I never had to really learn it... so how I teach you to live in reality? The 13th floor

This article will be deemed self-aggrandizing, or something of that sort... and I don"t care. Truth is truth...

I am 69 years old.

I have lived, this is a 20/20 hindsight, my entire life on the 13th floor. Two months ago I would not have said that: I didn"t know there is such a thing...

Having live there all my life: I am having a real tough time to say how I got there... because I never lived on the 14th or the 15th floor... the 13th floor is reality, based on your sensory organs, not on thought.

My brothers did live on the 14th floor. Both. My father also lived on the 13th floor. My mother didn"t.

The biggest difference, looking through my own eyes now, is the meanings. On the 14th and 15th floor you live through meanings... not facts, not perception, but meanings... created by words.

My father didn"t do life through meanings. (thoughts and emotions, the 14th and the 15th floor)

He went from an orphan whose mother died of starvation, to being member of the government... PhD, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Neither did I... Even the one area where meaning was going to trip anyyone, where anyone else would have become schizophrenic, according to psychiatrists, I did not get tripped... and didn"t become schizophrenic... A little antisocial, maybe...

I pondered the meaning, I tried to work through different meanings, but I toyed with it, like you toy with an idea, with a role in a play... Didn"t take it in like the truth.

I lived on the 13th floor and yet I was unhappy... most of my life.

High achiever... and unhappy.

You should be surprised now. Isn"t the 13th floor a land of milk and honey?

It isn"t. And yet, it is the only place where happiness is possible.

You should be confused now...

What? Why? How? Grrr....

OK, the 13th floor is clean, based on reality, based on perception, not on notions... a system that unless you screw it up, the way I did, can allow you to be happy. Allow is the operative word. Not MAKE you happy... allow you to be happy. Happiness is still up you to, even if you don"t screw it up... the way I did.

OK, I am going to try to explain. Wish me luck.

The 13th floor is your foundation. The floor that is almost identical to the floor animals live on.

I am yet to see animals sad... although some animals in captivity have unfulfilled needs.
OK, the 13th floor is the floor of needs. Needs that operate through feelings.
It is needs that operate the feelings that operate you... on the 13th floor.

Needs can be the fundamental needs, the hardware-type needs... ((Quoting from the Feelings book:
We use the term ‘hardware-type need" for needs that are genetically encoded in us. That means these needs are present all the time throughout our life and the activation of the previous levels is not a precondition for the existence of any of them. Their continuous and parallel existence is proven by the possibility of the constant appearance of indicating feelings
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