The parables, allegories and metaphor analyzed in this section describe how your biological systems define and limit your ego (intellectual) consciousness.  This in turn limits your capacity to perceive beyond the veil, or through the mirror, to the larger Reality in which you are embedded.  Worse, these "traps" act to create the believable and convincing illusion that the physical realm in which we live and move and have our being is the absolute and only reality.  Our belief in these illusions have even been further empowered by the deeply anchored "superstitions of science" (Chopra, 1990.)  These are beliefs which insist that what cannot be detected by our senses, either directly or as extended by technical prothesis, and therefore which cannot be measured, does not exist [philosophy of logical positivism].  Then we devote our entire lives in service to these illusions.

The goal for this section is to first inform you in such a way that you come to understand the nature of these three ego traps of mind: agendas, communication, and HIP (Human Information Processing) competence.  Through this awareness you can hope to  to escape their adverse effects on your life. Ultimately, you can even prepare yourself for a quantum leap into full Spiritual Consciousness.

Second, by understanding the nature and dynamics of these traps, you will be able to evaluate more adequately what is going on within you, within your family, among your friends and associates, within the company or institutions you serve, within the politics directing our society, and in your religious life as it relates to your Spiritual life.  Further, you will acquire a different and more accurate means of interpreting some of the events now occurring in the world.  For example, why the executives at Enron, Inc. and their accountants Arthur Anderson, Inc. were willing to profit from the ruination of the livelihoods and futures of tens of thousands of employees and stockholders who trusted them. Insight will be shed on the dynamics of other predatory corporate practices, extremism and the terrorist mentality, and the origins of right wing versus left wing political and religious values.

Finally, you will begin to acquire some insight into why and how you can become positive and proactive force in creating coalitions of other like minds (read "Consciousness awakened minds") to influence and reverse the disastrous direction in which this nation is headed.

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AGENDAS: THE FIRST OF THE THREE TRAPS OF MENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The Baboon Society
This link will always take you back to the beginning of the parable/allegory/metaphor analyzed below.

The story describes for us the nature of a bestial world which is entirely devoid of Spiritual Consciousness. In this example the behavior of these living systems (baboons) is determined entirely by their biological structures.  Their simple minds are servant to these emotional impulses without moderation by an intervening value system that is raised from an awakened Spiritual Consciousness.

Main Ideas
The following principles are found:

the "intellect" of each baboon is limited to processing selected (predetermined by instinct) data in the Baboon's environment. This data is transformed into simple information that only serves to evaluate that reality related to their primal needs: food, sex, shelter, and safety from harm or threat.
there is a hierarchy of dominance from the male and female leaders (alphas) to those who compete as challengers (betas) to those who are forced to follow and submit because they are not biologically or emotionally endowed with sufficient strength and will to compete (omegas.)
the Maslow hierarchy of needs explains the dynamics of how the biologically determined value system within each baboon creates their social system of rules and influences. Through these each creature acts to serve their own needs.  These lower order needs are served in the following order of priority: safety (from threat,) food and shelter, sexual gratification (i.e., the projection of self or ego into the future,) social status of acceptance, and physical and emotional comfort.  The higher levels of needs in terms of eros (romantic love,) sentimentality, self-expression, advanced logic, creativity and the highest need for Spiritual transcendence are almost entirely absent.
there are no abstract values related to personal or social ethics, or to abstractions of duty and responsibility, other than those linked to directly serve their own primal needs.  There are no concepts of loyalty to others. Instead their objective is to exploit any pragmatic benefit another baboon makes possible, e.g., let Yang, the male alpha, take on the leopard threat, and if he becomes injured and vulnerable to attack after defeating the threat, kill him and take his place.
control is limited to the ability and will required to impose intimidation and force on any challenger to personal power.  This extends to dominating the primitive symbols of that power (e.g., the most desirable female.)
sexual expression (expressed as lust) is used only to demonstrate personal dominance and for self gratification.
the baboon society is confined to creating the kind of limited organization (structure based on innate instinctive rules) that exists only to serve and express the above primal principles.  Yin and Yang are oriental concepts of opposites. Both being dominant alphas, Yang dominates through his maleness with Yat as his Beta, his first challenger.  Yin as female alpha dominates all other females, accommodates and manipulates Yang through her femaleness.

