Table 1: Links to Topics on this Page

Introduction Maslow Hierarchy of Needs Biological Level Ego Affirmation Level Spiritual Level Steps of Aggressive Dominance

Expression of Primal Primate Agendas Expression of Primal Human Toddler Agendas Expression of Primal Agendas in a Maturing Male Expression of Primal Agendas in the Corporate World Expression of Primal Agendas in the Academic World Holistic Thinking as an Antidote to Dominance Needs

The dialogue between the Mystical Protagonist and the Inquiring Mind continues from Dialogue 1, The Nature of Consciousness

Mystical Protagonist:
In this dialogue I want to acquaint you with the first of three ego traps that seduce the mind to be misled and make mistakes. Not only are we vulnerable to the unconscious demands of our first major trap, agendas, in that context we are then vulnerable to the second trap that creates a paradox of communication. Finally there is the third trap, HIP (Human Information Processing) incompetence.

InQuiring Mind:  

I understand that although we must examine them one at a time, each of these traps confound us in their own special way when we think and speak about our problems and opportunities. But each are operating simultaneusly.   Each of these three overlays are in constant interaction with each other.  Although the curse of Holistic/Systems  thinking requires me to accept them linearly, one at a  time, in fact they are One integrated experience.

            Figure 1: Looking down on the three nested cones that define the masking overlays over the Soul
P:  This figure [left] provides a conceptual overview for you to understand where we are in our journey.  You were introduced to this figure in our initial dialogue on the nature of C/consciousness.  Notice the Spiritual core enclosed within the three overlays of agendas, communication, and HIP,  You learned that we are Spiritual Beings (symbolized by the center most circle) who have formed our material bodies and enter the earth plane of existence to carry forward our Spiritual development and enlist others in that cause for themselves.

The figure shows the Spiritual core that each of us is, the "I am" that is embedded in and created by the Master Intelligence of the GOD FIELD, THE INVARIANCE, OR IMPLICATE ORDER.   We refer to this relationship as our Individualized Spiritual core which is manifest in the material world.  It matures to take on the characteristics of its ego intellect as represented in its three ego overlays. These combine to form the material personality.

In this dialogue we will focus on the first trap, "agendas" as we experience them through our feelings and reactions. These are stimulated by data arriving from our five material senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.)  If the agendas, the first room in the House of Three Rooms allegory [review allegory] are unregulated (not subject to mental discipline) they become the sole masters of the primal mind--the pragmatic, ruthless, pleasure seeking, survival oriented, and ego mind which is empty of Spiritual Consciousness.  This is the mind of the beast. In Freudian jargon, the agendas are the "id" driven elements of primal consciousness. [a more modern (neo-Freudian) expression of this analytical idea is found in Berne, 1964, in which the levels are re-labeled: child (id), adult (ego) and parent (super-ego)]

Q: But, based on what I learned earlier, I mean about systems and Holistic thinking, while I try to grasp the ideas in this dialogue, shouldn't I always keep the nature of C/consciousness, and all of the traps in mind as it they are always ready to spring on the Spiritually unilluminated folks like me?

P:  Yes! Excellent! The traps are always ready to spring, even if you are "Illuminated."  It takes a lot of practice to keep this everything-going-on-all-at-once mental set.  You will do better after you stop thinking at some point and simply surrender your mind to routinely Meditate on these things when you experience a physical or intellectual challenge.

What follows sets the groundwork for the theme of ego driven abuses of power and control whose generative dynamics can be placed in the Maslow hierarchy. [Maslow, 1968]   These agendas develop into sophisticated manifestations within the personality of the individual, and in higher expressions of complex human systems:  i.e., groups, organizations and institutions, and ultimately in our greater society.  These systemic manifestations will be further developed in our dialogue on power and control.  [in dialogue 5.]

P: The primal need of any child (and for you, me and everyone) is to be in the constant presence of unconditional Love and rational consistent discipline.  It is the experience of giving and receiving Love that most emulates the lost memory of our link to the Realms of Spiritual Intelligence.

Q: Dare I suggest that the unconditional Love you mention is that Love the infant perceived as having been lost at birth, as in your allegory of the Primal Dream of the Infant? [review allegory]

P: Exactly.  And the infant seeks the closest earthly condition that mirrors, although darkly, the purity of its Spiritual link to the SuperConsciousness.  Remember the distress of the infant's that was generated during the progress of the primal dream, and the wail of abandonment. This begins the incessant longing for Spiritual reunion.  We seek throughout our lives to return to the pristine realms of Spirit.  This is a reason behind the so called "death wish" and the resulting destructive behaviors that overwhelm some people.  On earth, only Spiritually grounded and valid Love affirms, validates, and energizes the Soul.  Unless this primal Spiritual need is met (the need to be in the constant affirming presence of Spiritual Love,) no resolution of any other sensual or intellectually defined ego need will permanently suffice.  But of course, we all learn to make do with what we are given--even chronic abuse.

Since genuine Spiritual (Agapic) Love is a scarce commodity, many people believe that love only has something to do with sex. Most children function at levels where there is inevitably some frustration of their need for Love, especially where two parents work away from the home. Some only get love, which is the trappings and symbols of Love but without its Spiritual substance.  I will develop these conditions in our seventh dialogue.  Then they turn to try to find the missing elements by means of what material resources are available, e.g., prostitution, seeking fame, acquiring power, etc.

Q: Can I assume that women who marry only for material security (access to money and power) are prostitutes in principle?

P: In a way yes, but this was most common early in the last century before women became emancipated from being home and husband bound.  But that condition provides a demonstration of how effectively our ego's can mask the primal agendas that lead to such actions.  When the need for Love is displaced by a drive for power and control, the tendency of weaker entities to "suck up" is misconstrued as genuine respect, if not actual affection and love.  But such investments only result in unfulfilled service to the lower order ego needs of their agendas.

Q: That seems like there is quite a range of needs accounted for in this hierarchy, from lower order ego needs, as you say, to Spiritual Love.  I assume that Love is a higher level need?

P: Yes, but is at the same time it is unique as a primal need, second only to the yearning for our forgotten Spiritual Oneness with GOD, or the POWER higher than ourselves.   Love, like the search for a Spiritual reunion with the SOURCE, is a pervasive need.  Originating in the Soul (The Presence within) it radiates throughout the physical body as a feeling, a yearning.  But the Spiritually unawakened ego owned intellect is only served by ego owned and managed material processes.  Thus, any plans and tactics to recover that vague memory of Spiritual Wholeness are lost in clouds of illusory misinformation. The yearning is mistakenly displaced on external material entities, a significant other, a career, one's lovers or family, or any other convenient surrogate.  Any need arising in the biological senses tends to interfere with the Spiritual need to be Love, and to both give and receive Love.

