Dreaming Ourselves Awake: How Paul Levy’s Workshop Changed How I See the World

I recently journeyed through Paul Levy’s Dreaming Ourselves Awake, a 7-week deep dive into the nature of Wetiko, the dreamlike fabric of reality, and the alchemical process of turning shadow into light. Each session offered both a map and a mirror, revealing how unconscious forces shape our lives and how awareness, creativity, and presence can dissolve their grip. We explored terma (hidden sacred treasures), the archetype of the wounded healer, and the role of evil as a paradoxical catalyst for awakening. This wasn’t just a workshop; it was a transmission - one that continues to ripple through my life, my work, and the way I meet others.

I want to share some highlights of what I took from the workshop, in part so I can integrate what I experienced (because my mind is still chewing on some of the meaty concepts) but also so I can pass the torch, allowing the wisdom to be passed on.

*All interpretations below are my own, but they are based on the workshop and concepts of Paul Levy.

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Meeting Wetiko

Wetiko, as Paul Levy describes it, is an unconscious force that can quietly shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions. At first, you might think of it as a kind of mind virus, something that spreads subtly without us even noticing. Over time, you begin to see that it is not limited to our inner world. It can show up in personal habits, in family dynamics, and in the ways our societies are organised. It works through what we cannot or will not see, feeding on the places we have not yet brought into awareness.

The Basics

Let’s break this down gently, for those who are new to these ideas and for those who prefer to wade slowly into the deeper waters. If you are familiar with these concepts, just skip along.

We have our conscious mind, the part we are aware of in the present moment. This is where deliberate thought, decision-making, and reasoning happen. It is the voice that narrates our day, the awareness that chooses, plans, and responds based on what we can directly see and feel. And then we have the unconscious - the vast storehouse of thoughts, beliefs, memories, and internal programming that shape what we do, say, and feel without us even realising it. Many use the image of an iceberg to explain this. The small portion above the water represents the conscious mind, while the much larger mass hidden beneath the surface represents the unconscious. We navigate life mostly from the visible tip, even though the greater body of the iceberg is quietly steering our direction.

But there is more. As psychologist Carl Jung described, we are also influenced by the collective unconscious, a shared field of archetypal patterns and deeper forces that connect us all. If the unconscious is the submerged iceberg, the collective unconscious is the vast ocean it floats in. These are the cultural myths, inherited meanings, and timeless energies that shape our lives, often without us knowing.

How the layers shape us

The choices we make each day might seem simple on the surface, but they are often shaped by these unseen layers of the mind. To see how these layers shape us, we can trace them in the smallest of moments, even in something as simple as deciding what to eat.

Say I decide to eat a salad. My conscious mind tells me I want something healthy, light, and inexpensive. This is the part of me making a deliberate, rational choice, based on what is in my wallet and what I believe is good for me in that moment.

Beneath that, my unconscious mind, the part I am unaware of, might be quietly guiding the decision. Maybe I am seeking a sense of control after a stressful day, or reacting to an old belief that eating clean makes me more lovable. Maybe I choose the cheaper option because, as a child, I was scolded for wasting money, and that memory still shapes how I behave without me realising. This layer is formed by personal history, emotional residue, and beliefs I have absorbed over time.

Deeper still, the collective unconscious, as Jung described it, holds shared symbols and cultural meanings that live in all of us. The salad might symbolise purity, discipline, or moral virtue, shaped by generations of messaging around health, thinness, and worthiness. Maybe I glimpsed an ad earlier showing a glowing, slim woman eating a salad with ease. I barely noticed it at the time, but the image lingers.

From the perspective of quantum physics, my focus on the salad turns all of those invisible influences into one lived choice. My attention helps shape reality, bringing a single possibility into form. In this way, even a simple dinner becomes a co-creation between my mind, my culture, and the universe itself.

The once simple salad now reveals itself as a complex decision. The challenge is that when we make choices from the conscious level, like the visible tip of the iceberg, we may have no idea that the deeper layers beneath and the vast waters surrounding us are helping shape what we do, think, feel, and say. Literally every action, thought, reaction and behaviour is crossing through all of these layers.

And here in these deeper waters is where we meet Wetiko.

How Wetiko works

Wetiko weaves through all of these layers like a shadowy mass in the ocean. It drifts beneath the iceberg, hidden in the depths of the unconscious, and weaves itself through the collective waters we all share. Like the unseen presence of a predator in deep water, it feeds slowly and quietly, through our blind spots, drawing strength from our disconnection, denial, and fear. Its danger lies in the very fact that we do not notice it.

Wetiko is not just a force within our psyche, it lives in the outer world too, shaping our systems, cultures, and institutions. It whispers through media, economic structures, political narratives, and social conditioning. It feeds wherever there is unconsciousness. And if we are not willing to look into the murky waters of our own inner world, or question the surface of the world around us, we risk being lived by something that does not serve our wholeness.

Oh, pish posh, you say...there's no such thing as a Wetiko predator in the water. But, as Paul says, your denial is already a sign that it has its hooks in you. Wetiko loves to be dismissed. It thrives in the places we refuse to look. It pulls us under while we are still insisting there is nothing in the water.

