The tumescent mind loves factions. Because it lacks power, it survives by usurping power from others, enrolling their tumescent minds into feeding off their resentment. It will seek out people it perceives to be less powerful—people it can lobby and persuade—and thereby access their collective power so that it may perpetuate indefinitely. It will move these people through their fear and scarcity in such a way they do not notice that nothing is actually being offered.
At least nothing real or true, as they are, of course, being offered safety and protection from whatever they are being drawn away from. There will be a low-grade sense of hysteria and fear, and a high-level description—more often than not, abstract or unsubstantial—of some threat. This person, armed with sufficient numbers, will aim to make demands of these power sources.
The beauty of the power source is to neither bend or block these demands. Should it bend, it will lock into place the tumescent mind’s belief it can rule with fear. Should it block, power will not be acting in alignment with what power does and will thus affirm there is something to be fearful of. The key then is for power to continually absorb the impact, to convert tumescence through the process of approval, and to send back measured love. A love that does not apologize but recognizes that the tumescent mind is a painful mind to exist inside of.
The more deliberately power can abet the absorption of the tumescent behavior, the more quickly both will be released from the tumescent grip. This is the difficult truth of interdependence: that while our actions may not be the result of another’s actions, and thus may not be our responsibility, the only way we will ever get free from another’s tumescence is to be part of the vehicle that has them get free of it. This requires that we see the world and the people in it as our friends—friends who are sometimes overtaken by the tumescent mind—and to never mistake the actions of the tumescent mind with the person it is acting through.