Q: How is possible to even speak of this--uh, well it sounds complex.  But how can I make mental sense of what you speak of as an intuitive or Holistic phenomenon?

Maslow's Contribution

P: With difficulty, yet we can.  I will apply a simplified version of Maslow's contribution to serve the goals of the Mystical Paradigm.   The modified Maslow Hierarchy is a convenient tool for looking directly at the relationship between Spiritual development and the carnal, i.e., the materialistic, physically driven, primal, and worldly agendas. This process begins in infancy within the child's emergent pristine earthly consciousness. Can you look behind the facade of worldly behavior and identify the underlying needs?  This skill is essential for correctly assessing and coping with one's own needs, the motives of others as evident in their behavior, and to manage effective conflict prevention and resolution.

Q: Well, I get along, I guess.

P: What you are actually doing while you "get along?"  Here are some questions to help you focus.   Your ability to answer these questions appropriately is relevant to your potential to function effectively in certain applications, e.g., as a conflict mediator.

Do you understand the difference between needs and wants?  [definition of needs vs wants]
Can you look at your friends' behavior and know what they really "need" compared to what they say they "want?"
Is what they ask for, a "want," or what they really "need? " I.e., a need is what survival and growth depend upon.
Do they have the capacity to actually Know what they really need? Or are they trapped in a limiting ego defined material reality?
Regardless of what the specific "goodies" of life are for them, or what they think they want, do people in the situations you have observed present a pattern of reflecting their priorities as measured by Maslow's generic hierarchy of needs in order to serve deeper needs?  e.g., how the wrath of Islam is being acted out, or a politician's need for unlawful actions to achieve their credibility and dominance.
Do we all share some common frame of reference for what we give personal importance to, so as to be served by our actions?

Q: You mean he actually studied happy and well adjusted people?  If so I bet he didn't find many.  I'm just thinking of so many of my friends--maybe me too.  I bet when people do not have their needs met when they get what they want, then they are still unhappy.

P:  Yes, and searching.  Maslow noticed that ordinary human beings seemed to show a systematic preference for creating priorities based upon their assessment of events that can affect them in their immediate environment. A person would choose based on what met their challenges and needs. This approach was also shared by a brilliant young psychologist, George Kelly, one of the first of the cognitive psychologists who, sadly, died prematurely before he could fully implement his model.  Healthier and happier people expressed a consciousness that seemed to function more near the top of the Maslow hierarchy (approaching what he called self actualization,) They tended not to be found near the bottom of the needs hierarchy serving their more basic or primal animal needs.

Q: So what did he say in the face of that kind of evidence?

P: He concluded by saying that while needs are always valid, wants may or may not be.  There is a systematic order to these priorities which I will slightly modify and place within the Mystical Paradigm under the category labels of three levels: Physical, Mental (Ego) and Spiritual frames of reference.   I will note the crucial role of parents who can either provide for, or compromise, or corrupt, the resolution of these primal needs for their child.  Typically, a person's needs are translated into wants and projected out on the world.  Become conscious of where most of your life's concerns and investments are now being made regarding your own hierarchy of agendas.

Q: So I would guess that the physical level is the one that contains the lower agendas, based on your earlier ideas.

Physical Level: Safety, Security, Shelter, and Subsistence

P: The figure [left] illustrates the path by which consciousness unfolds as directed by the senses and ego owned intellect.  The first and fundamental offering of a parent to their child is to attend to the child's primal biological needs with Love, patience and compassion. This produces confidence in a child to confront uncertainty (novelty) without fear and with confidence and trust. This kind of consistent positive relationship serves to validate any child's need for assurance that other basic needs will be consistently met.  Arising deep within the neural processes of the physical body, these most primal needs are:

 (1) Basic Safety: Felt power for preservation of life itself, or the personal freedom (power) to remove one's self from any perceived harm or life threatening danger.
 (2) Basic Security: This is the felt protection of, or personal power for the child to attend to its routine needs for sustenance, air, water, food, clothing, shelter and physical access to the resources needed to sustain life in its culture
 (3) Basic Subsistence:  this includes the assurance that the child's needs for comfort, and direct access to quality food clothing and shelter will be consistently met.

P: I can use the example of overpopulation as the most insidious.  As populations grow past the optimum for the capacity of the environment, including the social ecology, to support them fully, changes begin to occur in the affected populations.   I have given you examples of these changes in our introductory dialogues.  So I will only emphasize here, that the causal link is missing or obscured for those who attempt to deal with the symptoms.  They try to cope with the fallout that expresses in the form of family and social pathologies, crime, "random" expressions of violence, road rage, obsessions with weapons and security devices, self enrollment of individuals into "protective" gangs, fraternities/sororities, clubs, and so on. All of these activities are energized by the implied or direct threat to the ego's requirement that these basic levels of security and sustenance be under its control.

Q: Then when our economic system condones precipitously firing people from their livelihoods solely to obtain profit and economic advantage, and those groups who act through the political system to undercut the safety nets (e.g., employer contributions to unemployment insurance) that can sustain the unemployed, then all of the incipient overpopulation stressors are further amplified.

P: Correct.  I emphasize, should any individual, at any age, be seriously denied support for these basic needs, then their behaviors will be arrested at that primal level until their needs are fully and reliably satisfied and confidence is restored.

Q: You mean I should not waste my time trying to influence the recently unemployed in a graduate education, or learning a musical instrument.

P: Yes, because any person who is stressed out because of credible threats to their basic security has no capacity to even consider investing their energy or resources at higher levels on the Maslow scale. Thus you see that the root of this problem can be tracked back to the workings of predatory capitalism that precipitates these conditions, even while its positive myths are so celebrated in our society.  A day or reckoning is at hand.  But let us move on the the middle levels of the Maslow Hierarchy, that level owned by the ego intellect.

Q: So as a nation, we ought not try to nation build in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Palestine until visible evidence that their basic needs can be met becomes evident to their populations. Yes?  Nor should we be surprised when evidence of insurrection and social disobedience grows in our own country when the basic needs of our populations elements become threatened and denied.

P: An excellent demonstration of you initial ability to correctly apply the MP.  Now lets move to the next level, the ego driven intellectual level.

