This is the first of three dialogues that describe how the five senses and their ego driven intellect interact to distort our consciousness. These three traps of mind create a near overwhelming obstruction that masks our otherwise unbroken Spiritual link to the Super Consciousness, i.e., the Holistic energy and information fields that lie beyond our Conscious awareness. 

The first ego overlay is biological, called the agendas. It creates  our primal fears that threaten its survival, dominance and control. Then it demands responses to cope with these illusions. It urges the immediate satisfaction from the sensual things of the world as demanded by the body. 

The second is the Paradox of Communication which is nurtured by the ego and is built upon the emotions generated by agendas as symbolic language is learned.  It contributes its own serious distortions. 

The third overlay is HIP (Human Information Processing) competence. HIP is our learned ability to penetrate and cope with information complexity and to establish the rules by which we make decisions.  HIP is shaped by and during the evolution of the first two overlays.  HIP determines how effectively we deal with complexity created from the Holistic Reality in which we live and move and have our being.  But HIP is distorted the innate fear the ego generates at the base level of the agendas when we experience what our limited perception defines for us as reality.   This second dialogue focuses on how our consciousness and its "reality" are created and managed by the agendas.

OT/MP simplifies the five levels of Maslow's hierarchy [source] to three levels of C/consciousness priorities. These combine to generate an innate fear or anxiety that demands overt resolution.   The fundamental rational need that can pacify these feelings and  puts off this fear is to acquire power and control.  Energizing the need for power and control, these manifest fears are assigned the following levels or priorities:

(1) Security: basic primal needs of security, shelter, subsistence, and comfort.  At level 1, the fear comes from primal threats to biological convenience and survival.  Until this fear is satisfactorily resolved, this person (system) is arrested at this level.
(2) Ego Affirmation: ego needs include acknowledgment of credibility, belonging, and recognition.  At level 2 the fear is related the possibility of being denied or abandoned by a love object, being denied full membership in the relevant groups, being denied permission to compete, or acknowledgment for worldly accomplishments, and in the absence of which, possibly being cast out of the primal group with which we identify. The ego deception that underlies this is to cause us to think that our self worth is defined by others and by circumstances outside of our "I Am" self.  By overcoming this illusion we can advance to
(3) Self Actualization: the highest expressions of intellectual stimulation and creativity.  Self actualization is experienced only in the absence or minimal presence of fears associated with levels one and two.  It is experienced by joyfully being-in-the-world, and its ultimate achievement is to prepare the way for Spiritual transcendence.   When Level 3 needs are frustrated or threatened, the fear expresses as a diffuse sense of primal abandonment, anomie, and being lost in a crowd and starving in the midst of plenty.

Individuals who are stuck at one of the lower levels become devoted to resolving only ego priorities. Their fears lead them to form into collations of like minds. Then  they collectively organize and find support for dealing with their fears.  When the child's environment is characterized by absent, erratic, or punitive influences, the child becomes arrested in their C/consciousness unfoldment.  He/she remains compelled to function by obsessing over solutions to the lower order fears. They can become anchored at one of these more bestial levels with the associated behaviors then inflicted upon others.  You will find numerous expressions of different levels of Maslow's hierarchy in your daily experiences. 

The helpless child is born with the capacity to survive by commanding the attention of its adults.  Childish efforts to control expresses through behaviors that are selfishly devoted to serve only itself, to meet the most fundamental needs found on the Maslow hierarchy.  These priorities focus on the need to eliminate threat, and/or protect against the feelings of fear itself, and then to try to resolve feelings linked with primal needs of safety, hunger, comfort, and adequate dominance (limited to getting the attention of its adults.) 

When the child's formative environment (birth through the school years) is characterized by absent, erratic, negligent, or punitive influences, the child tends to fixate and become arrested in fears associated at a lower level on the hierarchy.  He or she can become anchored at one of those more bestial levels.  This fixation then expresses as a pattern of values and actions that are defensive, assertive, aggressive, and reactive in the presence of uncertainty, whether it manifests as an implied or direct threat.  In some cases the response is one of denial and withdrawal into a helpless and debilitating clinical depression.

