'Journey' Category

Culica Mobile game is finished, and has been submitted to Apple’s App Store / iTunes for testing on the 12th of October. ETA 26 October 2009 following months of hard graft. Tools used: Apple iPhone SDK, Objective C, UIKit and OpenGL ES. This has been quite a trip, since I wasn’t familiar with any technologies involved and the game programming paradigms.

culica mobile website: http://www.culica.com/product/culica-mobile/
twitter: http://twitter.com/iphonedevapps

Originally posted on flickr but I decided to “keep” it here as well with a view of potentially expanding on it in the future (i.e. never)

Below is my “skimpy” and purely personal contribution to “identity shaped by ’socialist communism’ in Poland”, ‘purely personal’ because different groups of people had entirely different , sometimes totally opposite experiences, depending on their age, family status, political or religious beliefs and so on….

My brief background: born in Poland in 1963, both parents very poor farming background who made it to the Big Town: Warsaw and managed to get higher education – I guess all thanks to ’socialism’ – they would have stood no chance in pre-WWII era. So here is first horrifying realization: I owe my identity, my “who I am” to ’socialism’ – because without it my parents would have never met as students and therefore I would not have been conceived, not to those parents anyway.

I found growing up in Poland a bizarre and surreal dual-reality – we were ’socialist’ country but our socialism did not conform to many obligatory principles of Communism. Everybody was poor – but many could afford “luxury” items such as cars or colour TVs – which were beyond their official earning potential. There was no food in the shops at certain times – but usually there was always food on the tables whomever one visited. Religion and Church were frowned upon by officialdom – yet not going to church was frowned upon probably even more socially. Most people went to “International Workers Day” 1st of May celebrations – yet most of them were just laughing their heads off at all this nonsense. The list could go on and on. It was, in a way, like playing some kind of kids “pretend” game – there were adults who would tell us what to think and how to behave (party officials) and there were kids who were nodding their heads while “misbehaving” – thinking and doing what suited them best. What made it even more bizarre was that most of the “adults” were “kids” as well – party officials who would condemn the church officially but secretly attend the mass every Sunday for example.

How did it shape the identity of myself and perhaps others of my age? This may sound very arrogant – but I believe this “dual-reality”, being “neither here nor there”, not having a straight, narrow line to follow made us very open-minded and resourceful. We had “polish socialism” dogma, we had Catholic dogma, we had Russian Communism dogma, we had “western capitalism“ dreams and we had most of the western and eastern art and philosophies freely accessible to us. Usually it was pretty difficult to obtain anything by means of a simple purchase or service – one always had to think of some schemes how to get the money, and if you had money – how to get the goods: how to get a car (5 year+ waiting queue otherwise), how to get food on the table which wasn’t in the shops, how to make alcohol when none was available, how to buy furniture, toilet paper, colour TV – having money did not equal with possession – one had to work hard, networking, joining some list-queues, giving right presents to the right people in order to obtain goods or service for those money. This may sound like corrupting environment but on the contrary: I think it strengthened one’s Ego’s and Soul’s integrity – there was black, there was white and everyday life happened in the spectrum of all colours in-between. “Networking” – “one hand washes another”; helping each other – was an essential way of living deeply embedded in our psyche – it is quite funny how the “western world” is trying to re-invent and “package” this simple basic human behaviour as some kind of “product”.

We also didn’t have much choice, if any at all: whether it was clothes, TV sets, cars, furniture, toilet paper, education, meat or accommodation – there was very limited variety of products and services – and I find it very liberating, educating and character building too – instead of wasting one’s mental energies on impossible decisions such as which car is the best buy, which energy company is cheapest, which mobile phone package is the most appropriate – one was free to spend this energy on other things, personal explorations, love and friendships, hobbies, learning or having fun time for example.