 Mental Level: Ego Validation, Identity, Affirmation, Belonging,

P: Have you ever felt shy or embarrassed?

Q: Of course. Haven't we all?

P: But where do these feelings come from?  They express when certain values and expectations that come from needs deep within us are challenged.  A fortunate child learns trust when their most basic needs are first made secure by loving, compassionate, and reliable parents.  All the while the child is moving ever further from what faint recollection of their Spiritual roots may have been retained in their conscious memory after the trauma of birth.  They are concurrently getting an important message as to the nature of their "self" worth.  The Spiritual Self  (I Am) is unconditionally worthy  in the Truth of the Cosmos.

But the treatment of the ego which can only function in the material world creates quite a different focus.  Information comes from the world of the overpowering senses becomes an urgent priority as is evident in the behaviors of the all powerful and all dominating adults in their life.  Then as the child enters its social world of school and community, its relationship with its peers becomes the dominant orientation.

The primal question, "Am I OK?", by the third or fourth year of life, is hopefully answered consistently in the affirmative.  [See the first major resource in transactional psychology,  Harris, 1976]  Beyond the merely bio-chemical organization of their body's biological needs at the physical level, the feeling ambiance of the emotions surrounding the unfoldment of a child's "mental body" is also doing its work.  The relationship of met biological needs, reasoned and firm discipline, and unconditional Love, is balanced against the perceived social constraints to build their mental concept of "reality."  The quality of core experiences at the biological level become transformed into a profound state of mind, personal ego validation in which the child's "felt worth" has become extrinsically defined (in reality) and not intrinsically validated and accepted (in Reality.) [see definitions applied to Spirituality and religion]

Q: So then, I conclude that when my ego needs are limited to what is going on in my reality as evaluated by my intellect, which you say is managed by my ego, I am vulnerable to letting others define my worth and satisfactions.  But if I learn to define my worth from this Spiritual level you assert exists, than I become free of the fears and anxieties placed on me by others.  This is because my my Real worth, as you say, is only defined by my awareness of this inner Spiritual part of myself.  I think I am beginning to understand, but it comes and goes.

P: As a child's mental consciousness unfolds in relationship to the consistent feelings present from its biological agendas, the basic ego needs that are steadily served by this process are:

Identity: The need for positive psychological recognition of the child's existence in the world and in the family. She/he must feel the sense of this communal belonging and acceptance within the field of Loving influence created by all powerful, kind, trustworthy and reliable parents. This becomes the primary definition of our "self" as managed by our own emergent egos. Classic studies in the treatment of infants showed that unless infants were regularly validated by simply being touched, and by hearing comforting sounds, no matter how otherwise well fed and cared for they were, those infants who were denied these primal validations failed to thrive.  They developed illnesses, suffered mental disability, and even approached death such that the experiments were then stopped. [Spitz, 1965]  This same phenomenon can kill all primal creatures not just when they are overtly attacked by a parent, but even when they are simply ignored. The immune systems of laboratory animals were shown to be superior when their care takers took time to lovingly handle them.  First the ignored children languish, and then may be attacked by their siblings because they have no confirmed validity. Then they die, although at birth they were sufficiently healthy and fit to survive.

Q: Wait, you mean those human babies would have died just because no body touched them?  But how did they feed and diaper them without touching them?  That doesn't make sense.

P: But that kind of touching is mechanical.  The primal Identity that needs to be affirmed is Spiritual, and that is only affirmed by an unequivocal ambiance of Love. You will come to understand at a deeper level that those energy fields communicate the Truth of a relationship and its Spiritual nature. The Spiritually anemic person, as an adult, cannot recognize the presence or opportunity to invest in Real Love.  This Spiritually validating ambiance cannot not be replaced by empty words and attention.  The caressing, Loving, touch has a Spiritual Truth energized from the hearts of those who share it, and that is what defines it as Spiritual.  The infant (or animal) Knows.

In the experiments, that crucial element of Spiritually grounded Love was missing from the otherwise perfectly good, but depersonalized (de- Spiritualized) mechanical care they got.  The Institute of Heart Math has developed protocols for teaching even the smallest children to recognize emotional distress within themselves. Then they are taught how to self-intervene to induce a healing state of peace and tranquility within their heart and connected emotional systems in the midst of their distress. [reference]

Affirmation:
Affirmation of the ego identify is located in the world as defined by the senses and intellect. But Spiritual Identity is shaped by the first and preeminent influence that affirms that a child is Loved (not just valued) by its parents.  Many a doting parent celebrates their child only because of some status or benefit the child can bestow upon the parent, e.g.,  "My son, the doctor."  "My child the honor student," or  "My virtuoso child," or My daughter, the business owner."

This need for Spiritual Affirmation defines the first level of Spirituality in the needs hierarchy that separates us from baboons.  Then as mental consciousness unfolds as part of the child's growth, the need to belong to a validating group is acknowledged by a variety of subtle social behavior that the child becomes adept at detecting.  These amount to overt signs of approval, first by parents, then by one's peers, teachers, clergy, and those other adults in whom the child begins to invest trust.

Inability to trust in hostile, punishing, or negligent parents shuts out any possibility to really develop unconditional trust in adult strangers. The fragile Spiritual core within the child that is wholly dependent on unconditional Love languishes and fades.  Likewise when a child is nurtured to become dependent on the parents constant affirmation. Then they fear of setting out on their own.

The child begins to search for affirmation external to itself from friendly adults or like-minded peers. The attraction of potential power is noticed when manifest in the "gang."  Then the need for membership, for belonging, becomes compelling. The child who is Loved and disciplined by Spiritually enlightened parents chooses their peers by the criteria modeled by the Loving parent, not in a desperate attempt to have unmet ego needs validated by the external validation promised by the authority of a gang.

Q: So is that why so many gang youth come from dysfunctional homes?

P: Yes, and you can include the entire neighborhood.  The abused and neglected child chooses peers based on images of power (protection and affirmation) using the superficial appearances of a gang's potency and then covets their acceptance and approval.  Of course, unlike a genuinely Loving parent, such offerings are always conditional upon compliance to the norms and values of the group or gang.  Children smoke only because of peer pressure nurtured by the seductive appeals of cigarette company advertising. For them it is "cool" to blow smoke in another's face as an act of machismo dominance.

