philosophy – Page 2 – Nothing to Doubt Blog

The Cycle

December 2, 2018December 2, 2018Mark Sabbas

I don’t get people.

How they hang around, wasting their lives,
Shunning themselves, chasing after precious lies,
Yet they are content
Not bothering to ask why,
Just killing time till their certain demise.

Do people actually think this way?
Can they not notice? It boggles my mind.
Or are they simply faking it?
To fake live?
And fake smile?

Yet maybe this is truth
And it’s just me, a screw loose.
Perhaps I am weird, foolish, depressed,
Caught up in myself, a squandered gem,
A cause lost in lines and tales divine, drowned
Within waves of sacred illusion
And never to be found.

I still don’t get how people are not depressed.

As I don’t know why they cannot embrace
Or kiss or stare, or breathe freely
With nature’s air, through each other’s lungs,
If only for love,
Or to not feel so lonely, in a lonesome world
Of subjugation and strange
Separation.
For contact is beautiful, and we are utterly repulsed
By beauty unfiltered—all virgins to it,
All ugly without it.

And I don’t get the people so cruel
To those others, when they gaze into their eyes.
Can they not see? Are they not spellbound?
The light that shines within, and the music that plays without,
Our being lies infinitely deeper, and the light never goes out,
For the melody too lives on in harmonious vibration, finely tuned
To the miracles of life, hidden in plain view.
We play every string—an unending croon,
A symphony forgotten.

We’ll Live and We’ll Die and We’re Born Again: Analyzing Issues of Religion, Soul, Reincarnation and The Search for True Spirituality (Part 1 of 3)

November 29, 2018March 18, 2022Mark Sabbas

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

-Carl Sagan, acclaimed astrophysicist & father of modern skepticism, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

A Question I’ve Long Pondered:

Why am I born who I am?

Come on, it’s not like I don’t know how babies are made, but I’m asking this from a deeper level—why am I born as a male human being, in this country, to these parents? Why not in Zimbabwe, or Syria, or even North Korea? Why not an elephant for that matter, a soaring blue jay, or an advanced alien race, at the other end of the Milky Way?

Who is the “I” in this case I treasure so deeply? Because to me, this identity has to be something more than simply the symbols that my parents assigned since arriving to this world.

In other words: why am I me and why are you you?

And why are we both alive right now, as intelligent beings on a beautiful planet among billions of others in this galaxy?

Unfortunately, we as a humanity are at the mercy of a paradoxical existence: As much as we come to know our bodies, identifying with it as we are told, we can never shift outside of ourselves, and look directly into our soul. As such, it wasn’t long before I was made to forget this question that others would consider so strange, knowing simply:

“My name is Mark. This is me! I come from a Roman Catholic family. And I am only seven years old.”

Oh but I hated Sunday school! And that’s putting it lightly. My twin and I would devise all sorts of ways to escape this religious instruction, and it is no wonder I was not prepared in the least for my first communion . . .

For Life is But a Dream: Exploring Ideas of Lucid Dreaming, Astral Projection, Synchronicity, and the Essential Validity of Non-Physical Reality

October 3, 2017February 8, 2018Mark Sabbas

“I went to Africa. You can go to Africa. You may have trouble arranging the time or the money, but everybody has trouble arranging something. I believe you can travel anywhere if you want to badly enough.

“And I believe the same is true of inner travel. You don’t have to take my word about chakras or healing energy or auras. You can find about them for yourself if you want to. Don’t take my word for it. Be as skeptical as you like.

“Find out for yourself.”

-Michael Crichton, Travels (1988)

It was the Summer of Inception-Mania:

Ke$ha was in the charts. Oil was in the ocean. Cleveland just lost half its economy. And the characters of Lost finally found themselves. But it was Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending film that captivated the nation, and if only for a short while, granted us a break from reality, thrown through a realm where the laws of physics don’t apply.

With a smart premise and a sexy cast, the movie was a hit, and the main question on everybody’s mind was if that little totem thing was still spinning at the end: Was it all a dream within a dream within a dream?!

Or, going further . . .