Yes, there is a spiritual side

It is the question that drives us

It’s taken me a while to come out with it, but here it goes. The nice quote (got it?) has truth in it. Though we often don’t know what the question is and that is fine. It is the search that drives us and almost defines us as humans. The search for higher meaning, the meaning of life, truth, love or any of them in a mix, is what makes us human.

Alas, the search for wealth, comfort or as in the case of science, facts, is not fulfilling and thus i need to make the distinction here.

It started with truth and ended with love

In hindsight it was even the search for truth that got me to study physics 25 odd years ago. Not consciously at the time, and it was only much later that i could express the anger at the deception. There is off course no truth in Physics, or science, though it was a hard nut to swallow.

Science is about facts, usually irrelavant facts. Irrelevant to the person’s life that is learning and teaching. It’s about talking in detail about the irrelevant, while never mentioning that it is irrelevant. Science is about pretence of knowlege, not real knowledge which is about life, love, or something meaningful.

The sign of intelligence is surely learning and reflection. But while it is not a big step to realise that what everyone needs to learn most is how to be fullfilled (colloqually called happy), and the reflection that matters most is that of ones own life, it is also a step rarely taken. Sadly all the talk about not meaningful things is keeping most people quite busy and away from any meaningful self-searching.

I have done my spiritual search, it started long ago, lead me to my master and finding the truth and love. Spiritually i have searched and i have found. I am left without question. That is, for me (not generally, or you) i have answers to any meaningful question. And i am completely fulfilled in my life, my work, and most importantly my love. My whole life is a whole, not as it used to be many distinct parts and i have no problems, either in daily life or in general.

An echo, karma unfulfilled

So why am still doing this and not out there teaching. At least it seems that anyone who has realized anything feels the need to go forth and tell others. But it is not my way and that is ok, in the same way that not everyone who learns english becomes an english teacher.

The best i can come up with it that there is still karma that needs to be cleaned. Just to clarify, karma is unresolved problems left from our forebares or ones own action before they were conscious. I was surely not conscious when i first started with virtual machines and so i get to clean that up now.

But don’t misunderstand, i don’t resent my karma (another great matrix line). I accept it and am willing to clean my bit up, even i can see that much of it has been handed down from my parents. I don’t blame them (or anyone) as they got handed their bit from their parents and did their best. It is the way of things, and i have long ago resolved to do my bit to further human consciousness as i can (starting in me).

So i just wanted to say that this project in itself is not important in any sense of the word. And the main meaning i get from it, is the cleaning of my karma.

The way back

I noticed that quite quickly after i started the project, i was diverging radically from old ideas. And actually that is not just from my old ideas, which is nice in itself. A certain freshness and the fact that i am not just going over old ground. No, it’s from any old ideas that i am aware of.

I just noticed another crystal project with similar goals, but sort of more traditional choices (salama was called crystal in the beginning). Ie llvm to generate binaries and a more static approach. And that would have been me as a younger version. Now i go the long way because i know i have all the time i need, and what matters is direction, not speed.

The way it is happening is that i am reexamining just about everything i touch. A part of that is the kind of no stone unturned mentality. Thoroughness in a way.

But mostly it is a reexamination of everything i learned. It is going back over old ground and really looking at things, seeing them in a fresh way and coming to mostly new conclusions. Off course the main reason we get so much done so quickly in software engineering these days is that we build on previous, and other peoples work. But so much of that is just layer on layers of stuff that is not needed. And they are not just baggage, they really stop doing things differently.

Going over this old ground and finding new ways does give me a certain satisfaction and already has lead to a much better understanding of what programming actually is. Also i find it meaningful that this sense of rediscovery is so similar to what the spiritual path was about for me. And the idea does make me smile, that i am now a spiritual programmer.