But let me quickly note that a child from a materially supportive but Spiritually lacking home may likewise withdraw from his/her Spiritual potential  Then the seduction is not from isolates and gangs, but by membership in "success and goal driven" peer groups.  These include honor societies, academic societies, fraternities and sororities, honor clubs, dance clubs, bands and orchestras, sports clubs, and other ego validating external sources offer the illusion of support.   But the eternal ache for Spiritual affirmation is not, cannot, be served by such means.

In all areas, when a child is steadily seduced away from its own Spiritual Truth and comes to believe in the seductive trappings of peer group loyalties. Whether success obsessed, or even if they require violence and murder as a price of belonging, the cost seems cheap to purchase that affirmation as a substitute for the Spiritual affirmation they miss at the level of their Soul.

Therefore, as I mentioned before, in terms of the MP, the systematic removal or dilution of the constant presence of a Loving and trusted parent from a child by a court's custody decree, or by the actions of a social work bureaucracy is primal evil made manifest.  Children who are brought into the world for any reason other than Spiritually validated Love between two viable parents are vulnerable.  When a father (or mother) is denied parental (not visitation) access, or is driven off entirely, or abandons his/her child for personal convenience, the disaster potential for the victim children mounts in exponential proportions to the extent of this betrayal.  As you will learn in our sixth dialogue, an evil Karma ripens for such parents, lawyers, judges and bureaucrats.

Balance of Influences:
Q: So you mean a child really needs equal influence from both sexes to grow Spiritually?

P: Absolutely.  The resulting balance of influences, assuming of course the healthy presence of Love, opens the child's heart and mind for Spiritual growth. A balance of yin and yang (polar opposites) that construct and nurture all the higher intellectual processes.

Q: Why?

P: Because the dynamics of higher mental activity needs to be grounded in unconditional Love, first expressed through two parents.  Because then, the destructive or defensive emotions are stilled.  When identity and affirmation are constantly validated in the C/consciousness of the child, the emotional context for mental interaction with complex human ideas becomes safe and therefore attractive.  Ideas and concepts act to "explain" and interpret the events in the child's world which I insist are all illusory with respect to the absolute realms of TRUTH.  Yet the child becomes qualified to to "live in "the world, but be not of it."

Just stirring around ideas is satisfying, like making music or creating art, and becomes increasingly so as one develops the foundation skills of language, mathematics and music.  Here again the balanced functions of two viable male/female parents is crucial to the child developing this satisfaction and following it toward healthy personal goals. Only then can the child pursue their own positive contributions to the evolution of human consciousness.

Q: Is that why single parent households are so bad for children?

P: Wrong!  Single parent homes are no more problematic than two parent homes, provided the father-mother influence is arranged to be co-equal.  The children need equitable male-female, constant, mature, fair minded and Loving parental (authority) models. The number of roofs under which parents must live has nothing to do with that except for the obvious logistical complexity.  The logistics of two households can be managed easily in the presence of good faith cooperation between the parents. But unresolved dysfunction between parents creates evil whether it is under one roof or two.  That evil is greatly amplified when a vicious and hateful parent is willing to use their own child to "get" the other parent, a condition that many divorce lawyers have been quite willing to exploit.  When a spousal murder occurs as a result of an unresolved custody conflict, the lawyers should be indicted as a accomplices to the murder.  But the subtle nature of this kind of child abuse is mostly an unrecognized and un-addressed social outrage.  Because the nature of this abuse is "out of consciousness" for our legal system, it is thus "out of mind."  But that is another discussion.

Q: Then it seems to bad that these ideas of Spiritual nurturing through the presence of Love cannot be applied once a child is fully entered into the adult world.

P: In fact it can and has been applied.  Maslow's ideas have been applied to management through a process Maslow called Eupsychian Management practices.   But the implementation of such elevated techniques must be caused to occur in spite of the hostile presence of the manipulative and controlling management practices that are favored by predatory capitalism.  Sufficient numbers of children must be raised to a minimal Spiritual level that persists as they become adults to nurture such Spiritually grounded applications. [additional information]

Q: So how does a child, or an adult for that matter, advance to this Spiritual level?

P: At the Spiritual Level, the unfolding consciousness of the child must survive becoming anchored in one of the the prior two stages of the hierarchy. Otherwise, the child's mental concentration and energy are being diluted in a variety of acts of defensive futility in service to an insatiable ego.  A Spiritually betrayed child must constantly apply her/his intellectual energy and efforts to compensate for unresolved frustrated needs at the prior stages.

Maslow did not dare to label his highest level "Spiritual," which he instead called "self actualization." The term Spiritual was not acceptable to Maslow's peers because the field of psychology at mid 20th century was wholly dominated by the materialist world of secular science, e.g., the dominance of behaviorism.  But advancement to this "self actualizing" or Spiritual level of Consciousness requires the ability of the child to form a Conscious union with their larger Spiritual Source.  This is the Source for all advanced mental activity for which one can only intellectually prepare, but not fully achieve.  The intellect, without Spiritual guidance, can never direct you to the optimum path to any goal.  This is because that nature of the optimum path can only be determined from the Holistic perspective. Such a perspective can be Known only from information accessible in the Super Consciousness.  But there are some signposts along the Spiritual Path to that Consciousness.

Q: You mean there is a way to tell where one is along the path?

P: Yes.  What people invest themselves in is a reflection of how they meet their underlying needs, and the level at which they function to resolve those needs. Spiritually advanced persons invest in the following:

 (1) Giving Thanks: The first sign of Spiritual emergence is the person's capacity to be grateful for blessings, even for adversity.  Suffering is eventually recognized as a Spiritual Teacher of the highest order.  I know!  The Spiritually quickened are sensitive to the gifts that life has to offer, things most people don't give even a thought to, let alone thanks for.

 (2) Unconditional Compassion:  One's heart goes out to the needs of others, both animals and people, including villains, for the suffering and heartache that they may have found in their lives.  This capacity for identifying with (but not owning) the pain of others inspires one to serve a healing role for them. One desires to be a Loving and helping force for them.  There is no hostile or condemning conditions in one's heart or mind when feeling the overflowing of this expression of the power of  Love.

 (3) Capacity for forgiveness:  "Father forgive them for the know not what they do."  Here one finds a constant awareness of humanity's limited Spiritual capacities by the rare experience of finding a truly forgiving person.  Instead of indulging one's self in self- righteous anger, bitterness,  or resentment at the experience of insult or harm, one looks with sadness on the corrupted and limited consciousness in the person or group who is capable of advocating or practicing harm under the burden of such ignorance.  At this level of Spiritual unfoldment, one places an overflowing essence of Love upon those who are simply ignorant, and even those upon who are overtly evil. One literally reaches out to Spiritually embrace them in a circle of Love and light to heal the pain they must suffer to cause them act in any destructive way.