There was also another “dual reality” – social differences: we drove a car, my grandparents drove a cart and horses, we lived in a flat supplied with water, gas, electricity, bathroom and toilet – my grandparents lived in a house which only had electricity – the water came from the stream nearby, coal was used for cooking and heating, the toilet was a wooden shed outside, one had a quick wash using small basin in the kitchen. Those differences also forced one’s mind to realize that “things are never what they seem to be” – we were perhaps conformist but we weren’t uniform, my family’s town living with modern comforts wasn’t “better” – just “different” – it forced one to question what “being better off” really means, weakening judgemental nature of Ego. There was no strong class division or discrimination that I remember – we all came from more less the same poor background, we all had to struggle to make the ends meet, we all had the same oppressor – we were “all in it together”.

All in all – and I have to stress again that those are just my personal thoughts and experiences – the identity ’socialism’ shaped me, and perhaps others, into was “goły ale wesoły” – “naked/poor but happy” – focus is on enjoyment in life – material possessions serve to enhance it – but they can never provide it.

Cheerio!

[...] you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.

–Morpheus

We can live in our thoughts, we can live our thoughts, we can be our thoughts, caught up in dramas generated by our minds, thinking, analysing, obsessing, re-living, agonizing, shortly: digesting the thought food supplied to us by our brain – that’s the Blue Pill, Virtual Reality, Bondage we were all born into.

Luckily, as creatures equipped with consciousness, we also possess a seemingly hidden from us ability to distance ourselves from our thoughts, ability to allow them to exist without actually us paying too much attention to them, without us acting upon them, without us reacting to them – that’s the Red Pill, Quantum Reality, being the Observer of the Experiment called “life” rather than laboratory animal being experimented on by our very own mind.

The choice is ours but it is important to consider Morpheus’ words here:

I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth

–Morpheus

Those words are absolutely critical: many of us bravely decided to take the Red Pill, but in a wrong arrogant belief that it would somehow give us an advantage, improve quality of our lives, enable us to have more control over Virtual Reality we have to deal with every day, free us from the bondage we were born into. What Morpheus is trying to emphasise then, and many of us had a pleasure of painfully learning that lesson themselves, is that taking the Red Pill does not automatically “make things better” – it is often, in fact, that taking the Red Pill makes things seemingly worse, to start with anyway – so it is vital that we understand our choice and the reasons behind it if we are determined to stand by it.

Why would anybody want to take the Red Pill then? Because, IMHO, that is the only choice we have, even though Blue Pill not only sounds more attractive, but also seems to make much more sense.

The reason why Blue Pill does not represent any choice is simple:
“everything we pay attention to grows”
If we chose to live our thoughts, listen to them, pay respect and cultivate them, effectively becoming their slaves – then they will just grow larger, hungrier, more demanding, and haunting, knowing that we have become dependant on them, until we will get totally trapped in them, unable to escape, stuck in a Virtual World of our own anguish which, over time, will become more and more unbearable, a living Hell.
Blue Pill is like any drug addiction – sooner or later it will start to bring in increasing misery, agony and suffering – its original purpose and attraction lost. Our investment in Blue Pill will cease to pay off and our losses will just keep mounting up over time.

The reason why Red Pill is the only choice is simple, for the very same reason:
“everything we pay attention to grows”
If we stop paying attention to our thoughts so deeply and passionately, particularly to unwanted ones, they will stop growing and slowly start to wither away, for they won’t feel needed anymore and there won’t be anything they can cling, hang on to. Our investment in Red Pill will start to pay off and our profits will just keep mounting up over time.

But the choice of becoming an Observer is not an easy one – some parts of us will still be deeply locked in Virtual Reality Bondage and therefore we will have to maintain the state of “dual reality” – being an Observer as well as a person trapped in his/her own Virtual Reality. And how will we know which is which?
One also has to accept the fact that one will never be able to fully free oneself from the Blue Pill Birth Bondage – Red Pill is not an absolute, guaranteed solution – it is an “every little helps” remedy.

