Doomsday prepping was pretty popular before COVID, and now it’s blooming big time. America is the biggest tribe of preppers to date with millions doing all they can to prep for a time when the system falls and we all need to fend for ourselves.

You may think they are paranoid but they do this to bring comfort to their anxiety of ‘what if’. Most think there is no ‘what if,’ it’s a given.

It’s less weird now and more and more people are going off grid and finding ways that they might survive with the minimum of supplies and resources.

I myself am not a prepper. I am very much a live-in-the-moment kind of gal, who trusts whatever my fate maybe it is to be, and as long as I remain aware and my insight is in check, whatever happens in my future is meant to.

In saying that, I am into the concept of ‘Spiritual Prepping’. Not so much stocking up for later but garnering tools right now that I can embody and when and if the time comes my inner core will be resilient enough to endure whatever happens. There is that old saying, you can take everything from me but you can’t take my soul. So to me spiritually prepping is about connecting and nourishing my spirit so the conscious link to my soul and the source will always be strong.

I feel it’s important to prepare for our personal spirituality and the wounds and worries that arise and to be aware of the collective in regards to Wetiko, the collective psychosis, and how we can be influenced by it.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Paul Levy, the author of Undreaming Wetiko (his latest book) the other day. What I found interesting was that he and I came to our path of service in a very similar way.

Both of us blew open on a psychic level. He tasted psychiatric confinement, fortunately, I did not. We both dived into a state of Spiritual Emergence and found our way home by similar paths. Jung, Shamanism and Buddhism. We both felt overcome by the collective darkness and in our own way found our way out of it to be of service to the greater whole.

I found Paul to be very authentic and open and his understanding of the collective psychosis incredibly insightful and well-researched. Wetiko reminds me of the Nothing in The Never Ending Story. It is said there is an unknown entity behind the Nothing but it never is identified as such. In regards to Wetiko, it is similarly not a being of any kind. It in my view is an unbalanced force that seeps into the psyche of humanity and blends with our own personal wounds. Paul I feel is preparing us in ways to look beyond the personal and see how we are affected by the collective madness that is currently running rife in the world as it feeds off the duality, the discord, the division and the destruction. The War outside of you is a reflection of the war within. We need to be aware of both. The conversation we had led me to this blog title. I kept thinking of how we can prepare for more changes and discord within humanity’s struggle to evolve.

The collective shifting sands can feel incredibly destabilising. And it’s important that we don’t get sucked into that on a psychic level. It’s crucial to be aware of what is ours and what is being influenced and amplified by Wetiko. I feel that all people who pass through the valley of mental health issues ( acute sensitivity) are deeply affected by the unseen Wetiko influence. I sure was until I realised I had absorbed a great deal that was not mine and was being drained at the same time from something I could not name.

So these are some of the people I recommend to learn from that you might like to add to your own Spiritual Prep kit. I don’t doubt there are others, but at the moment these are the ones that I resonate with due to my background and my interests.

Paul Levy: Writer and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner. To help you understand how to be aware and manage the collective psychosis that digs into your own personal challenges. If you are not much of a reader there are plenty of podcasts and interviews etc. However the books especially his recent ones are very helpful with case study examples and other insights that the interviewers don’t pick up on.

Bessel Van Der Kolk: Psychiatrist, author and researcher. A rarity for a psychiatrist to think outside the box, and Bessel does just that in understanding where trauma can be eased. He is great and guiding you in understanding the intricacies of how trauma plays out in life in layman’s terms and he has flung open the door to finding different modalities that suit the individual. Bessel often shares that trauma is a state of not being present. We need to be present to thrive through these changes. Personally, I feel this is the way psychiatry needs to go, to move out of the medical assessment model and branch into more helpful modalities that people can learn. Honestly, he gives me hope that the old Freudian model is finally being phased out.

Gabor Mate: Physician and author. Gabor has an incredible understanding of the cause of many ailments including addiction. He is non-judgmental in his approach and in my opinion, is one of the best wound trackers I have come across. He looks underneath all the rubble of emotions and layer by layer leads the person into their own insight.

These three men all have experienced deep trauma. Both Gabor and Bessel were deeply affected by the Nazi occupation be that from their own experiences or generational trauma. Levy, knows trauma like the back of his hand due to his brutal father. These men are pioneers for other men to be able to be allowed to express the deeper wounding that has been shut down, and for women, they give us hope in their ability to be compassionate and of genuine service to those in need.

