Call for Essays and Other Works | The Century of Awakening
January 16, 2021 Kosmos Community News
Dear Kosmos Family,
Below is my brief essay about the current unrest in the US. We follow with some classic Kosmos essays about wetiko – a virus of the mind, as destructive and widespread as Covid-19.
Then, our Call for Essays and Other Works for the Spring Edition of Kosmos Quarterly. Share your wisdom with Kosmos!
Our Struggle Is with Illusion | Finding the Vaccine for a Virus of the Mind
by Rhonda Fabian
The misinterpretation of self is at the center of much current unrest. What does this mean?
Many who believe the US election was ‘stolen’, suffer because they mis-equate an erroneous belief, (Trump won), with their personal identity or sense of self. We all do this to a lesser or greater degree. We become attached to our opinions and stories, which in turn are conditioned by our childhood, our traumas, and the opinions and stories we consume.
Yes, beliefs matter. Truth and justice matter. Yet, our emotional attachment to any belief or ideology rooted in fear, greed, anger or false-pride should not be confused with who we are.
Einstein called the misinterpreted self “an optical illusion of consciousness”, the incessant stream of chatter in our heads we call “me, mine, I.” None of us are immune to the illusory self. It is the ego craving attention and validation. It criticizes others and can be sharp, sarcastic, selfish and even violent. At Kosmos, we sometimes call the illusory self, wetiko, and you can find articles about this below and at our website.
Our tendency to crave attention and validation can make us easy prey to elaborately constructed conspiracy theories, which turn our own powers of reason against us. Make no mistake, conspiracy theories are not “organic”, the intentional creators of these mental toxins have agendas. They are the game masters who pose ‘questions’ and plant ‘clues’ that manipulate our natural curiosity and make us feel clever indeed when we discover the ‘answers’ they want us to find.
Rumi, the Persian poet and jurist said, “sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” He understood that the illusory self is the barricade we erect against the ambiguities of unconditioned reality.
More on the Wetiko Mind Virus from Kosmos
Covid-19 is a Symbol of a Much Deeper Infection | The Wetiko Mind-Virus
By Paul Levy
For almost twenty years I’ve been writing about an invisible, contagious death-creating virus that no one is immune to that has been insidiously spreading and replicating itself throughout the human species. This deadly disease is a virus of the mind—the Native Americans call it “wetiko”—that literally cultivates and feeds on fear and separation. A psycho-spiritual illness, it is a psychosis in the true sense of the word, “a sickness of the spirit.” The origin and medium of operations of the wetiko virus is none other than the human psyche.
Seeing Wetiko: Through the Eyes of a Seventh Generation Algonquin
By Marcus Grignon
Posoh mawaw niwak. Nekataw manawich kikitem. (Hello everyone. I am going to speak.)
The injustice we witness every day, whether it be environmental, societal, and even economic, has a root cause. Nobody sees it because it has been invisible since the genocide committed against the cultures who lost their voice to speak its name. This being is not one sole individual, but a metaphysical entity bent on destruction. Wetiko in the Cree language, Wendigo in other Algonquin speaking tribes scattered throughout the Great Lakes region is what they call this evil spirit who represents environmental destruction, greed and ego in human beings
Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition
By Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk
What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism we see all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection?
By Myk Estrada,
My grandmother grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles during the 1940s, a time when xenophobia induced redlining & segregation of the city’s neighborhoods set the stage for the Watts Riots taking place some 20 years later. My grandmother’s grandmother was technically from Texas, although her parents knew the land as Mexico prior to the Mexican-American War in 1846.
Kosmos Call for Essays and Other Works
The Century of Awakening
Deadline: February 20, 2021
If we are to survive the coming storms, collective awakening must be our goal. What does this mean for each person, community and nation?
Lack of self-awareness combined with disregard for the truth about our present reality, has resulted, for many, in an inability to directly experience our essential nature and the real perils of our current trajectory. Now is the time to dedicate our personal effort to generating the energy of peace and self-awareness, and to accelerate collective awakening to our interconnection, shared values and goals. The Sustainable Development Goals are an important step in this direction.
What ethics and the standards of behavior can we commit to? What truths enable us to be strong, stable and clear, especially when enduring adversity or challenges? What authentic ways can we build conscious communities? And what tools, including technologies, can help us to literally save the Earth and all her forms of life?
Life that can be saved, must be saved. Our task is to come together and generate the collective will and energy to do so. Ours must be the century of awakening, if we are to survive.
Share your ideas. We invite you to submit an essay up to 1000 words, a poem, or other artwork, in response to any of these prompts or what the theme means to you. We will choose several works to publish in our Quarterly and on our website.
Deadline: February 20, 2021
GO TO OUR SUBMISSION GUIDELINES