Being a Prisoner of one’s own thoughts is a Living Hell
Being an Observer of one’s own thoughts is a Good Laugh

One single negative thought we managed to eradicate from our mind is one single improvement in quality of our lives, and therefore lives of others and the Universe as a whole. “Old habits die hard” implies that any newly learnt habit becomes more and more permanent over time. “Practise makes it permanent” as they say.

Harmony naturally results in a deep silence, joy, delight.
Conflict results in anxiety, anguish, stress, tension.
The EGO is nothing but all the tensions that you have created around
yourself.

–Osho

Assumptions:
-) We influence, if not create, reality but we have no idea how we do it, nor we have any control over this – because any event is an outcome of practically infinitive number of factors that contributed to its arising.
-) “Reality” is analogue, Universe is analogue, everything FLOWS rather than progressing step by step
-) Any event must exist in a field of potentiality before it arises – any event must exist in a state of an unobserved particle, when its state is un-determined
-) The State of Potentiality is the most powerful state, absolutely still and absolutely silent, like a Calm before the Storm, or Nothingness before Big Bang, it is a state of pure, accumulated energy that hasn’t decided what to do with itself yet hehehehehe

Now then:
Let’s consider for a moment a balloon being filled with air. If we continue filling balloon with air – it will explode sooner or later. But if we make a tiny hole in it – some of the air will be escaping. The explosion will not be as powerful and entirely different – because of this tiny little hole.
Or, if we consider a particle in its un-determined state – even a sneak glance at it, a minute observation, will determine at least some of its state – and therefore particle will lose its infinitive potential of being anything.

Therefore any useless speculation on what is or will be actually chips away from what is or will be, dilutes it. It is like watching the balloon filling with air, not knowing that there is a tiny hole in it somewhere.

Furthermore we are, particularly these days, “digital creatures”… we think in “digital”, not analogue, we think in “steps”, we think in “if this then that” procedural language.
But we also know that everything, including our brains, is analogue. Therefore there are always “gaps” between “steps”, between “this or that”, we think, we perceive, we analyse, we speak – always digitally, always from one point to the next, missing the gaps in between points.

Therefore the outcome we expect is always “skewed”, inaccurate, or not even resembling our “trend predictions” – because we are entirely blind to half of the “story”… i.e. “gaps”

The more we try to predict, analyse, define, describe – the more “gaps” we create in the process… and hence the more we move away from what is really happening. One could say that the “real life” is happening exactly “there” – in the field of gaps which we cannot perceive, due to digital, logical “yes or no” nature of our brains, due to the fact that we think in order to determine.

And I start to think that this is where “being in touch with oneself” term originates from. It is not a metaphor, it is actually an act of Mind touching, “linking” with the Heart, on vibrational level, thus creating an envelope of stillness and silence, embracing the field of potential, rather than panickly trying to dissolve it with thoughts and/or words.

It is only natural. We are scared of stillness and silence, energy seemingly not moving, not manifesting itself – for we simply and quite logically equate it with Death.

“Being in Touch with Oneself” is a practice, a method, of opening oneself to those “gaps”, learning to acknowledge them, learning to CONCIOUSLY live through them, and, first of all of course hehehehehe, learning to unlearn the fear of them.

(:o

P.S.

• Some people touch the area of their heart in order to confirm/re-affirm that they are trying to get “in touch” hehehehehehe
• Eadon tells me: So getting in touch with reality is touch in the sense of “observation”, by observing ourselves, we make ourselves reality and hence learn about ourselves, hence getting in touch with ourselves.

I think we sometimes repeat same stories to others over and over again because our Ego
enjoys it so much…. it actually BLOCKS OUT our memory…. I know.. I CLIMBED
KILIMANJARO lol… and my “scientific” conclusion is “tell sign”… if that happens… the person telling the story (they know they had told before) will NEVER ask “have I told you
this before?”.. or “hold on, are you interested?”.. the interest in telling the story
becomes so great… the Ego fuelled story-teller anticipates all the questions which could reduce that interest…and deals with them “accordingly”… (usually by not hearing them or not giving the listener the chance to ask them hehehehe)…. and of course, this is a general statement, nothing to do with my personal success of actually CLIMBING KILIMANJARO.