Applications in "The World"
Our world is rife with the operation of these principles within our American society and in all other world societies.

the lower order needs can be found demonstrated in many of our accepted social values (e.g., hunting, brute force sports, predatory capitalism)
human beings extend their power through various technical and social structures which are used to protect, project, and exploit the resolution of their needs.
humans who have evolved to a much higher social and Spiritual C/consciousness are sometimes unable to easily make and follow through on crucial survival determining decisions. For example when forced to protect themselves from imposed threat occurring at this primal level, civilized nations are reluctant to engage a ruthless and determined enemy by force, i.e., by using extreme means such as a preemptive war.

Implications for Subsequent Material
The principles of this allegory will be demonstrated in the following:

we learn to communicate using language and symbols with the emotional structures derived directly from these primal experiences and values.
apart from the denotative meaning of language, the connotative meaning of language is entirely derived from the feelings systematically associated (paired) with these primal experiences as they become labeled by words and symbols.
social systems are planned, organized, and constructed by alpha persons (groups and organizations) to serve as extensions of the dominant individual's personal power.  The dynamics of these systems as now function in American and world societies through corporations and governments. Their already serious threat to our ability to protect and advance our highest and most Spiritual values, become the subject of subsequent major sections of OT/MP.
look for the principles of the Baboon Society as you can find them in our world today.  They can be found demonstrated by events reported in the daily headlines and media stories.  They operate throughout all subsequent portions of OT/MP where power and force are factors.

Reminder:
This link will always take you to the next parable/allegory/metaphor on the Master Index page
This link will always take you to the top of this page to use the direct links to other explanations on this page.
This link will always take you back to the previous parable/allegory/metaphor on the Master Index page
This link will always take you to the top of the master Index page Table of Contents
This link will always return you to the point of departure in the dialogue that brought you to this interpretation

The Playpen

This story represent the next level above the baboon society's expression of primal behaviors.  These appear within the human being's primal biological system.

Main Ideas
The following points my be found as compared to the baboon society:

the human in its infant and toddler years expresses the same scale and scope of values as are found in primitive (baboon) biological systems.
unlike the infant baboon, the infant human is endowed with the neural structure and Spiritual linkages to evolve as a fully functional Spiritual being, given the appropriate emotional nourishment from those humans who dominate and control the infant's earliest years.
the early experience of a toddler provides the first opportunities to exert his/her will on both adult authority (during the "terrible twos") and his/her own peers.  The extent of his/her success establishes a level of confidence (i.e. sets their will) in the mind of the infant. This allows them to place themselves on the alpha-omega scale of dominance potential.  This self assignment determines their willingness to risk assertive actions in the future to get what they need.  The systematic feedback toddlers receive from their achievements or failures with adults and peers sets their capacity to function at some stable point on the dominance hierarchy during subsequent social experiences.
the degree of presence (or abrogation) and style of adult authority gives the infant his/her foundation definition of self confidence in claiming authority and control, e.g., from an expectation based on a continuum:  from ruthless and inflexible, to loving and reasonable.  Its parents can apply appropriate consistent discipline, or be rigidly demanding, or indifferent and inconsistent, These patterns can range from weak and vacillating (whether loving or not) to strong and predictable.