Now for two women who have influenced me greatly.

Sandra Ingerman: Shamanic teacher and author. Sandra has such a lovely way of guiding you to find a deeper connection to the beauty of the medicine of the earth and how to embody the shamanic way in harmony with it. With Sandra, there is a deep resonance for me as she was the first medicine person who introduced me to the concept of Soul Retrieval which is a cornerstone of my path of service. She also speaks of Transmutation, by engaging the light within and emanating it, to the point she even uses the same language as I have (and I did not learn this from her) in experiencing a star from the night sky within and letting it emanate throughout your being and beyond. As a star needs no effort to shine, it just does. Doing this can connect us to our own starlight as a reflection of our spirit. And this is what I seem to be bringing my clients back to quite a lot during these times. We need to resource from within. ‘All you have to do is shine your light’ she says. ‘We don’t need to focus on healing others, more so we need to just connect to being that starlight’. When we are in this space others benefit naturally and can spontaneously heal. Sandra always feels like the type of woman if you knocked on her door she would invite you to sit on her veranda with a cool drink a smile and the scent of sage emanating from her hair. Approachable and deeply compassionate.

Edith Egar: Psychologist and author. Was discovered on a pile of bodies at Austwich barely alive. This woman and her book ‘The Gift’ blew me away. Such a small book, but what a huge impact. If anyone knows how to survive a death camp and come out the other side to want to be of service to people in trauma in such a lovely authentic way, it’s Edith. She speaks of the mind being much like a concentration camp and how we can free ourselves from our own imprisonment. This from a woman’s perspective was gold for me. I know Victor Frankel was famous for what he wrote about it, but from a woman’s perspective, I gained a different insight that I could fully relate to. I highly recommend her book ‘The Gift’ to anyone struggling.

How am I helping in regard to this Spiritual Prepping?

Several clients who have spent quite some time learning from traditional shamans, find that what I teach is more ‘personally’ empowering. They could find a shaman and the shaman would release something but they didn’t really know what or how, so when they felt confronted with another challenge, and the shaman was not around, they found themselves adrift. How are they going to work with what comes up be that an altered experience, a resurfaced wound or an unwelcome visitor from a between-world dimension?

My path of service and my books are a way of accessing one’s own spiritual and psychic inner support. Even my latest novel is a dark ride admittedly but the journey is one of reclaiming one’s inner authentic light, much like I had to when I was lost in the dark.

I am very much into personal empowerment as and as many of you know, my credo is safe practices. People these days are hugely reliant on what ordinary reality offers. So much so that we have become addicted. Addicted even to healing but not integrating much of it at all. If we really want to prep, we need to embody the healing that we are currently doing so we have a core to source from in the future.

Right now the Middle East has exploded and tragedy abounds. Innocent lives are taken in the name of ownership on both sides. No one owns the earth. No-one. We are here to be caretakers. This right here is an example. How are you managing the news? What do you do with the information coming into your psyche? How are you looking after yourself? How do you befriend your anger? How to you calm your fears? How do you nourish yourself? What do you do to connect and not feel pulled in multiple directions? How do you create a sense of safety within? These are the things we need to be working on, to prep for as it’s not going to stop. Humanity is going through a psychotic breakdown of sorts and we need to be able to handle what we get thrown and or what we absorb.
Even more so during these times we need to remember our starlight, the flow of that light and let it emanate. That and if you can find it, I would definitely recommend taking a flower remedy daily to keep your vibration above the heavy collective. I personally recommend the Bach Flower, Oak. I call it my resilience tonic. We are not trying to shut off or deny the uncomfortable we just want to be more resilient in the face of it.

Bringing medicine ways to the modern world that people can relate to and be able to actualise in themselves is paramount in these current times. Many practitioners are seeking to be of help in some way and even as practitioners, we all know that we too need to top up our own Spiritual Prep kits for the times to come.

As the flight attendant says, put the oxygen mask on before you help others.
And on that note, I am doing just that. I am taking a week off to be by myself and give myself a tune-up.

Will be back to service the following week.
Blessings on your journey within and without.
Odette

(c) Odette Nightsky 2023