 (4) Self Actualization: This is the highest mental level of achievement in preparation for making Spiritual contact with the Super Conscious realm of Spiritual intelligence. [sample of characteristics]  The evidence of Spiritual health expresses as happy people contented with their lot in life.  One seeks to deliberately construct a subtle and fragile interface with the larger Spiritual realm of embracing  energy and intelligence.  But any human effort to forge this link is highly vulnerable to any emotional disruption or interruption from external events.

 (5) Fulfillment of Agapic Love:  This is the ultimate stage of Spiritual accomplishment beyond lust and Eros. This is the
ultimate capacity to experience unconditional Love.  This capacity is well beyond erotic love that requires sexual fulfillment and validation.  Instead, the Love feeling is a validation of wholeness and Unity with all other sentient beings.  One can at last see all things as being of GOD and in UNITY with one's most sacred SELF.  I will offer more about this capacity in our seventh dialogue which is devoted to the ideas surrounding L/love.

Q: But you mentioned the relationship of these needs to agendas of power and control, like in the allegories that began this dialogue.  I hear you telling me that in order to promote Spiritual growth, this hierarchy of needs must refocus the use of power and control from external concerns to one's internal states as one's C/consciousness moves up the hierarchy.  Is that right?

P:  Yes, but easy to say, hard to do.  But now we turn to our second ego overlay on our capacity for C/Consciousness, human communication.  This overlay you will discover, is embedded in and nurtured through the dynamics by which our agendas are managed and fulfilled.

To apply the concepts of agendas,  I offer you a metaphor which illustrates the kind of bestial society that exits when its inhabitants can only serve their primal physical agendas because they have developed no higher C/consciousness.  Here is an example of the raw exercise of primal agendas in the absence of a viable Spiritual Consciousness.  I begin with how baboons get their needs met in a Spiritually empty bestial society.

...
The Baboon Society
[Please be sure to read the interpretation that accompanies each allegory, parable and metaphor]

[Return from Allegory]

Q:  I get your point--for baboons there is a complete absence of Spiritual Consciousness, as you say.  They cannot love as we experience it.  Instead there is mostly lust for sex, power and control.  But its hard to believe that we humans, except maybe the worst of us, actually fit that model.

P:  Really!?  Well, let me share with you an injunction commanded of the Jews by no less a personage that Moses himself in fulfilling the commandments of his God.  After the battle and conquest of the Midianites, Moses saw that his army had spared the women and children.  He became enraged at his army's failure to deliver vengeance. So he commanded them as follows:

"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately. "  [NKJV Num. 31: 17-19]

P:  Nevertheless, withhold judgment about this passage, because metaphysically, the story means something much deeper than the surface plot.  Briefly, it means to permanently remove from the future, those excessive masculine ideas of dominance and aggression from our consciousness, symbolized as the males and male children of masculine excess.  Instead leavening and creating a hybrid future through preserving the uncorrupted [by not intimately knowing a man] female aspects of surrender, accommodation, and patience. But you are not ready for me to further develop these abstract ideas yet.

Q: But is this not primal behavior or what?  The baboons would be proud of them.

P: But for now, please focus only on the primal part, the other end of the continuum from Spiritual.  Primal behaviors of all kinds are our biological legacy that we must soon transcend.  In fact, such primal behaviors are so ingrained within us, that as "civilized" beings we have actually institutionalized many of them.

Q: Your kidding!  I have never noticed.

P:  You observation is a ripe example that demonstrates what is not in consciousness can not be detected or processed by the intellect. When the government changes Presidents after an election, at the Cabinet level, and at the political levels of all agencies, every appointed bureaucrat routinely submits their resignation.  Almost all of them are replaced by supporters of the new and dominant party. Their careers are symbolically "murdered."  Even the careers of civil servants, held to be immune from such assault, are with increasing frequency being professionally "murdered" by placing them in positions where they literally cannot function effectively in applying their technical and administrative skills.  After his first election, President Nixon caused the upper management specialists at the Department of Education to be moved around so that specialists in elementary education, science education, vocational-technical education and so on, were assigned to areas outside their expertise where they were no longer competent to be champions as advocates for the new areas they then had to supervise.

This tactic is one source of the enormous waste in operating the government.

Q:  But, from what you have already told me, I recognize there that the government itself ought not be blamed because its role is that of a puppet.  Instead, we should track such behavior back to the puppet master, Nixon and the republicans in your example, to lay any blame.

P: But unfortunately, the public is oblivious to the presence and the destructive effects of such practices when they are hidden from public view.  Such practices serves the further purpose of right wing extremists by causing the government to behave incompetently and provides ammunition for further assaults on its integrity.  This is a tactic which only serves raw power politics. This dynamic will also be a topic for our coming dialogue when we eavesdrop on the deliberations of the Secret Society of Power Brokers and Power Mongers (SSPBPM.) [concluding dialogues]

Q: Secret what?

P: Patience. First, we have much to cover before you are prepared to meet the SSPBPM and understand the implications of their "infernal catechism."  First, there is more to say about ritual murder.

In addition to the "murder" of incumbent positions, like the defenseless baby baboons, any program of the departing administration that is not healthy enough and sufficiently established and entrenched, even though widely valued outside of the new leadership, will be quickly "murdered."   I assure you this this action will occur in the absence of any objective merit for such action, no matter what justification is offered. These practices are not confined to the government, and sometimes occur with even greater ruthless vengeance in the aftermath of hostile corporate takeovers.  It can certainly be found as well in the more subdued, sublime and erudite climes of academe.  In the resulting melange of ritual murders, the competent, dedicated, and loyal staff of many years are often reduced to the dominance status of infant baboons scrambling for their livelihoods and professional lives.

Q: Nobody taught me this in any of my advanced management classes.

P:  Look around you wherever you find yourself, in you local neighborhood, or in a foreign country. Ask. What are the standards for surviving and thriving in this culture?  The less Spiritual Consciousness the inhabitants of the social system of interest are, the closer to baboons they are in their behavior.  Never mind how high tech they may be, nor how intelligent.  They will still act out aggression and fear very much like the baboons.

Q: The idea that I understand from this, is to look past the trappings of civility, and see expressed the rawness of primal agendas.