Applications in "The World"
By the time a child reaches the first years of grade school, the combination of systematic experiences with peers and adult authority has already defined the child's ultimate orientation toward power and control.  They already perceive themselves at a point on the dominance (pecking) order, from alpha to omega.  They have learned from the experiences arranged or permitted by their adults, the foundations of self respect or self condemnation. This potential is embedded in the larger social context of adult authorities and their systemic extensions.  By the time a child reaches adolescence, he/she can be found to function as grounded in one of the following sampling of many possible profiles:

loving kind and trusting but vulnerable to being used and abused
loving, kind and trusting, but assertive and capable of defending and advancing their power and control in reasonable ways
manipulative and devious in serving their needs by indirect, disguised, or covert means: ands therefore, always suspicious of the motivations of others
passive but angry, defensive, and reactive to any perceived threat to their ego through the use of passive aggressive tactics
directly aggressive, reactive, confrontive, and controlling; abusive without regard for the needs and rights of others.

Implications for Subsequent Material
The first experiences in confrontations with other toddlers validates or betrays the child's innate dominance character.  This aspect of their character defines their subsequent strategies and response patterns for engaging others for the rest of their life.  This primal incident will be recreated though out OT/MP in various guises.

The Playground
The Board Room
how to  understand and cope with the dynamics of personal, social, national, and international games of dominance, power and control

The Playground

In the playground story, once again, you will find a primal display of an agenda to control others in order to protect or promote satisfaction of one's own needs. In this story the incident reflects this dominance need at a more complex social level.

Main Ideas
The following main ideas should be noted:

the primal agenda of dominance and control now occurs at a level that also involves language
the focus is on the application of language within a context of a threat to use primal force. The tactic is intended to achieve intimidation and control of others, and through such means, gain the validation of one's own power and autonomy
primal force in any application always fails to provide the sought for legitimacy as it cannot address the out of conscious Spiritual Needs seeking validation. The core Spiritual need for ultimate affirmation cannot be found in the world of action or the senses.
any human system with primitive or inadequate Spiritual Consciousness will quickly regresses to the use of primal force as their only known means of coping with threat, fear, or frustration, e.g., passive aggression, a tantrum, threats and curses, or the violent laying on of hands when no other alternative seems accessible or productive.

Applications in "The World"
The "Bully" is found throughout all levels of social system complexity, and generally is created by the following recipe:

the bully (or bully group or gang) has been indoctrinated from birth by fear and intimidation, and has been persistently denied  psychological, social, and Spiritual affirmation by significant others, the dominant authorities.
there are frequent frustrations of L/love, and/or the incapacity of the bully to both express or receive L/love that define a defensive way of life. Recall from your own life how immature grade school boys, impoverished of mature means of displaying affection, often insult girls and push them around. Such actions are primal dominance demonstrations and disguised displays of their emergent sexual interest.
the bully mentality is amplified when it is locked into a social system which is chronically impoverished of the visible and accessible means to nurture Spiritually healthy expressions of Love.  Then the bully is driven to express frustration, aggression, or fear on ay accessible scapegoat target, or
the bully grows up uncontrolled and confident due to a permissive or ineffectual discipline system that does not or cannot  predictably  hold the bully accountable after his regression to verbally abusive or physically violent  aggression in order to achieve "respect" and control over others.

Implications for Subsequent Material
The "bully" is an expression of a social pathology.  Bullying behavior, however disguised, is Spiritually impoverished. However, in a society characterized by uneven and immature development of Spiritual Consciousness (e.g., the United States, western Europe, Islamic societies) sanctioned means of "bully" control have been carefully designed to disguise this primal agenda and legitimize its expressions in less harmful behavior.  Such accepted norms allow abuses to be ignored, or make them socially acceptable, even valued and taken for granted as "reality." Examples include:

