Going through so many false promises,

false hopes..both as the maker and receiver,

you wake up in the morning, and have no idea anymore,

what is worthwhile to do in the time left in this world?

When dreams have been forsaken..

perhaps just to feel protected?

Just an illusion of protection..

today while buying coffee the cashier 

asked the person next to me what he wants,

and he said `Ohh, he was before me'.

I jokingly told him `You are so different than the typical Israeli in a line',

he said `Why hurry?'

and I thought, yeah just hurrying to our deaths,

and he read my mind and said `In the end, we are all going to the same place'

Perhaps he was a sort of divine messenger saying `Ariel, don't spend the little time and energy

you have trying to cut in line'.

but by the end of writing this I see again, I am not grounded in hard reality,

I am bound by the same fairytale, an elusive love,

how insane is it to feel a person you have not seen for years is reading your thoughts, almost touching you at every moment. 

A divine messenger comes once in a while and whispers a sentence,

but the devil shouts loudly in your head every moment.

Still, I hope what seems to be the devil at times, will turn out to be my guardian angel.

So sad that such
a short moment, can keep you locked forever,
in its memory.

I don't know who you are anymore,
and maybe I never did.
You're just an image I use to write the next note.

,הרבה אפלה, קצת אור

?מי ינצח

אחד עוטף, השני ממוקד

אחד ממכר, השני חמקמק

?מי ינצח

Some thoughts.. it seems we can't fight the `spirit of time', in the sense that in today's world, with
the constant stimulation and overflow of information, there is no chance to develop the attention to detail that a composer in the 18th century had.
It seems a better use of energy not to try to be better in the parameters by which we judge old composers,
but just to be different, using the advantages we have today, rather than endlessly reflecting on the disadvantages.
No one is going to write like Bach as well as Bach; and even is someone did, it wouldn't be that interesting.
Like Dwight says in the office: `Nostalgia is people's biggest weakness, second only to the neck'.

How crypto-currencies will change the world

My first reaction to bitcoin - the popular electronic money,
was kind of dismissive. I thought `ahh.. all these shallow people only caring about money'
and `this cryptography stuff is always so non-elegant and over complicated, and thinking about security all the time is boring.'
but getting into it, and actually reading the genius paper of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto
(it is not known who he is, or whether he is actually a group of people,
or whether his name is short for Samsung-Toshiba-Nakamichi-Motorolla)
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

you start to feel, like others are feeling, that this is the beginning of a revolution on the scale
of the creation of the internet.

A revolution for the better?
Well it's like asking is life better with the internet?
I think the answer is:well.. it's not better or worse, it's just different.

Is there any point in going somewhere different that is not strictly better?
Well I think of the analogy: you are watching a movie - the
27th minute is as good as the 32nd minute - so why not just watch the 27th minute over and over?

Because (coming back from the analogy), there is a certain pleasure and excitement in witnessing and taking
part in this evolution of humanity, which is really part of the transformational process of mind and matter from the big-bang to the big-crunch - the *ultimate* movie.

Why is it a revolution?
Well you could say that any communication between people, or retrieval of information\media
that is possible now, was possible before the internet it is just much more convenient and easy now. (Maybe this is not precise but give me some slack.)
But this convenience\easiness changes the world, because it very very often changes the decision of
whether to proceed with the information retrieval  or communication.

The electronic currencies will ultimately make the same change in ease\convenience of exchanging
services for money - money in the broad sense of some, perhaps digital, currency.

Let me give an extreme example:
I am in my office thinking it would be nice to buy a muffin, in the coffee shop downstairs
(actually already ate a muffin half an hour ago, but just for the example..)
I think: I would gladly pay another 10 cents for someone to bring it to me.
And right now, there is someone downstairs that is buying something else in this coffee shop and on his way up that would gladly make the purchase and bring it to me for 10 cents.
But of course, we would not do this today,
because the complexity of coordinating between a person wanting the muffin, and the person who
happens to be downstairs at the same time, and the awkwardness of exchanging 10 cents for the delivery,
is too large an inconvenience to be worth it for either of us.

But if it was easy as typing `muffin' on google on your cellphone,  or computer,
it would be worth doing,
and that's where things are headed

Science and Mathematics have created (a revolution in) Technology,
and consequently in our way of lives  (an issue much discussed in this blog, is that
they have not and probably cannot solve the basic problem of dukkha (suffering\unsatisfactoriness)
but that's a discussion for another time)

An exciting revolution, that we seem to be in the beginning of,
is technology creating a revolution in how we do math and science.

A beautiful post by Tim Gowers on this subject

http://gowers.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/is-massively-collaborative-mathematics-possible/

initiated the polymath  project, where a large group of mathematicians jointly solved
a research problem, mainly via a sequence of comments in the comment section of the blog post.

One of many points in this insightful post:
Gowers purposefully encouraged people  not  to think in depth and in length
before posting a comment, and instead writing partial ideas that were likely to be wrong.
Thus, creating a process of doing mathematics that is indeed inherently different
than what was possible before the technology of the internet -
one giant interconnected brain consisting of many mathematicians with constant rapid feedback between the different parts of the brain.

