For the first time in who knows how long, how many years, I have nothing to write.
One could say “writer’s block”… but I would not know. I have never had that…
Except…
So I am looking. When I have nothing to say… and that is unusual, what happened that is also unusual?
Did you see how I formulated the question?
Your ticket to get out of anything, to innovate yourself out of a problem is the question. Or questions…
So that question did direct my attention to something I’ve been doing that is also unusual.
I am reading letters by Seneca, a Roman philosopher. It’s enjoyable. He gives you all the answers. He does all your thinking for you. He leaves nothing out.
Wowser… I hope I am not like him. I hope I am not doing all your thinking for you.
I have had this experience before. Sometimes from reading a book, but more frequently at seminars… there was nothing to add. It was so complete… only a bow was missing…
But when I look, there is hardly anything I can say what Seneca’s advice is to Lucilius. Here is the picture: 
Seneca is old. Has retired from public office and now he is old, lives modestly, and enjoys his time that is his.
Lucilius is younger, and just got a promotion. With the promotion come riches, and people who want to partake in your riches, and who curry your favor.
So letter after letter Seneca is trying to convince this Lucilius to leave it all, and retire to a life of poor means but freedom.
I live that life, the life Seneca is promoting.
So, in a way, I could write about that too… Why I haven’t? Because there are a lot of things I do instinctively, but never really distinguished it as something that can be taught.
For example, he says: practice poverty. A day here, a day there.
Eat only the bare minimum your body needs to survive. Drink only water.
Sleep in a cot instead of a bed, in the cold, covered with rags.
Wear rough clothes.
In this day and age, this “prescription” would also include: no electricity, no smart phones, no email, no computer. For a day, here and there.
Walk to the grocery store. Climb the steps instead of using the elevator. Wash your dishes instead of the dishwasher.
Chop vegetables, cook… Nothing fancy. A poor man’s soup.
Shower in cold water.
All those conveniences together take you away from feeling yourself. From having the light come from within… instead of chasing it without.
By the light I mean pleasure. The joy of living. The experience of Self.
Of course, if you got stuck on the feeling need level of “meeting the expectations of others” this is hell… But sometimes you need to go through hell to get back to normal.
If you need people to be nice to you, to be kind, to be courteous, polite, then you need this more than others: you need the world to be in a certain way or you won’t be well?
You need to see that you are trapped in this vicious cycle of wanting the world to approve of you… The world won’t do you this favor, but even if individuals approve of you… you are craving more… A typical “desire trap” resulting in a life of hellish misery.
Certain soul corrections are more prone to entrap themselves in this trap than others: Circuitry is one soul correction that is famous for this.
They suck the light out of everything and everyone… and yet it is never enough.
Of course, it is not them, it is the desire trap. But they can’t see it… it’s the snake biting its own tail, the dog chasing its own tail… the circle that cannot stop.
Your soul correction could be translated to “what is your feeling trap by design?”
Of course this is a new science, so it is slow going. But for slow-going science, it is quite speedy.
So how did I get here from Seneca’s letters? Well, all he is talking about is the desire trap… He doesn’t have a name for it, but he knows it inside and out.
He wrote many many many letters to this Lucilius. Did Lucilius ever listen to him and do what he asked him to do: leave the lucrative business with money and slaves and turn his attention to his inner riches?
I have no idea. I doubt it.
Why? Because unless you know it’s a mechanism, unless you know that it’s feeling-based, unless you know that certain activities, like imagining the future, keep it going… you cannot.
First you need to stop imagining. Starve the mechanism from its fuel.
Start directing the attention to what is… feel the deprivation, and do it anyway.
Eventually the trap, without its fuel, will weaken enough that the deprivation feeling will weaken then go away.
This is where your TLB score comes to bear: the deprivation feeling is unpleasant. You need to be able to have it, and do nothing to fix it, to ease it, to get away from it.
I think that just by stopping feeding the trap with imagination, positive or negative, you can stop any and all the traps… but we’ll see… I can’t see everything yet.
Oh, it’s important to say that wanting is the key word. Wanting anything is the key to the desire trap.
All the hardware based feelings have an element of wanting, so wanting can be the start of any and all traps.
You want to be able to recognize the dynamic feeling of wanting. It is like a pulsing. Like a jack-hammer. Like a child tapping your legs… pay attention to me.
Not pleasant. Distracting. Exactly. That is its function. Indicating a need.
Thirst, hunger, having to go to the bathroom, being chilled, being tired, being horny, being lonely, being bored…
All have this exact dynamic. You don’t have to obey. You have to be able to recognize, evaluate, and make an executive decision, a decision for this time. Not for all times…
Monks make executive decisions for all times about sex… and they have to fight the wanting, every day, every minute, instead of communing with the god of their beliefs…
Catholic priests: ditto… and not surprisingly they abuse little children, because an executive decision for the whole future is not in line with the 13th floor…
I will never… I will always… are the dead giveaways that you are in the Tree of Knowledge, and that you’ll fail, if it is a promise, or you are dead wrong if it is telling your story.
