About

Botond Béres is an experienced software professional, a spiritual seeker, and a writer. He was born and raised in Romania in the city of Mediaș. His first serious foray into the world of computer programming started at age 14 when he joined a high school class with a mathematics - informatics specialization. He was blessed with a great informatics teacher as well, so he worked diligently with the material and excelled at it throughout high school. After high school, he got admitted to one of the best Computer Science universities in the country, but he decided to drop out during the first year. It was the continuation of a rebellious phase that started in high school already, rejecting the structure of the university. Also, he got highly involved in playing a Massively Multiplayer Online video game called Eve Online.

Despite this, his interest in programming did not go away, and he managed to get an entry-level PHP Web Developer position to support himself. He studied and improved his skills continuously in a self-directed way and improved at a steady pace. Soon he was at another company and switched to Python as his primary language for web development. Eventually, he held a Technical Lead position at 3Pillar Global, leading a backend infrastructure team for PBS. Then he moved to Dublin, Ireland, and spent almost five years there as a Technical Lead for a Fortune 500 company in the video games industry (Demonware - Activision Blizzard). His passion for video games paralleled his love for programming throughout this time. After this time, he moved back home to Romania, where he currently lives and still works as a software developer, but now with a Microsoft .NET techology stack.

Around the age of 25, he started feeling strange sensations in his body that culminated in a few seizure-like episodes and even vertigo. It was also associated with anxiety and sleep difficulties. The doctors said it’s spasmophilia, so he started a treatment of vitamins and calcium in addition to lifestyle changes. He was leading a very unhealthy lifestyle with a high-stress job, spending lots of time in front of a computer even outside his work, and drinking high amounts of coffee, smoking a lot of cigarettes, questionable diet, and no substantial physical exercise. The first step was to quit drinking coffee entirely.

The conventional treatment helped, and he kept it up, but they didn’t seem to address the issue wholly, so he looked deeper. Beyond the physiological matters (vitamin/calcium deficiency, diet) that the treatment covered, there lied mental/emotional issues (anxiety, panic) that needed addressing. He sought out the help of a licensed psychotherapist, and during this time he also discovered mindfulness meditation and started practicing it regularly. Meditation brought about a kundalini awakening, though he did not know what that is until years later. Over 8+ years since then, he has explored a few different spiritual paths, starting from Mindfulness to Tibetan Buddhism, Indian yogic practices, Non-Duality, and eventually arriving back to Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Due to resistance to what this process brought to the surface from the unconscious mind, he went through a few mental/emotional difficulties but came out with renewed strength from each.

Thus, spiritual practice/study and psychological practice/study have been a nearly constant companion since then in his life and still are today. He starts each day with spiritual nourishment, and he is pursuing a degree in psychology. Today he is free of anxiety attacks or panic attacks and feels a sense of inner peace underneath whatever he’s experiencing. Yet he is still in the midst of his journey towards awakening. In this blog, he aims to bring lessons learned from spirituality and psychology into the practical realm of daily life, especially from the perspective of a knowledge worker in the software industry.