P: Correct. Opportunities are everywhere.  For example one such place is the court room.  Dominant males (and those females who want to emulate and compete with them) act out deeply hidden primal agendas when they conduct the business of the court. But neither they nor the victims to this process have a clue as to what is really going on.

Q: For instance?

P: Throughout most of the 20th century, it was great sport for lawyers and judges to separate fathers from their beloved children. But such satisfactions dare not express at the conscious level.   Their ancestors assembled around an open fire and viciously fought with each other for the right to mate with the choicest females and perpetuate their genes into the future of the tribe. But today they exploit the contrived rules of civil law to deny children the love and influences that can only come from parental access to their fathers, and in some cases, mothers.  Unlike the baboons, we do not literally murder the child to remove this relationship. Instead, we act to place complex and insurmountable barriers between the rights and needs of a father (who is typically forced to pay money) to block their access to parent their own children.  In the modern court, this primal contest operates to reduce a mother or father from their sacred roles as parent to being merely visitors in the lives of their own beloved children.  Further, this separation manifests as torture for the children to which court has remained oblivious and indifferent until the last decade while they declare that all of this is for "the best interest of the child."

Q: But wait, aren't the fathers and mothers who are denied parenting in some way incompetent, inadequate, or even dangerous?

P:  Sometimes, but seldom.  Under the courts of baboon justice, a Spiritually impoverished parent can use the court as a vengeance tool to thwart the involvement of the other parent in the lives of his/her children.  When the victim parent resists, then an endless round of hearings funnel the parent's funds that ought be used for the good of the child to the jousting lawyers.

Q:  I guess that must be a real power trip, for a sitting judge and the culpable lawyer to have the power to separate a parent, especially a father, a male, from a beloved child.  I envision alpha baboons in three piece suits. They would surely be outraged by your allegations.

P: Indeed!  You've got it. And they haven't a clue as to the primal forces affecting them as they pursue these primal goals.  They have created a myth to sustain them, the euphemism that it is always for "the best interest of the child."  Legions of parents, mostly fathers, can testify to the presence and harm to children committed by this evil lie.

Q: But isn't this changing?  Aren't the courts enforcing mediation and looking more objectively on the actual dynamics that are separating the parents?

P: Yes but changing very slowly.  A "mediation" in name is sometimes not a mediation in fact when some lawyers claim to be mediators. Remember, it is the primal ego driven agendas that direct the intellect in the absence of a viable Spiritual Consciousness. In order to function as a competent mediator, a lawyer must counter the adversarial and confrontive win at any cost mentality which is the core of their lifestyle.  Then they must adopt the opposite life style, the feminine lifestyle of accommodation, and promotion of compassionate, win-win, negotiation.

Any person who aspires to the Spiritual discipline of mediation must first detect and manage these primal tendencies.  This is a long and slow process, and nearly impossible without the feedback from a competent mentor.  Mediation and alternative dispute resolution practices are slowly growing.  But these changes are persistently resisted by the baboon lawyers and their political surrogates (the bar associations) who still thirst for the thrill of unaccountable court room dominance with its primal win-lose contests.  Look how many films are based on the sensational jousting of primal lawyers in the court room.  What fun!  An the victims to this process are always contrived by the screen writers to be abject villains who deserve the worst.

Q: I think I can see the point as I recall those sensational criminal trials that still dominate the media.  I have often thought that any justice that comes out of them is a coincidence.  What it really seems to be about is a massive exploitation of a tragedy by judges, lawyers, and the media.  Now I have a grasp of why this is not recognized for what it really is and dealt with accordingly. What they are energizing is outside of their consciousness capacity.

The Playpen

[Return from Allegory]

Q:  Well, there is competition for a desired object.  There is the exercise of will to achieve dominance to get the bauble.

P: Yes.  But the insensitive observer will assume that the struggle is for the bauble. It is not for the bauble which only has symbolic significance.  But as you begin to understand the MP, we always look beyond or beneath the visible evidence of the senses and the surface logic that is so appealing.  For example we might waste our time to spin theories why the bauble is so attractive.  But the bauble is irrelevant.  In this case the struggle is for dominance and control and the resulting power status, period.  The bauble is simply an instrument to validate one's power and control.

Q:  So it seems this is our nature--to compete for power and control. So then, the west bank in Palestine is a "bauble?"

P:  Correct.  Of course, in complex human situations you must also take into account certain tactical advantages for defense and other complex interests of the competing societies.

Q: But the combatants would be furious at such a serious suggestion, that they act like baboons.

P: Indeed they would, and that is one more illustration of the controlling influences of the ego and the invisible dominance of its own power and control agendas. The need to control territory is wired into our nature.  Overpopulation pressures further energize this issue.  Undergirding this struggle is the incipient fear of being pushed out from the both source of survival resources, and protecting the symbolic meaning of one's visible status based on their power to control their own survival base. That makes them vulnerable to humiliation and consequent loss of face before those who empower them in their roles, this fear must be tended to before any logistical or operations difficulties are manifest.

Q: I can see why such struggles are so intractable in today's world, a low C/consciousness world as you describe it. So how can we deal with such a desperate and intractable situation, other than a win-lose war, with the spoils going to the victor?

P: Such situations are intractable only under the present impoverished levels of inadequate Spiritual Consciousness as held by the combatants and intervenors alike.  However, the Spiritual seed within us separates us from the beasts, except that this Spiritual seed, like a hybrid plant, must be nurtured.  Now it happens that each of us begins earthly life with the primate level of consciousness in terms of our moral capacity.  Just watch an infant who expresses as a child in the playpen story.   But we have more than simply an ethical potential.  We have a Spiritual potential which must first become fulfilled to awaken and energize our ethical potential.

But as we mature, we must be teach ethical responsibility by demonstrating it in the adult world.  It must be demonstrated in the consistent ambiance of Love and compassion. These demonstrations, not exhortations, are what awaken the higher power which is natural to a child who is nourished in it.  As a definition of being human, at the first opportunity of emergent consciousness, i.e., as toddlers, we begin to immediately exercise control over others because we are driven by a biological instinct for primal survival. This manifestation is the action of our ego.  Social constraints must be present and effective to moderate and direct that unleashed bestial tendency.

Q:  I think I can see where our social problems begin--with parents who are little more Spiritually evolved than baboons.  So I bet if I knew how to look, I could see primal behavior in a small child.  Yet the typical toddler usually does become a more socially responsible adult.

P:  Yes, hopefully, but with serious exceptions.  Every child in effect unfolds though the same levels of mental consciousness as our ancestors did to bring our entire humanity forward to where we are today.  Some of these ancestors were far more Spiritually Conscious than ourselves today, as are many tribal societies today.