It reminds me of that line from The Usual Suspects about the mysterious Keyser Söze: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” That feels to me how Wetiko works. It moves through our blind spots, wears our face, and uses our voice. It convinces us we are acting on our own behalf, when really we are being acted through.

But the moment we begin to sense its shape, to name it, feel it, and look it in the eye, it begins to lose its power.

Awareness is the crack in its spell. What was once unconscious becomes conscious. And in that moment, we are no longer asleep. We are choosing.

So how do we avoid being driven by Wetiko?

We pause. We get still. We begin to witness ourselves - our habits, our impulses, our thoughts, with curiosity. We create. We dream. We allow the imagination to speak.

We ask: What is moving through me right now? Whose voice is this? What wants to be known?

We do the work of going inward, raising the shadows that lurk beneath the waters to be transmuted into light. These shadows are not here to punish us. They are here to help us reclaim more of our light, to become our fullest, most radiant potential. But if we avoid them, if we pretend they do not exist, swimming around them in denial, they will eventually swallow us whole, moving our inner and outer world further into chaos, despair, and darkness.

Paul Levy invites us to attune to the dreamer within, to tap into the creative force, and to see the world through a cross-cultural, multilayered, multidimensional lens, one woven with dreaming, imagination, and quantum reality.

We are not separate from the mystery of life; we are in constant relationship with it. And from there, from that place of sacred witnessing, we can choose how to respond.

An Exercise in Dreaming - The Holographic Bubble

In the spirit of Paul’s invitation to dream ourselves awake, I have begun carrying a new way of seeing myself and the world I move through. This is not just a passing image, but a living model I hold, a lens through which I now view every interaction. It quietly shapes how I walk into a room, sit with a client, or meet someone in the supermarket.

I see each of us as a holographic bubble, made of light, awareness and energy. Imagine a bubble floating, thin and shimmering, holding the imprint of who we are. When we arrive here, this body is clear and open. Over time, experiences imprint themselves on this bubble. Some are mine, the unprocessed grief, fear and shame I have gathered in this life. Much of it is older, carried from generations before me, traces of ancestral wounds and the denser patterns of the collective’s unhealed pain.

Because we are holographic, even the smallest fragment contains the pattern of the whole. A single reflection holds all reflections. As everyone is a holographic bubble, our fields intersect, overlap and merge. There are pathways of exchange between us, flowing freely because there is no fixed boundary or solid wall. What moves in one can resonate in another. Holding this image changes how I move through the world, questioning each day what is mine, what belongs to the whole and what is truly alive in me right now.

For example, I was speaking recently with a mother who met me with a sour face, her energy feeling closed and laced with judgment. My first reaction was to question what I had done wrong, to wonder why she did not like me. But holding the bubble image helped me to see that she carries her own sediment, currents and debris that influence how she moves through the world, and her waters are not separate from mine. By sitting with the possibility that she was reflecting something in me, I could hold space for both of us. I could honour what was present in each bubble and allow the energy to rise to the surface and dissipate.

The next time I saw her, she felt like a different person, warm, open, and attentive. It was as if something had shifted in the shared waters between us.

The dreaming shows me that my work is not to curse those who enter my bubble or fear the greater ocean, but to tend my waters, to let light in, to welcome flow, to allow what is murky to settle and clear. And each time I do, the greater ocean changes too.

Paul often reminds us that beneath all the sediment and shadow, our true nature is a boundless creative force. This is not something we have to earn or achieve, and it is not something we must wrestle with Wetiko to reclaim. It is what we already are. When we see ourselves clearly, we allow this greater creative force to move through us, to breathe life into our actions, and to shape the world around us in ways that serve life rather than diminish it.

How We Begin

You do not need to name it Wetiko, or know all the theories, or understand quantum anything. You simply start by noticing. By being honest with what is here. By allowing curiosity to replace judgment.

Something isn’t wrong with you. Something is asking to be seen.

Feeling is medicine. Not fixing. Not bypassing. Not rushing to change. Just feeling.

When you allow yourself to feel, really feel, without making it wrong, without analysing it to death, you become the witness. And the witness is not trapped. The witness is not taken by Wetiko. The witness sees, and in that seeing, begins to transmute.

Emotion becomes energy in motion. What felt like chaos begins to show its deeper intelligence. What felt like shame reveals a doorway. What felt like resistance softens into revelation.

This is the medicine.

It’s not easy.

But it is sacred.

And this isn’t just about personal healing. The more each of us becomes aware of Wetiko and the unconscious patterns that shape us, the more light we bring into the collective field. Every time we choose to feel, to see, to respond with presence instead of reaction, we interrupt the cycle. We shift the current. In a world overwhelmed by disconnection, projection, and pain, this inner work is not just self-development, it is world work.

It matters.

It ripples.

It’s how we dream a new world awake.

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If this speaks to you, I encourage you to explore Paul Levy’s work. His teachings will continue to ripple through my own life and practice. And if you feel called to take these ideas deeper into your own lived experience, you’re welcome to reach out. Whether with me or in your own way, tending your bubble changes more than you can imagine.