perverted acts of faith justified aggression on out-group nations, groups, organizations, and their members
violent sports
destroying the livelihoods of others,  or stealing, lying, and/or manipulating to consume the earned wealth of others (e.g., through predatory capitalistic activities)
celebrations of guns, other weapons, legitimization of numerous expressions of controlled or simulated violence, and the activities of the "gun culture"
creation of a variety of ridiculous violence and vengeance themes in media with loner "heroes" (more recently pairs) who predictably resolve vengeance agendas single handily without harm to themselves, i.e. surviving hails of automatic gunfire, being protected from this fierce onslaught by running, hiding behind bushes, screens, open mesh fences, wagon wheels, and other reliable protective cover.   Have you ever noticed that in the hail of gunfire exchanged between the bad guys and the good guys in a typical western chase, with villains falling off their horses left and right, you  never see a single horse get hit unless required by the plot!  Also, we buy into the "reality" that after countless numbers of bad guys have been "killed" and fallen off their horses, approximately the same number who rode in then ride off as survivors.  The scattering of countless corpses are never seen disposed of.
obsessive media coverage and relentless reviewing of sanitized versions of real incidents of violence and depravity as priority "newsworthy" topics. Yet the true brutality of murder and war is almost never realistically, starkly and honestly presented to the public. The 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan, is a remarkable exception, and illustrates the True cost to our society and those who scarified to preserve our way of life in W.W.II.  How would our feelings about the now legitimized presentations of romanticized and gratuitous violence change were we to be constantly shown the gory carnal Truth, the footage showing the brutal Real and Truthful account of obscene violence actually in our world that is now left on the cutting room floor.

The expression of institutional bullies (lawyers) appears as a kind of dance whose "music" is created and nurtured by various uses and abuses of civil and criminal law.  The law is mostly written to benefit those who control its creation and implementation, i.e., corporations,  lawyers, judges, their corporate masters, and others who feed in the trough of "the law."   In the 19th century, Charles Dickens wrote in Bleak House that lawyers feed the law so that the law can feed them. [source] There has been little change since his day. The worldly law, proclaimed by the trumpets of idealism, is frequently written to serve its masters without regard to the underlying impoverished Spiritual Truth, or the victims it creates and exploits, nor does it make visible for public review its own perverse rules that it often freely violates to serve itself and its masters. NOTE

The Board Room

This story is a continuation into the adult world of the power principles underlying the demonstrations of primal dominance behavior found in the playpen and play ground.

Main Ideas
The story involves one of the more complex dynamics of our civilized society.  It reflects the following central ideas:

overt laying on of violent hands is avoided as "unacceptable."  Instead, the aggression is thoroughly disguised in the cloak of accepted social convention that validates corporate dominance behavior The power mongers to do violence to the lives of others in select ways. This violence is done through permissive social convention and various allowed legal dances without regard to either the consequences befalling the affected individuals, or to the larger social good.
aggression and abuse are disguised as a carefully orchestrated legal "minuet," a dance crafted to use the rules of civil law created by and for those who dominate corporate America, the legal profession, and the western capitalist world.
the contrived legitimacy of these worldly laws have been so deeply ingrained during generations of childhood and adult indoctrination in western society, that their literal existence, their dynamics of operation, and their ultimate harmful consequences are generally outside of the US population's awareness. Even while seriously suffering the symptoms, they can't make the connection.  The causal reasons for such adverse impact is not reveled either to the individual or the immature collective C/consciousness of society.
certain rules by which predatory capitalism flourishes throughout the world are devoid of Spiritual Truth.  Those who use these laws to abuse Spiritual Truth and accumulate worldly gain are also accumulating an enormous but invisible (to them) Spiritual (Karmic) debt (the topic of Dialogue 6.)
the ultimate and certain adverse fallout will be shared by all of society's members who actively contribute to, or permit, the controlling perpetrators that are creating this debt. The debt will be owed even by those who act (choose) to do nothing. The choice and act of "doing nothing" condones the status quo.

Applications in "The World"
The mechanism illustrated by this story, the legal destruction of a viable corporate entity, is a way of life at the beginning of 21st Century America.  The principles which legitimize the ruthless pursuit of primal dominance agendas can be seen in much of the accepted social and commercial conventions in western civilization. Those who manage and benefit from these worldly laws are oblivious to the link between this chronic abuse of those who are vulnerable and helpless and the certain Spiritual Justice that is approaching them as perpetrators.