At this level, grounded in the stability of met and reliable security needs, the child's developing value system seeks ways and means of validating their ego self through arranging their relationship with external conditions. These are initially found in the approbation and approval of parents, peers, teachers, and other trustworthy adult influences.  Power and control agendas become active as the child seeks to protect itself from challenges, neglect, or humiliation from intrusive threats to their ego self.  Adult influences must create a balance between confidence building permissiveness, and setting limits without excessive rigidity and irrational imposition of discipline. Investments are made in tangible external expressions that validate the child's ego self.  Validation is defined as "success" or "recognition," or "membership," with access to the results of their successful use of power and control. 

These goals can include finding association with, and earning acceptance by that group or coalition that validates the person's values, whether these values are nobel or perverse. They are further affirmed by awards, diplomas, and other material indicators of social validation and "success."  However, no validation of one's Spiritual Truth is possible by only investing in these external techniques.  One's Spiritual potential (and the empowerment that goes with it) will remain neglected and can atrophy by only investing in these worldly priorities.  This loss of undeveloped Spiritual potential is a hidden cost for the energy devoted to illusory material surrogates.

OT/MP asserts that the person who reaches this level of Spiritual unfoldment transfers their energy from pursuit of external factors and their investment in external material conditions, and instead grows to pursue intrinsic or internal discipline and control.  They rewrite their comprehension and definition of reality so that external investments are mostly for the purpose of providing for the basic needs in ways that free the intellect to pursue Spiritual ideas and growth.  In order to achieve this Spiritual advance, the intellect and emotions must become stilled, i.e., one must practice the discipline of prayer or meditation in The Silence.

Personal discipline in pursuit of the arts (music, dance, art, acting) become more oriented for Spiritual purposes than for worldly acclaim. One finds reward simply in  the pleasure of the discipline and mastery of the music or techniques. As Spiritual illumination unfolds, one places decreasing value on accomplishment for external approbation, acknowledgment, and the awards and rewards provided by significant others and the public. 

One's capacity to recognize and reach for Spiritual Consciousness becomes further empowered by success in the effort itself. When the mental consciousness is inspired by a healthy, Spiritual Consciousness, the person is freed from the ego burden of fears of failure and obsessively needing to conform to external expectations, requirements, and standards that are not valid from a Spiritual perspective.

As a child matures from infancy, through the toddler years, and the years of childhood and adolescence, he/she is constantly educated by their ego owned intellect in the context of their external world of material influences. Through these influences and their direct experiences, a child learns how to have their conscious needs met.  With rare exception the more urgent and important Spiritual Needs are ignored, displaced, or even contradicted by the nature of those material influences.  The intellect matures learning to rationally assess all experiences from the limited material world of experience, and the teachings of others that are also anchored in materialism.

In the following sequence, you will observe through various scenarios how the basic power and control needs of the individual are accommodated through the exercise of power and control agendas directed by their ego intellect. You will recognize most of these scenes as having occurred in your experience, either directly, or as observed in others. 
 

The nature of our agendas begins to form the roots of intellectual consciousness (the ego) beginning at the birth of the individual.  Hence the trap is insidious.  As demonstrated in the examples above, those who specialize in practicing their intellectual understanding of reality are vulnerable to investing in illusion.  This material "reality" is created by synthesizing the input from our five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.  Then they wonder why there is often negative fallout from the actions that follow from guidance by their ego intellect.  In order to grasp the evidence of this dynamic, the Pilgrim will now be encouraged to begin to evaluate any given event or system of interest Holistically, i.e., from within an embracing system of systems. 

Language and all forms of symbolic representation have only defined and limited meaning from the ego 's intellects conscious perspective. This perspective is defined and limited by each observer, but only for themselves.  There is no other relevant meaning for that observer except that moderated by her/his viable Spiritual Consciousness. Any observer's unchallenged ego intellect, compared with a Spiritually moderated ego, can create deficient meanings and interpretations of reality. These can have serious adverse  implications for the viability and health of the observing system.  All communications directed to such an observer must be designed with knowledge of that observer's Holistic experience is within his/her Reality. For it is only from that material paradigm within her/his agenda's defined reality that the observer's language and symbols derives their meaning.  Whatever the intended message sent to a receiver, it will be always by filtered through the need priorities of the recipient's agendas or ego intellect.