All I am trying to say is that Comfort Zones is what one seeks more and more the older one gets. Which means preference to put up with whatever we have rather than facing a change of getting something better.

(:o

Most people think they are “one”. This pattern of thinking could be dangerous, for we are not “one” at all, instead, we are rather like “Clockwork Orange”, a multitude of parts and clogs, which are constantly in conflict with each other. And how can conflicts be resolved if we are not even aware of them?

One could say that it doesn’t matter, that, as long as we are in peace with ourselves, we don’t have to bother ourselves with our internal machinery. “Make Peace, no War”. But remember Cold War? And think of Israel and Palestine. Can the peace, achieved by constant threat of violent retaliation be really called “peace”? It sure has a practical meaning to ordinary people, who are not interested in politics, and just want to get on with their living, rather than become victims of “collateral damage”, but then again, if You think of human psychology, the issues which are not addressed do not go away, they just grow internally, and become more violent outwardly.

It is important what we think and how we express our thinking outwardly. It is good to know that there are still some people in this world who think differently and take delight in sharing it with others… even if we don’t agree with their views or find them obvious or boring hehehehe…

Allow me then, without further ado, to present one of those differently speaking people, taking delight in being so:

We get so brain washed by media, propaganda at work, laws, supermarkets… that it is very easily to forget who we actually are…and who we want to be. There is a huge conflict here. In order to be a “good person” we have to serve our society well. And in order to do that, we have to embrace all that society is, warts, taxes, laws and government propaganda and all. But I think many of us do want to be a “good person”, but not necessarily want to be who their Government wants them to be. There is very deep, and spiritual, and religious, conflict of interests here. Even thinking of Jesus story, he never rebelled against his government, he lovingly accepted its each decision, no matter how costly it was to him. But he openly spoke out, shared his thoughts and feelings with others, not as a rebel or government opposition, but as one human sharing human experience with another human.

Fragmenting ourselves is very important me thinks. As the YouTube video indicates, there is at least 2 of “us”: one person who says “You shouldn’t really”.. and the other who says “Oh.. go ahead anyway! You deserve it this time!”… And having a 3rd person, who laughs at the nonsensical negotiating dialogues between those 2 is within anybody’s reach.

Without being split into multiple personalities, You have NOBODY to turn to when there are internal problems. Also, the more parts of yourself You can identify as not being “You” but just a part of the machinery, the more You start to lose the sense of “I” and gain the sense of “all is one”…

It is simple. Scientists started to discover God by breaking parts of the machinery, by identifying the smaller and smaller parts of it until they run out of parts they could identify or break apart.

And I believe religious people, truly religious people, always tried to connect those little parts into some kind of science, Buddhism and yoga being a prime example here, not as much as blind religion, but rather the method of living one’s life. Studied and described with scientific approach and consistency.

So scientists and religious people meet “half way”, not as a truce in the warring realm, but because they are both circling around the same light bulb… Both were attracted to the marvel of this realm, the unbelievable being obvious, and therefore very difficult to prove intellectually.

And any intellectual proof is not a proof at all. It is just means to pacifying our border controls, turning our firewalls off, so the content can slip through our biological passport controls in order so it can come to attention of our inner self which can then examine it. And then the decision can be made. And even if it is a wrong one, at least our inner self can learn from its mistakes. Most of the times it doesn’t have a chance for growth, for most of the teaching messages are blocked before they can even reach it.