Another point addressed is the issue of credit.
Mathematicians, and people in any field, are sometimes afraid
to publicly discuss their ideas before they are fully developed
as someone else might make the last step and quickly publish it as work of his own.
Here, Gowers says,
`is where the beauty of blogs, wikis, forums etc. comes in: they are completely public, as is their entire history'.

So, you have proof of your contribution.
The one potential problem here, is that the blog\forum\wiki owner could alter this documentation
of history, giving credit to himself or others.

It is interesting how ideas that are in the spirit of the time arise concurrently from different sources.
Satoshi Nakomoto wrote a paper a few years ago about how to implement a digital currency called a bitcoin, that requires no centralized banks.
In fact, his ideas are not limited to electronic money.
They give a general method to document history in a way that unless more than half of the people involved in the documentation collude together, it is impossible to falsify the account of what happened.
In the case of the bitcoin it is the history of a sequence of financial transactions,
but it could be just as well the history of a math research project.

I like sometimes to believe I am cursed,
because then, nothing you do matters,
you have an excuse to be lazy, to be bitter, to be negative to people,
to blame certain people for your pain.
Not having to make any effort.
But when you experiment, you see that what you do matters,
up to a resolution of a *minute*:
Watching 50 minutes of hard-core porn and meditating for 10 minutes
will leave you in a much worse mental state
than watching 30 minutes of hard-core porn, and mediating for 30 minutes.

and it seems that it's not just your mental state, somehow the  *events* for the continuation of the day
will vary according to if you chose option a or b above.

A friend of mine helped a blind person cross a road (yes of course anyone I associate with is a complete saint)
and he told her a saying I like very much:
`Don't worry, there are more obstacles than directions"

Denied the happiness of waking up next to her smile, hearing her voice,
you turn to spirituality not out of choice.
You are not really an exception, almost everybody is lazy and hypnotized by pleasantness.
They will only truly search within when all other paths are blocked.
You search for something that can lift this blanket of sadness.
You start to meditate, and think at first it's an illusion that anything but her can truly help.
15 minutes pass..20 minutes pass.. and then , it starts to work; like a stream of water arising
from within; a stream flowing in the body, like a flood drowning negative emotions.
Soft tears flow through your eyes. Not really crying, just a few drops of water cleaning the eyes.
Would you trade this cleansing stream for the pleasure of being with her? Those intense emotions
that nothing can compare to? You would at any given moment.
But the choice is not yours.. God, fate, or bad luck has forced you to take the hard way.

Waiting at Amsterdam airport for a flight to Bergen, Norway,
I am delighted to discover that Bikkhu Bodhi's book
The Noble Eightfold Path, can be found online
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html#ch1

I remember reading just the first one or two pages a while ago,
and feeling they resonated so perfectly with me.
I think of the analogy of having a really simple mathematical proof
of a theorem.
Then, someone finds a small bug in the proof.
You hope there is an easy fix.
But although you try to deny it, in the back of your mind you already know:
The path leading to the correct proof is completely different, deep and long.
So it is, with the issue of happiness and suffering.
You are not completely happy, and you are hoping there is a quick fix:
Oh, your career must be not what your real calling is.
Oh, your partner is not the your true soulmate.
Oh, you need to exercise and eat right and then everything will be perfect.
Of course - quick is `relatively quick' :)
I think a big problem, is that once you have a glimpse of the spiritual path
you doubt that these things will  make you 100% happy, but you are not sure they
won't make you 100% happy.
The only way you could be sure is if you had the job\partner you fantasize about,
and discover - ohh , I'm still not happy.
But since you at the same time doubt these things will make you happy,
your motivation to go after them is not as high as other people..
so you don't get them! and then you stay with this doubt..
you use half your energy for the spiritual path, and half for obtaining the things you fantasize about
and keep taking one step in one direction than one to the other.
If you are in this situation, reading the intro of Bodhi's book can really help :)
..well I'm not completely sure it will help but read the first page anyway. It's awesome.

I remember asking a meditation teacher: Does a cat generate bad karma by killing?
I expected the answer: No, it's just his instinct. He has no choice.

But instead he slightly smiled and said something like `It's hard to get out of being an animal'

It's easier to make money when you already have a lot.
It's easier to generate good karma at moments when you are experiencing the pleasure of previous good karma.

But when you are not. And you are looking around, envious. Why did he get the relationship he wanted?
Why did he get the job he wanted?
You find yourself wanting to be bitter.Wanting to be the victim and tell yourself how everybody uses and mistreats you.
You find yourself cutting people on the road. Not stopping when a mother with her baby wants to cross.
You have a day where you feel as miserable as you did as a teenager.
No hope, only darkness.
You go get some coffee to help you finish some work.
Or perhaps, you think of some work you need to finish to have an excuse to drink more coffee.
Especially soy-milk capuccinos can be watery and tasteless if not done right.
But you get a cup that is thick and tasty.
You wait for a second for the guy to end a phone call and say
`You guys always make the best coffee around!'
You feel better than you did all day.
For a moment, you are not poor or envious.