Three Apple Engineers and Three Microsoft Engineers

So, I left the discussion last time with asking how can we realize the truth if we detach ourselves from everything in order to attach to the higher nature, and accept the guidance provided by the Manifestations of God. One could argue that our free will allow us to do that, but I will argue that if we don’t know what truth is, how is our free will going to recognize it? If you are blind, how are you going to tell light from darkness through free will? And this is where things get interesting. Detached from everything, we are to recognize the manifestation of God for the particular time we live in (as guidance will always be provided, progressively).

This can only happen if a) we examine things in life with a pure heart and motive and b) through assistance from God. The first part is not to be taken lightly. Think about it, anything we do we always have a motive for doing it, from learning to eating, meeting new people, working, basically anything. And the beauty is that only one can know one’s own true motives in their actions. So what happened in each time a prophet came? And this has always been the case, from Moses to Jesus to Muhammad and even further back, the clergy of the era before them always denied the new prophet and gave him hardships. Was it because of ignorance? Or was it simply because they had power over people and were not ready to give it up and hence they used this power to serve their purposes, i.e. their motivation were anything but pure.

So bottom line, if you are pure in your motives in anything you do, be it that you screw up, you will be fine, but only YOU know if your motivation is pure or not and no other human being can judge or tell your motivation.

Another interesting point regarding free will is the very definition of what society seems to define as free will, i.e. as long as I don’t hurt anyone I should be able to do what I want. Is that really free will? Or is giving into empty desires anything but free will? I disagree with today’s most common definition of free will. Free will is about being on control of your will, knowing what desires are to strive after and what desires are to be controlled. By that I mean any desire that serves humanity at large, that I will encourage in myself and pursue it, anything that is only self-serving, I will control, and read this part well, control, not suppress, not abstain but control it in order to not lose my goal in life.

I will leave it at this for now…

It’s been a while since I posted. Today is a slow day, one of those days that you have to fight to take a step forward and get something done and on days like this I try to think about stuff that on busy, productive days I won’t stop to think about. Most of these thoughts are work related, such as what should be the strategy regarding searching of data or regarding the different options to improve security, you know geek stuff. But somehow, when thinking about searching today, I ended up thinking about the creation. As a Baha’i I believe that the reasons for us being on this planet are a few but foremost we are here to serve. Serve mankind and civilization to continue to advance according to the teachings of Baha’u’llah. And during this process grow spiritually and prepare for the next worlds of God.

So how does everyone get to understand this then? Well, as Baha’u’llah says in the opening sentence of the Book of Certitude, “No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth.”.

This mean that the process is that every once in a while a Manifestation of God appears on earth to guide us. Those of us that are detached from all that are in heaven and on earth can understand the truth that we are being presented by. In this process that is ongoing from the first prophet God sent and will continue to be so, many fail to see the truth that is brought to us. This is a test obviously, so that not everyone can realize it unless they try their best to achieve this according to their given capacity and only if they do this, through the grace of God can they understand it, because how else can you see the truth if you are detached from EVERYTHING.

So why is the process this way? I know I can’t answer that, but still it makes me ask this…Test is a way to separate true seekers from the false ones, but why was it set up this way? Well, you could argue, that if it was not setup this way we would not have had free will which is huge subject by itself. Ok, true, apart from certain predestined things such as birth and death we have free will and that gives us the ability to choose and see the truth or not see it through detachment and the grace of God. But this still doesn’t answer the question…and I will explain why in the next post as I have to run now…

Came across PureText which as a developer seems very useful. When copying/cutting text from an application into another, where you want only the text and not the formatting…this tool can be configured to do the job.

And here is a cool addin to Outlook. A calendar addin that give you fish-eye view as well as other useful features when looking at your outlook calendar. It’s called DataLens and you can view a demo video so you understand what it does and it works with outlook 2003 as well. Both of them are free.

Here is a good link that I have been looking for. MSDN’s own search is not good enough (unfortunately) and I tried this with a few articles that I looked for using MSDN’s own search without finding it and I found it using this search engine. I came across this link reading this free book called .NET in Samples . This is still in draft version and final one will be release on the end of 2004 focusing on Whidbey features (pdf or doc) [via Iserializable].

Came across this article on the topic of happiness and wealth that I found interesting. Why is that so many of us still will not realize that money is not the answer? Sure, we all say that its just money and its not happiness but our actions for better job that pays more so we can buy this or that says something different. Heck, I realized this before coming to Haifa that the ‘rat race’ is not the way to go and that’s partly why I escaped it. Yet after two years of no income, I have my own battles from time to time missing the ‘good’ life. And still, I know that if I were to go back to that life, after a while it would be the same thing….the grass seems always greener on the other side. I guess realizing this is the first step, and recognizing which side or rather how to keep the balance between the two sides (pursuit for wealth as a mean for happiness vs. pursuit of happiness without a care for wealth) is the trick. One thing I remind myself when in battle with myself regarding this topic is to remind and ask myself what I am going to take with me from this world the day I die. Quotes such as the one below gets me back to earth…and today I am having one of those battles.

“Life in this mortal world will quickly come to an end, and this earthly glory, wealth, comfort and happiness will soon vanish and be no more. Summon ye the people to God and call the souls to the manners and conduct of the Supreme Concourse. To the orphans be ye kind fathers, and to the unfortunate a refuge and shelter. To the poor be a treasure of wealth, and to the sick a remedy and healing. Be a helper of every oppressed one, the protector of every destitute one, be ye ever mindful to serve any soul of mankind. Attach no important to self-seeking, rejection, arrogance, oppression and enmity. Heed them not. Deal in the contrary way. Be kind in truth, not only in appearance and outwardly.”

Abdul-Baha

Surely, most of us have wondered at some point what kind of file extension we are. It made me laugh to see I am .doc based on what the description. Have a go and see who you are…still have the invites…wonder if that’s because no one is reading this blog…