This justice is already fermenting, undetected, and unrecognized by the corporate and political leadership in America for what it implies. We are creating an eventual coordinated attack on America by a mass of other world cultures, each with their own ego directed agenda, but with the common goal of destroying the capacity of predatory capitalist America to impose its economic and political dominance.  This ultimate attack will not be by an invading conventional army, nor even by international terrorists, but by the slow and relentless infusion into our nation of a cadre of immigrants whose goal is not to help build America's dream, but to instead steal it for themselves, or worse, to destroy it entirely in order to establish their own dream, one equally devoid of Spiritual Truth (e.g., militant Islam.)  The harbinger for these developments has already announced itself in systematic actions against the World trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund among others. It announces itself through the unchallenged inflow of immigrants that we permit in order for them to displace American workers, or do the filthy work required by corporate America, and the lazy exploiters who revel in its material benefits.

Overt resistance to corporate expansion is now strongest overseas while the American public dreams on. [evidence] [more evidence]  American dominance is accountable for the destructive effects of its ruthless predatory behavior upon personal and social behavior in all world societies; e.g., overpopulation, theft and corruption of natural resources, stress induced spouse and child abuse, family and community violence, gross poverty, and the routine trashing of the livelihoods of millions of decent but vulnerable individuals and families for profit.

It is this pattern of behavior that appears subtle to the Spiritually asleep, but whose impact is having devastating affects that must eventually become become visible to all, but after it is too late for  healing and corrective interventions.  It is this corporate "success" that has created and which energizes the roots of national and international terrorism.  The certain costs of all of this is activity is "out of consciousness" or dismissed by the leaders of American corporations, politicians, and the public who reside in the dream world of our as yet unchallenged ego protecting mental myths. The myth of an invincible America.  And these Americans who are asleep in their dreamtime act to declare that "business as usual" is OK.

Implications for Subsequent Material
You are encouraged to look for the expression of primal power agendas as an underlying factor in subsequent sections of OT/MP.  Look behind the media headlines of each day.  Look behind the public policy of any corporation, agency or institution you serve.  You will not find little if any Spiritual Substance as you will come to understand it through OT/MP.  Especially note the contribution of social complexity as it hides the dynamics of primal aggression across the various levels of our society. Your capacity to achieve this insight becomes more accessible as you engage the information on the overlays of communication and HIP (Human Information Processing) competence.

The Aborigine and the Professor

This story demonstrates that, in the absence of an adequate Spiritual Consciousness among the highly educated, even the most advanced intellectual achievements and capabilities will not necessarily protect you from unconsciously expressing Spiritually empty primal values and behaviors.

Main Ideas
The story illustrates how the dynamics of an inadequate C/consciousness is hidden from even a highly educated owner's conscious mind.  For example:

the professor is unable to link the aboriginal behavior as identical in principle to that of he and his committee. This incident provides an example of how intellectual consciousness acts to compartmentalize concepts and hide the deeper connecting relationships that are actually working in the situation.  Such subtle inner connections cannot be revealed through the ego intellect, but only through an empowered Spiritual Consciousness.
the ego managed intellectual consciousness is not always aware of either the presence or nature of compartments that seal related concepts or conditions off from each other
only the introduction of information derived from Spiritual Consciousness can link diverse areas of complex but subtle and compartmentalized intellectual consciousness. This capacity is not possible through the natural activities of the ego managed intellect by itself.

Applications in "The World"
Our intellectual consciousness (ego) is designed to serve its powerful vested interest in maintaining control by selectively allowing us access to needed information, but only as specified and permitted by the ego.  In order to preserve our ego and serve its bottomless needs, the intellect acts to deny us access to those elements that could destroy the ego's dominance of our mental consciousness.  The destructive elements of our Spiritually unilluminated awareness are invisibly linked to influence or control our actions as we strive to serve the primal agendas of our egos.

Implications for Subsequent Material
 In the following sections, you well see how the second trap of communication and the third trap of HIP are integrated with the agendas, and which conspire to create and protect the conceptual compartments that feed our agendas. Not how these traps hide and disguise the underlying Truth of our Reality from us, even when such dynamics deny us benefits or actually harm us.

First story in the human communication segment.