With all due attention, where all due attention is due,

it is the waiting that tires me most, it is the waiting that I find most tiresome, we are immersed and floating in this thing called “time”, this thing that is, feels infinitive, non-substantial, invisible, undetectable by our senses, yet perceived, over time, in some indirect way or other, “I used to have a head full of hair and now I don’t” forces me to think, believe, assume that some time has passed between then

and now, but any attempt to quantify it, get a feeling, perception of the amount, of how much time has passed, fails me miserably, what is “10 years”? How does it feel? Can you compare any 10 years in your life with another 10? So it is just flowing,

time is, flowing infinitively, without beginning or end, without source or destination, it is flowing in a direction we call “forward” or “future”, but it ain’t really matter which way the arrow of time is pointing, the important thing is that it IS pointing in some direction, A direction, and even though this might not be strictly true to a scientist, it is good enough for a common folk, time flows in a direction, in an orderly, sequential manner. Chunks of time flow following each other,

and therefore events in our lives happen one after another, very much as frames in a film follow each other, and although there is very little difference between neighboring frames, the overall result, i.e. film, is open to practically infinitive variety of possibilities: loads of films were made and are still being made each year, because each of them is so different, despite all of them having very similar neighboring frames,

only film is of a digital nature, the frames have very clearly defined boundaries between them, a frame being a very definitive and measurable basic unit of a film, but what is a basic unit of time? we can measure 15 minutes with a precision near to absolute, but that hardly means that quarter of an hour is a basic unit of time, and then of course

different creatures have different life spans, it maybe even that there are creatures whose life span is less than 15 minutes, so perhaps a “lifetime” sounds like a more realistic basic unit of time, mainly because it addresses the relativity aspect of time, and hence waiting,

for although we are immersed in this infinitive stream, our time is not infinitive, we have only limited amount of it and know it straight from the beginning, there is a conflict of interests here, in order to avoid tensions in our lives we should express, rejoice, become one with the nature of the stream that carries them forward, nature of limitless timelessness but

how can we, how can we embrace and live our lives through limitless timelessness nature of time when the very time carries us towards, reminds us of our very definitive and timed nature, there is a clear conflict of interests here and perhaps that is

why religions, for example, resolve this paradox by means of afterlife, equating timeless time with timeless life, so as I was saying, waiting is killing me…

time, limitless, timelessness, basic unit of time, flowing, stream, life, afterlife, frames, infinitively

Yoga / Alexander Technique
Watch Kristina’s posture. It is very rigid, yet seems natural and happy. Even when re-composing herself (when she steps back to adjust) she never loses her posture. Which just proves that it is natural, naturally learnt habit – something which conscious mind does not need to control by thinking about it all the time (and not thinking about it in emergencies such as “step back”) – a habit which has been moved from “conscious” to “subconscious” – so we don’t have to “control it” anymore and it such move also frees our conscious resources to deal with some other matters which we could not previously due to overload.

Joyful Ordinary Journey
Watch Kristina’s smile at the very beginning, and her “I love Hopping” (which I misread for ‘I love hoping’ T-Shirt. Give some attention to the surroundings, ordinary gym, probably in some school, ordinary, sporting clothing Kristina and Vova are wearing, everything is ordinary, even the way they perform their “acts” are utmostly ordinary matter, there is no “Big Deal” anywhere, no matter how hard one searches for it. But there is an ordinary joy, pleasure of doing something that pleases one.

Egoless Perfection
Vova throws his clubs on the floor, but there is no anger in this motion, it is more of a manifestation “they are only clubs”. Kristina steps back at one point, probably to adjust to not 100% perfect delivery by Vova, but she does it with grace and, yet again, posture, and without any trace of annoyance, without any trace of failed expectations, she does it with total humbleness and joy of receiving an opportunity to put her faith, her composure into practise.

Control / Spontaneity / Mastery over one’s own life
The way Kristina and Vova juggle those clubs gives an impression that they are almost not necessary there, that it all happens “naturally”. They do not control clubs, clubs control them – they are just reacting to what has been thrown at them. And because it has been thrown at them – they have to react, in the only way they know, there is no time for thinking here, for any analysis. So they react to it in perfect way.
But of course. It probably took many, many years to learn, condition oneself to react that way. And here comes Zen and the Archer blending with the arch’s string, and Buddhism and Nirvana and Liberation: yes, for many, many years one has to practise, try to control something in order to reach perfection. But the sweet price of perfection, of this enormous effort and dedication is that, once one reaches it, one does not need to control or even think about it anymore: it is kind of shifted into subconscious, “spontaneous” area of our brain, Blind Zatoichi and his sword – he does not need eyes to confirm that what he is doing is right.