A toddler very quickly discovers how to fulfill its needs by dominating others.  We sometimes call this first period of a toddler exercising its autonomy "the terrible twos."  Such a child's disruptive presence acts to create social disharmony among the affected adults and siblings.  But this is one of the most crucial periods in the unfoldment of a child's C/consciousness.  Here is where a child gets a permanent set to balance its needs for dominance and affirmation with a capacity to recognize, respect, and accommodate to the presence, needs, and rights of others.

Q:  So, unless this awareness is accomplished, by example as you say, the child becomes just like Yang and Yat, the Baboons.

P:  In the elemental consciousness of these human actors, the primal game of  Yang and Yat was over.  Toddlers are still devoid of an activated Spiritual Consciousness insofar as they can only relate to primal forces.  They respond to the real appearance of events detected by their senses.  Toddlers are already forgetting the nature and origin of their Spiritual Truth as they cope with their primal needs.  Their ego instincts is are mostly driven by fear to eliminate or control any possible threat, or to selfishly seize any opportunity.   To control or be controlled energizes their agendas.

Q:  So the bauble simply becomes the symbol of victory.  It could be anything.  In this case it is chosen because it was already in the hands of and being controlled by his host.

P: Yes. They cannot articulate the compelling inner force which leads to a struggle over the bauble. But neither can adults.   It is written into our genes that to survive one must control the reality we find ourselves in, as we define it.  Any uncertainty surrounding matters of power and control induces and amplifies our incipient anxiety and fear about loss of control over what appears to affect us.  Dominance behaviors are a reaction to the need to overcome uncertainty and eliminate the perceived source of fear.  One must ultimately become Spiritually grounded in order to transcend the normal fears of feeling out of control.

Q: But what if the person does not feel strong enough to compete in such struggles?

P: Then they quickly look for a champion to which they surrender their dominance, allowing their champion to make decisions for them.

Q:  I get it.  We can choose what game we want to play.  We choose "King of the Mountain" if we are alphas [leaders,] and "Emperor's New Clothes" if we are omegas [followers.]  Why must this always be the case?  I mean maybe Hollywood could come up with an alternative scenario.

P:  The source of the primal survival drive to dominate and control is our biological legacy.  It is a primal force physically rooted  in our original wilderness experiences.  It is anchored in our mental consciousness because we are chained to our senses and neural processing.  While under the control of our egos, we are arrested in a universe of threat and fear, whether mild or severe. We don't see expressed in the toddler any evidence of the Spiritual legacy waiting to be awakened. We see it only after the child is regularly and lovingly placed in the presence of examples of high ethical Consciousness in the child's adults. A child cannot intellectual be taught this. Trust and respect for the rights and needs of others must be persistently and lovingly demonstrated so that the child is drawn into exhibiting the behavior. Admonishments and cajoling do not work.

Q: Amazing!  Parents actually have a use besides paying for food, shelter, clothing, and cars.

P:  A profound insight you show!  The innate capacity of the unadulterated primal drives leads an unilluminated child who grows up to confront, challenge, and even harm others as required to serve their ego needs.  Other options are out of consciousness and not accessible even to be searched for.

Q: But they do have the capacity to love.  I saw a three year old cousin of mine toddle up to a new kid who was just placed in day care for the first time. He showed affection by hugging the new kid.  I thought that was neat.

P: When you see toddlers approaching and hugging each other, affection is not the factor being demonstrated as adults like to project and need to believe. Hugging is an action that establishes the dominance status in the toddler relationship. The "hugger" dominates the "hugee."  Where two alpha type kids are involved, you will sometimes see them hug and then physically struggle, and even fall down.  Or one of them (the looser) ends up crying.  The reason why we have such contests is because individuals are born with more or less of the drive for power and control. Obtaining control is first a requirement for survival, and then as a symbol of status.  This dynamic can be better understood from the dialogue we will have on reincarnation and karma [dialogue 6.]

Q:  But aren't acts of dominance the essential and visible signature of a biological survivor. I remember my early days in our junior high school gym and locker room.  I dominated very well thank you.

P:  For every need felt by a human being, there is some kind of withholding "Gate" out in the world that is detected by the senses.  This gate represents some kind of opposition or denial to direct and easy access in obtaining the worldly solution to that felt need.  The nature of this "gate" changes as a child grows up in a lifetime.  The gates also change at the societal level by the cyclic evolution from primal tribes into complex high tech civilizations.  The "gate" for a toddler, and primal people, is simply an unyielding state of nature and the presence of other people who may control their getting what they want. A human child who is not Spiritually socialized beginning at birth, cannot control this tendency to dominate by any means that is subject to their ego, as the following story illustrates.

See if you can detect a common principle that appears in both the prior allegory of the playpen and in the following allegory.  Examine this allegory and tell me how you interpret it.

...
The Playground

[Return from Allegory]

Q:  It seems to me, if I relate to the earlier allegory of The Playpen, the arena has become enlarged but the principle of dominance and control remains the same.

 P:  Yes Do notice that in addition to the raw physical struggle to control turf or property to which the toddlers were limited, on the playground there is added an overlay of dominance through the use of symbolic language.  Further, the needs are acted out at a higher level than the primal needs for safety, security, and comfort on the Maslow hierarchy. In this story we find expressed the need for affirmation and belonging.

This is why, in our next dialogue, I will offer the paradox of communication as the second trap of mind in which symbolic expressions of social status carry potential power and control.  Language is first used to declare the complex rules and ritual which underlie and mask the Real source of the conflict arising from the ego's agendas that create frustrated or threatened needs of some kind.  In this story it is the bully's need for emotional safety, via the "gate," i.e., his ability to control his peers, to thereby validate his personal credibility.

He neurotically affirms this by inducing their fear of him when he has failed by other means to validate his needs for affiliation and belonging.   The bully mentality is often attracted to social roles that give them permission to act out their dominance, e.g., in military and paramilitary functions, police and other enforcer types, and as lawyers.  They are also attracted to seek control by means of high public office.  When impoverished of Spiritual Consciousness, the resolution of their needs can only be resolved by the ruthless use of any accessible tool for exercising intimidation and force, e.g., lying, cheating, betrayal of the electoral process and ruthless intimidation of those who appear to control the gates to power and control.

Q: So before there is a laying on of hands, there is first the use of threatening language.

