Beyond Fear and Greed: A Call to Awaken Human Consciousness
Listening to the Pain of the World: Healing the Human Soul
My heart is listening to the pain of the world. There is so much anger, fear, suspicion, projection, despair, violence, grief, sadness, and mistrust. We live in a time when trustworthy leaders are almost nowhere to be found. Some are dictators. Others are neoliberal mouthpieces. Many are corrupt, serving the interests of billionaires and corporate lobbyists. Politics has become a theatre of self-aggrandising agendas, ambitious posturing, and empty promises—while children go hungry and families live under clouds of uncertainty.
How did we arrive at a moment when our governments are filled with people so disconnected from their own souls that they can no longer empathise with human tragedy, pain, or suffering?
Most people simply want a reasonable life: decent pay, affordable food, secure housing, healthcare, and good education for their children. Most people are willing to play their part in creating a sustainable world built on connection, relationship, interdependence, and community. They do not want wars, dictatorships, violent invasions, or domination.
Yet, the geopolitical crisis we now face is not the result of one leader, party, or ideology. It is the product of an intricate web of psychosocial and psychospiritual forces shaping our collective order—forces that, while complex on the surface, stem from a deeper spiritual pathology.
A good place to begin understanding this is with the small but powerful minority who have gained overwhelming influence over governments, technology, and global policymaking. Their unchecked power is pushing our world toward self-destruction in pursuit of ever-greater wealth, control, and resources. This is no longer a conspiracy theory—it is happening in plain sight. Their greed is underpinned by a cold contempt for ordinary humanity, one that has made life for millions harsher, lonelier, and more desperate.
Author and spiritual teacher Paul Levy describes this dark influence as Wetiko—an ancient psychospiritual contagion residing in the collective consciousness of humanity. According to Levy, Wetiko acts like a virus of the mind, amplifying selfishness, corruption, violence, and ignorance. It manipulates us into collective blindness, cutting us off from our divine nature. True freedom, he argues, comes from recognising and healing our susceptibility to Wetiko, which awakens us to a higher level of consciousness.
Greed and avarice have become the engines of the modern world order, impoverishing both material and spiritual life. Yet we are capable of so much more than what our systems of government, commerce, and religion tell us. We are, in essence, luminous beings—souls divinised by the light of grace.
Our true identity has been deliberately obscured by both human and nonhuman forces. Throughout history, humanity has shown its paradoxical nature: capable of both brutal tribalism and transcendent compassion. Alongside fear and scarcity, there have always been acts of deep altruism, empathy, and self-sacrifice.
We have seen individuals whose awakened consciousness changed the course of history: Martin Luther King Jr., Thích Nhat Hạnh, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman, Emmeline Pankhurst, Maya Angelou, Malala Yousafzai, and countless others whose names never reached fame.
Even in the dark days of segregation, young women like Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, Ann Braden, Sandra Hayden, and Constance Curry risked everything to resist injustice. They were ordinary people whose crises became catalysts for divine awakening. Their lives remind us that the light of higher consciousness is not reserved for saints, but lives within us all.
We may never be called to heroic sacrifice, but we are, every day, invited to express our truest nature in small yet sacred ways. As Teilhard de Chardin described, humanity is part of a vast noosphere—a shared field of consciousness. Every act of goodness ripples through this network, evolving both humanity and the planet toward its divine potential.
At the heart of this evolution lies compassion—a quality with exponential power to awaken higher consciousness. Compassion is the recognition of suffering, joined with the will to alleviate it. It unites empathy with courage, wisdom with tenderness. When cultivated intentionally, compassion becomes a radiant contagion, an antidote to Wetiko.
This was the power that Martin Luther King Jr. and others channeled in their movements of peaceful resistance. Through love and compassion, they dismantled systems of hatred more effectively than violence ever could.
I believe that humanity has long been manipulated to act from fear and division by unseen forces seeking our downfall. But I also believe that we now stand at the threshold of transformation—a shift in global consciousness that could redirect us from the brink of self-destruction.
Amid today’s chaos, the cure is already within us. It begins by acknowledging and befriending the shadow parts of our psyche—the places where Wetiko hides. With compassion as our guide, we can journey through this inner darkness without shame or fear. Compassion steadies the ego, reminding us that we are not our wounds, not our mistakes, not our despair.
Our true identity has never been touched by evil. It remains whole, luminous, and divine—and it is calling us home.