“We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application–not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech–and learn them so well that words become works.”

In most religions, Heaven is a transcendental realm in which people who have died continue to exist in an afterlife. The term “heaven” may refer to the physical heavens, the sky or the seemingly endless expanse of the universe beyond, which is the traditional literal meaning of the term in English. The term in English has also typically been used to refer to the plane of existence of an afterlife (often held to exist in another realm) in various religions and spiritual philosophies, often described as the holiest possible place, accessible by people according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith or other virtues.

Epistemology (from Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē), meaning “knowledge, science”, and λόγος (logos), meaning “the study of”) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge itself: what is knowledge? how is it acquired? how do we know it? This philosophy deals with knowledge, truth, belief and doubt.

Ahaṃkāra (अहंकार) is a Sanskrit term that is related to the ego and egoism - that is, the identification or attachment of one’s ego. The term “ahamkara” comes from an approximately 3,000 year-old Vedic philosophy, where Ahaṃ refers to the concept of the Self or “I” and kāra refers to the concept of “any created thing” or “to do”. The term originated in Vedic philosophy over 3,000 years ago, and was later incorporated into Hindu philosophy, particularly Saṃkhyā philosophy.

Two major revelations and one minor one on my walking-meditation yesterday 1M. Non momentary-focused consciousness as a source of dissatisfaction This morning I was very disturbed and dissatisfied, what with not having our bond repaid and such. Largely I am yearning for the time when we are once again fiscally secure (and somewhat independent); being able to imagine/remember this makes me frustrated with the current situation. For various reasons (with the iPod assisting) I brought my focus on to the very-very-now — the instant as it was occuring.

We live in a reality that is always under a probabilistic quantum flux, apparently. An electron travelling from A to B actually takes every possible path; the path we observe is an integral across the probability of each of these paths, “collapsing” into the most likely one at the point of observation. What’s true of the very small (or very fast) is true of the very large, and everything in between.

I watched a documentary on reincarnation last night, which was interesting. They looked at the case of a boy in Glasgow who from a young age spoke of his “other family”. Eventually they visited the place the boy had spoken of, and it was spine-tingling to see both his reaction to the “old house” (a normally vibrant boy, he became subdued and was visibly sad) and the number of “coincidences” between his stories and the history of the place.

I’m really quite a skeptic, but this last week has me wondering whether bad luck is actually some physical phenomena that I just don’t know about. It has certainly seemed so in the last week – we seem to have caught “bad luck” like most people catch colds, and we’re only just starting to shake it off. First, I got an email back from Canonical/Ubuntu telling me that I didn’t even make a first interview for the Web Engineer role I went for – bummer.

It’s another grey and rainy monandaeg in Melbourne, Australia, which is perfect weather for writing in a blog or two. Unfortunately, I’m at work, so my writings today are on borrowed time (whilst compiling, for example, or sitting in another boring meeting). I’ve been thinking for a little while about what I actually believe in – philosophically, theosophically and spiritually I guess. What I see as core truth in all spiritual teaching.

“Most children like to collect things. At four I started to collect documents of my own development as correlated with world patterns of developing technology. Beginning in 1917, I determined to employ my already rich case history, as objectively as possible, in documenting the life of a suburban New Englander, born in the Gay Nineties (1895)– the year automobiles were introduced, the wireless telegraph and the automatic screw machine were invented, and X-rays were discovered; having his boyhood in the turn of the century; and maturing during humanity’s epochal graduation from the inert, materialistic 19th into the dynamic 20th century.