“I will never amount to anything” or “I will never love again” are great examples.
They ignore the 13th floor and thus are lies, mistakes, and traps.
On the 13th floor the energy re-generates itself, and there is no such thing as “never” or “forever”.
This is what Seneca can’t see. So his answers, his solutions come from the 14th floor. The floor of words, notions, advice, and not from where LIFE gets decided, the 13th floor.
You see, if I told you that you can eat X for a week, and for the rest of life you’ll be healthy, you would do it.
But if I told you that if you eat X for the rest of your life, you’ll be healthy, your 13th floor will revolt… and it has, for most of my clients that got their list of X in the health consultations.
The more resistant your soul correction to “always” or to “never” the less you follow X, and the lower your health number is.
How do you tame that?
Surprisingly it is wanting and desire… desire trap, that is doing it.
In essence: if you can understand the desire trap, intimately, then you can control and annihilate all the traps, including the fear trap, that seems to have no connection to desire.
The important thing to know is that the wanting, the desire is a foreign element on the 13th floor… like the serpent in the Bible…
The serpent is from the 14th floor. It is part of the Tree of Knowledge and its cohort, the 15th floor, the marker feelings, the emotions level.
When, in the story of the Garden of Eden, god said: you cannot eat from that tree… its words (you probably say His words) aroused the software based desire to assert one’s individuality, which is the “desire to meet your own expectations” or the ego.
The ego which can behave friendly to you or like in the Garden of Eden story, can destroy your life.
The negative aspects, the destructive aspects of the ego come from the 14th floor, the world of the words. And the marking feelings… pride, contempt, rebelliousness, and such emotions.
Now, if this didn’t make a lot of sense, let me try to say it simpler:
All human traps come from the two floors, the 14th (words) and the 15th (emotions, marker feelings) being in cahoots to overpower Life, Life that is the 13th floor.
They will not stop. The whole system of societies, the whole culture is built on you being able to be jerked around at will through the tools of the 14th and the 15th floor.
You can get out of this predicament by centering yourself on the 13th floor… Life… feelings… needs. Real needs. For Life.
And get really good at getting out of the traps that are set for you by everyone including the people who consider friends, family, lovers.
It’s possible. It is even easy if you can stay alert and aware.
Ultimately your alertness and awareness will be the decisive factor whether you live in the circus or in Life.
And that is why alertness and awareness may be the best predictors of your happiness and fulfillment in life.
Now, we have come full circle.
And back to Seneca and his letters to Lucilius: philosophy is a 14th floor activity… and probably this is why it cannot make any difference. It know nothing about the roots: about the 13th floor.
While psychology is an activity (I would not deem to call it a science) entirely dealing with the 15th floor, largely even ignoring the effect of the 14th floor… and knowing nothing about the 13th floor, where everything happens.
All Tree of Knowledge, all useless. Keeping you squarely at the mercy of those that pull all the strings.
In the feelings webinars, and reading the Feelings and the Words books, you can start locating yourself on the 13th floor, and reclaim the power you lost: to be your own person.
PS: I was just on a fun pictures site, and found this…
Seneca says: real joy is not smiling, not laughing.
I can attest to that. The more someone smiles or laughs on their pictures the more miserable they feel inside.
The smile = happiness idea is a 14th floor concept, about as true as the rest of it… A lie.
PPS: Your TLB score can start rising with this new science. Why? Because it is needed.
And your TLB score will be the strongest predictor if you make the transition from unhappy puppet to happy human being.
Get it now
if your eyes look for how you look to others, then you are stuck in “meeting the expectation of others”… the little boy who had lots of pleasurable feelings from being a ham, or the apple of his mother’s eye.
The practiced smiles, the scarves, the “self-consciousness” which is the opposite of self…
You need to leave that behind so that you can grow up and be inner directed. Be directed by the need to fulfill your own expectations of yourself, without completely ignoring to be appropriate, which is the meeting the expectations of others.
In the past 2 days I saw and heard a bunch of excellent musicians. Some literally world-class. How do ambition, desire, competition, and striving for excellence fit in with the notion of a life lived from the 13th floor?
Maybe it can still be an inner game, but one that has a reference in the “outside world.” You know your ranking, you know how to perform in a competition, you honor your skills and talents and develop them to their highest levels. You see your rivals as coaches pushing you to be your very best, but it’s not about the accolades and rewards, it’s about the growth and the satisfaction of an inner push. Hmm…