P: Language, as in the above story, only prepares the ground work, makes declarations, sets the emotional tone and symbolic posture.  But first there must be an attitude of objectification, depersonalization and alienation from "the other" that is intentionally created, nurtured, and maintained.  This trend is the exact opposite of a Spiritually directed goal.  This depersonalization is a necessary first step because we can not possibly harm those with whom we share any recognized affinity, let alone affection or love.  Then insults are hurled which escalate into taunts and challenges.  Without any rational analysis, let alone Spiritual mediation, there follows the inevitable regression downward to the physical, to the primal laying on of hostile hands.  Notice the key to resolving such conflict.  It is our Spiritual Consciousness and nothing else that can inoculate us from harming another person, group, or society, whether in thought, word, or deed.

Q:  I didn't have to be sent to you to know that, except for the Spiritual dimension.

P: That Spiritual dimension is the only relevant but missing dimension from much of our social norms and standards.

Q: Even I can see that the struggle for power is experienced at every level of social complexity.  I noticed that the first sign of problems for me when a recent relationship was over, was my partner's psychological distancing from me.  I was not able to "get though" and the harder I tried the more I was distanced until finally, it was Ok for her to hurt me by "kissing me off."  Then she blamed me for her rejection of me.  Neat! That insight just came to me from your examples.

P:  Correct.  That is also true in the work place. In order to discredit, demote or remove someone, most perpetrators of such actions must first begin a long term program of distancing, depersonalization, and objectification.  Then the attacks become increasingly hostile as justifications are found or contrived. Colleagues and associates, when they are also without adequate Spiritual Consciousness, sense the "hit" coming and begin to succumb to and participate in the process (i.e. to serve the "if your not with us you must be against us" mentality.)  The confused target may never catch on as to what is shaping up until the "hit" occurs.  The pecking or biting to death of a wounded bird, chicken, or other animal by its peers is the raw primal expression of what in "civilization" is conducted as an elegant oppressive minuet in some of most manicured offices and corporate boardrooms.

Q: So the first signs of a politically motivated firing, demotion, or transfer can be detected by an insightful observer maybe months in advance?

P:  But only to those who have a internal paradigm or model that empowers them to detect the dynamics.   We can experience this psychic violence at the individual level, and then the level of groups (or families,) organizations, institutions and nations. In the latter case this becomes war.  At the level of the organization, under these primal rules, "Greed is Good," and success is achieved by the power brokers' ruthlessly using the depersonalized institutional rules and laws contrived for their purpose. This capacity is a core evil of predatory capitalism.

Q:  So the Bush administration recently built a case against Saddam Hussein not by enumerating his real evils which were only a threat to his own people., Instead, to validate their desire for wart, and the get permission, they induced fear in the Congress and the American public by promising immanent attacks by Iraq's WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction)

P:  That is the brutal truth. Notice that the Congress and public can only be duped if they are not Spiritually awakened.  In the worst case scenarios, given an absence of Spiritual Consciousness, the ambitious power broker will deprecate, decimate and/or obviate the work of both colleagues and competitors. They are prepared to damage the government, or the corporate ecology as necessary, and exploit the menial, intellectual and creative work of millions. When required, they swiftly put thousands of those very people, whose work made them successful and powerful, out of their means of livelihood.  The evidence continues on and on. [examples]

Q: Are you also telling me that if I am to survive in corporate America, I must be prepared to manipulate and actually harm others?

P: Exactly.  You can expand this list simply by following the daily news and the sensationalist media that focus on money, politics, and people.  In this evil dance, the millions thus afflicted feel powerless to act defensively because (being lost in the complexity) they are oblivious to the real causes of the ruinous events that fall upon their lives. The perpetrators place blame on meaningless abstractions such as, "its  the economy, stupid."  The absent Spiritual Consciousness of all parties involved makes the interacting causal links entirely lost to them. They feel only the effects, observe only the symptoms, but can only respond to their growing inner fear and consequent anger with reactive actions.

Q:  So why doesn't somebody do something?

P: Who?   The public celebrates this predatory model by reveling in the kind of systematic vulgarities exploited by the media.  There we find glorified mayhem and murder that pass as entertainment.  But the public remains oblivious to the long term effects of these influences because of their absent or anemic Spiritual Consciousness.  They are unable to see the evil they have set up for themselves and their children which they will soon personally experience directly in their lives.

This is the modern equivalent to the Roman's Circus Maximus in which human lives were sacrificed for the entertainment of both royalty and rabble. This is the most bestial level to which we must ultimately regress when people function in a realm of Spiritual emptiness.  Apart from the cruelties of cock fighting and dog fighting, there are growing reports of such depravities in the form of private no-holds-barred personal fights that continue until the looser pleads for mercy, or is rendered unconscious or dead.

Q:  So we have an aggravation of the playpen and playground dominance exercises.  How does it look at the adult level.  There must be a million ways?

P:  Yes.  As a starter, in suffering a lack of Spiritual Consciousness, complexity inhibits our ability to perceive how dominance needs create these abuses.   These dominance processes appear to us in the guise of what we have been taught and accepted as legitimate, or even desirable social behavior, e.g., unregulated and unconditional competition.  But notice that life in the executive suite is no better than the playpen, although it appears to us adults far more urgent, meaningful, gentile, and legitimate. This we accept in accordance with our society's norms, laws, and expectations with which we have been successfully indoctrinated by our "educational" systems.  Is this scenario a familiar one from your training, if not from your direct experience?

...
The Board Room

[Return from Allegory]

Q:  The way you tell it, the emotional outburst and feelings are the same, even though the object of desire changes from controlling  babbles, to playground status, to control of a business or organization, to control of the world.

P:  Not quite "the world" in that limited example, but when we get to the power mongers, yes.  The above story is the third in a trilogy that have an identical theme--power exercised as force. [ref Hawkins, also in the glossary and discussed in the technical section on Consciousness.]   In The Playpen, the toddler was emotionally committed to dominate and control by physically possessing the baubles in its limited field of reality (consciousness.)  The stranger toddler was likewise wholly committed to dominate and control the bauble which was simply the validating symbol or instrument. The bauble was in fact what I will call a primitive "power marker." [glossary definition]

In the second story, The Playground, the bully was invested in his verbal dominance of his peers, and fully willing to regress to laying on of hostile hands in order to impose his verbal demands.  His power only lies in his imposing physical strength and psychological profile that indicated his willingness to commit physical harm. His personal "power marker" is his bully profile. He is validated when his victims show fear, discomfort, and compliance, and the helpl