Automation and happiness
Kristina and Vova seem to managed to automate their “brain patterns” and corresponding bodily behaviour when it comes to juggling clubs. This maybe sounds awful as a term, but it isn’t. It just proves how “easily” (with many, many years of hard work and dedication) we can condition ourselves, our brains, to achieve anything we dream off.
We have, in fact, done it already. We have automated our brains how to be unhappy, how to create and consequently live on the dramas, how to look for something wrong when everything seems right…. how to prove to others that our lives are not as good as theirs because……

Anger Management
Last clip. Kristina and Vova seem to throw clubs at themselves “in anger” (new corporate term which I, worryingly, noticed is used more and more, “to do things in anger”) but they are not throwing them “directly”.. using the shortest route… they maybe throwing them angrily but following the longer, “up in the air” route… there are a lot of lessons, analogies and quotes here (”When angry count to four…”), the one which strikes me most is that, simply because of this longer route, the anger seems to hang in the air above them – so they are not affected by it, so practical advice here is that when angry and in need to hurl abuse at somebody, one should try to use the longest possible route for this abuse to be delivered…. and in most cases the anger will die out before abuse reaches its destination – so we have a chance to recall it or apologize for it before it even arrives hehehehe

It is all to do with those Biblical people straying off into wilderness, and getting lost, being mislead by God / their leaders, and suffering a lot as a result, if I understood correctly, and I really should read this “story” one day, but it all comes together rather nicely and I have a feeling that this year might be a year of fruition… and the reason I am saying that is because I no longer say “I have finally cracked it”.. or “I have found the way!!” or even “finally there is a hope”… no, it is a simple matter of finally accepting being lost and taking pleasure / comfort in it… and yes, discovering the paths / ways that lead somewhere (whether there were none before)… they don’t necessary lead to “better things” / paradise …. they just lead somewhere… and it is good to walk… it clears one’s mind, awakens and grounds one’s spirit, does good for a physical body…. so I guess discovering all those new paths, and seeing a pleasure in walking them down… shifting the focus from “I have problems which I HAVE TO sort out” to “I am a traveller who travels and enjoys the journey”… that is what I am talking about perhaps…

And hence there is no “hope” and no “I finally cracked it”… because both are destination points, and the focus has shifted from reaching that point to enjoying the journey and being fully part of it…..

P.S.
And no, those people were NOT mislead by their GOD, there were led to the place where there is no misleading – no false paths already setup so they can follow them like a cattle… there were forced to realize that in infinitive number of paths they could follow there is only one “correct” one… the one they chose to walk….

It is quite amazing and wonderful, even though a lot of it quite easily explainable, how quickly and efficiently laws of karma, or whatever one wants to call it, have immediate and very direct effect on our lives when we are self-grasping, self-obsessed, focused on our needs and wants, when we are cruel, inconsiderate, arrogant and relating to needs and wants of others only through the prism of our Ego.

Luckily the same almost immediate and direct, but obviously opposite effect seems to take place when we are, trying to be considerate, compassionate, understanding towards needs and wants of others, when, even if we are unable to put others before us, at least we are able to give up, quash, subdue our self importance, demands and “rights to have”.

It is quite amazing and wonderful, even though a lot of it quite easily explainable, because those almost immediate effects are very practical positive or negative feedback loop, which enables us to experiment “in real time” with the laws of cause and effect.

It is quite amazing and wonderful, even though a lot of it quite easily explainable, because those almost immediate effects give us very little margin for doubt and mental speculation: it becomes very obvious, very clear how our behaviour and attitude directly affects our lives. And hence we are in position to very quickly realize that we don’t have a choice, that if we want our lives and our world to be a nice and loving and kind place to live in…. there is only one, only one way to go about it.