What if everything we’ve been taught to believe about reality is wrong? What if we’re not just living in the world, but dreaming it—and the dream is sick? In this episode of the Gospel of Direct Experience, Michael Ellick and Jeff Mansfield welcome Paul Levy, a writer, mystic, and self-described “wounded healer,” who has spent decades exposing the insidious mind-virus known as Watiko and more recently has been describing the spiritual side of the revelations of quantum physics. We dive into his own initiation—his ecstatic spiritual awakening that landed him in a psychiatric hospital—before unpacking the terrifying and liberating realization that reality itself is more fluid, responsive, and alive than we’ve been led to believe.
Episode Highlights
[00:04:54] A Bolt of Lightning
Paul recounts his life-changing awakening experience and the ecstatic state that led to his first psychiatric hospitalization.
[00:13:39] The Dreamlike Nature of Reality
Paul explains one of the central insights of his awakening—that we're living in a collective dream.
[00:28:47] The Oppositional Adversarial Force
Whether its the anti-bliss police or the devil, Michael, Jeff, and Paul discuss the cultural, psychological, and spiritual forces that resist and undermine spiritual awakenings.
[00:38:05] What is Watiko?
Paul explains Watiko as a mind virus that distorts perception, leads to self-sabotage, and thrives on unconscious projection.
[00:55:54] The Power of Creativity
How engaging with creativity inoculates us against Watiko and connects us to the deeper reality beneath our illusions.
[01:03:12] Spirit Guides
Jeff tells a story about a recent interaction with the spirit of the painter, George Inness.
[01:10:12] Synchronicities
A discussion of synchronicities as a spiritual navigation system, oracles of the dream-like nature of reality which demonstrates the relationship between inner and outer, mind and matter.
Paul Levy
Born in 1956, Paul Levy grew up in Yonkers, New York. In the mid-seventies he went to college at what was then called the State University of New York at Binghamton (now called Binghamton University), receiving degrees in both economics and studio art. While an undergraduate at Binghamton, he was hired by Princeton University to do research in economics. When he graduated college, he stopped his studies in economics and pursued his career in art, moving out to the Bay Area, where he was both making, and teaching art.
In 1981, due to an intense personal trauma, he had a life-changing spiritual awakening in which he began to recognize the dreamlike nature of reality. During the first year of his spiritual emergence, Paul was hospitalized a number of times, and was told he was having a severe psychotic break from reality. Much to his surprise, he was (mis)diagnosed as having a chemical imbalance and was informed that he had what was then called manic-depression (now called bi-polar disorder), and that he would have to live with his illness for the rest of his life and would need to take medication till his dying breath.
Little did the doctors realize, however, that he was taking part in a mystical awakening/shamanic initiation process, which at times mimicked psychosis but in actuality was a spiritual experience of a far different order, completely off the map of the psychiatric system. Fortunately, he was able to extricate himself from the medical and psychiatric establishment so that he could continue his process of self-discovery. Thankfully, as Paul freed himself from the shackles of psychiatry, he found his spiritual teachers, who instead of seeing Paul as crazy, recognized that he was beginning to spiritually awaken.
An artist, after the trauma of his shamanic break-down/break-through, he became a certified art teacher. Due to his interest in the work of C. G. Jung, by the end of the decade he became the manager of the C. G. Jung Foundation Book Service in New York, as well as the advertising manager for the Jungian journal Quadrant. In 1993, after many years of struggling to contain and integrate his non-ordinary experiences, Paul started to openly share his insights about the dreamlike nature of reality. He began giving talks and facilitating groups based on how life is a shared waking dream that we are all co-creating and co-dreaming together. He is the founder of the Awakening in the Dream Community in Portland, Oregon.
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul is a wounded healer in private practice, helping others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. His work has gone through three phases: because of his intense interest in dreams (both night dreams and the dreamlike nature of reality), he was first known as "the dream guy." After writing Dispelling Wetiko, he became associated with the idea of wetiko. After the publication of The Quantum Revelation, he is now seen as connected with quantum physics. All three aspects - dreams, wetiko and quantum physics are interconnected and complementary facets of a deeper reality into which he is continually deepening his investigation.
He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis (2006), Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil (2013), Awakened by Darkness: When Evil Becomes Your Father (2015) and The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality (2018). A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over 30 years, he has intimately studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma. He was the coordinator of the Portland chapter of the PadmaSambhava Buddhist Center for over twenty years.
Where to find Paul:
Continue the Conversation
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