're not in touch with our creative nature, we're only going to be seeing the crucified, tortured face of Christ. Paul: But if we actually connect with our creative nature, then us doing that, we become the instruments through which the second coming incarnates through us expressing ourselves creatively. Monica: Beautiful. Just so beautiful. Well, for my listener, I just also want to highly recommend that you grab a copy of Undreaming wetiko, Breaking the Spell of the Nightmare Mind Virus. Monica: And just to give you just a brief overview, The part one of it, or in the preface, Paul talks about kind of what is it to unmask ourselves. Okay. And then he kind of draws like a thumbnail sketch of, of wetiko what it is. And then he starts going into what he calls spells, curses and shamans. And the reason I love this so much, Paul, is because I talk about the patriarchal trance of unworthiness. Monica: And, and I do, I get really curious about. The parallels and the differences between how this occurs for men and how this occurs for women, because I do think there's some subtle differences just based on the dominator culture model and how that has played out over time. So anyway, then he goes into angels, demons, and rebirth. Monica: And I loved this whole idea of reconnecting with our better angel or our angel, you know, like the guiding angel or what some might call the higher sage voice of wisdom within each of us that only really showed up in my life when I started to get quiet. When I started to actually cry out, actually through suffering, the voice started to finally answering me like, finally, I thought you'd never ask. Monica: That was my experience, which I can now have humor about. I absolutely did not have humor at the time. So, you know, you really do such a great job, I think, of really talking about. What it is to reconnect with ourselves in this way and to create a pathway back through a spiritual invitation without it being woo, woo, or religious or any of that. Monica: So it's very kind of what I really appreciated about your writing was it was just so straightforward and you give great examples and then he goes into the. Quantum parts of this, which I find fascinating. And then my favorite part is the, toward the end, Paul, you start talking about the self as revelation. Monica: And I, I love that expression. Like what gets revealed gets healed. And another expression that I use a lot is let your whole life be a revelation. It's this idea of it's actually. The art of seeing begins to really play out in what I call doing your own revelation project, where we actually, if there's nobody out there, okay, if we're just playing that game, there's nobody out there, then all day long, I'm asking myself, what is wanting to be revealed right now? Monica: What is wanting to be revealed within me right now? Right. Paul: Totally. Yes. Well, what you're saying, I mean, I appreciate because in my work, I point out there's a figure young calls it the Daimon, which is the inner voice, the guiding spirit. And then, you know, the way to think of it is like, it's sort of, you know, it can be potentially this inner angel or muse or genius, or, you know, it helps us find our voice, our calling, our vocation. Paul: And all of that and the whole point of the therapy that young was developing was connecting people, getting them into intimate relationship with this inner wisdom figure that was seemingly autonomous. It's both us and it's beyond us. It knows stuff that we don't know. It has wisdom. It's awake. It can guide us. Paul: It's in touch with our wholeness. But he points out that if we don't consciously connect with our daimon, and he calls it the ego self axis, where the ego develops a relationship with the self, and it's reciprocal and goes back and forth, like any intimate, you know, relationship, really. But if we don't consciously connect with our daimon, that daimon consolates negatively and becomes a demon. Paul: You know, so that's really interesting is like encoded in the potential energy that say it can save us and help us if we don't relate to it properly, it becomes like against us and young actually points out that encoded in that diamond hidden encoded within it is the creative spirit, you know, right there is like showing us if we don't connect consciously with our creative part, then that repressed creative energy. Paul: Gets constellated in a way that's against us into it. It'll seem like a demon, you know And that's why once again the profound importance of expressing ourselves creatively. Yeah. Monica: I well I love that because what comes up for me is also the quote was it the gospel of Thomas? Who said what you don't bring forth in you? Monica: I forget what the quote was Paul: Yeah, if you bring forth what's within you it'll save you if you don't bring forth what's within you it'll kill you Monica: Yeah, so it's like, that's what he was pointing to. Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's all. That's a great responsibility that we all have. Monica: Um, it's a radical responsibility. Paul: There's no one out. There's no, you can't outsource the blame. And, you know, no, the idea is that we, we're the dreamer of our dream. And yeah, we're having a collective dream too. And what I'm trying to point out is when a sufficient number of people like the hundredth monkey phenomena or. In the Bible, they talk about the symbolic number 144, 000, but the idea is, is that when a sufficient, you know, like a nut, when you bake bread, if there's enough yeast in the dough, the bread will rise and the same thing, if there is enough of us individually. Paul: Who are like connecting with our nature and who are these, like these little jewels of light and we actually connect with each other that can actually change the whole collective unconscious and change the trajectory of the self destructive, genocidal, suicidal trajectory of our, of our species. Monica: Yeah. Monica: Wow. Well, that feels like a really hopeful note to end on Paul. And I, I just want to thank you. I mean, I got to tell you, I can see how challenging it is. Your passion for this is obvious, but I can also see how challenging it is to communicate this, to articulate it, to. I'm sure to meet people's objective challenges about it. Monica: There's so many ways that I really get that you have had to think and feel into how to articulate and bring this to the surface for, for everyone to see. And I just want to tell you that I personally am so grateful for your work. Thank you. Well, Paul: I really appreciate it. And just one thought that that brings up, like, so I have a friend, he was the one who did the audible, who read the book because it's just not my thing. Paul: And he's a minister. Right. And he was telling me, Oh my God, Paul, when I was reading your work. I was completely attacked by demons. I couldn't believe it and I just began laughing. I go, imagine what it was like to write the book. Yes. Because I every day felt these incredible demonic forces that were doing everything they could to stop me from writing the book. Paul: But I was fortunate enough to realize, Oh, I can interpret this. Like this is an expression that I'm on the right path. Great. This is the best news I've heard all day. Instead of interpreting it like in a negative way and then going belly up and stopping the writing. But I really appreciate it. Monica: Yeah. And what I hear you saying again, just to demystify this for our listeners, right? Monica: Like I read the shaman's prayer before you and I started, right? And I do that to set a container so that the trance of unworthiness doesn't, for example, my perfectionist part will always try to, you know, run the show, literally run the podcast show. Cause I want to do it right. And I want to do a good job. Monica: So again, if I, if the perfectionist is running the show, the other. Parts of me are not present and can't listen with my whole self, my whole present self. So again, I just want to demystify that for my listener, because as you're talking about being attacked, I think sometimes like, again, we think that that's coming from the outside and. Monica: So there's both and can be true in these cases, but usually it's a part of us that has hijacked the rest of us. Paul: Yeah, but that's exactly the description of what wetiko, it colonizes the psyche, it hijacks the executive function. Totally. I mean, I could write a book exactly about that. I already did. Yeah. Monica: Yes. Monica: Brilliant. Thank you. And for my listener, I'll be sure to put Paul's links in the show notes, and I'll also add some other articles and some other places that Paul has expanded on this with a couple of other interviews that I heard that I really, really loved. So until next time. More to be revealed. And thank you again, Paul, just for your incredible work in the world. Monica: And I just honor it so much. Appreciate it. Paul: Oh, thank you so much. I just so appreciate that. Really. Thank you. Monica: We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us at jointherevelation. com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes. Monica: We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed. Yeah. Yeah.