Know Thyself as an Un-ist

and Let the Struggle of Isolation Fall Away

Let’s remember together who we are

Dear Persons,

This rising crisis is the shock we require to reach the next octave. Have courage. Keep calm and listen with your heart.

This is an open letter to those who envision themselves to be identified

as a member of a group, a class, an organization, a race, a generation, a political party, a gender, a nation, an orientation, a corporation, an ethnicity, a faith, a culture, a religion, a body, a family, a profession, and even moreso to those who attempt to generalize the identity of others or to classify individuals into taxonomies or categories.

Here is the mindset I would take as a human being in these tumultuous times:

I wholly support the sovereignty of every conscious being, and I fervently call for the end of violence toward and oppression of anyone based on how they appear. I stand with everyone who has been mistreated or disrespected based on an attribute of their body or mind. I vow to be a pillar of compassion and equanimity, to listen to all perspectives with an open heart, to accept only what I need, and to give everything I can. I reject and contest preferential treatment based on appearance. I commit to sharing privilege evenly among all denizens of earth until it is no more. I devote myself to guiding us toward the awareness, acknowledgment, and acceptance of our sovereignty.

In kind I must request that no one refer to me as a gender, an age, a skin color, or by any other label. For decades I have selected the Other bubbles. When obliged to say more, I have opted to be labeled North American, sometimes Terran, sometimes merely Human. Truth told, even these are unwanted and inaccurate. I do not expect to change anyone’s mind but my own, but to my mind these classifications do not belong in my identity.

I am, yes, but that is it.

I am that I am.

To refer to me, please use my name, Kerry, or “you”, “we”, or “us”. These represent the totality of the identifiers to which I consent. All of us, every conscious being, may exercise this option to self-identify, and we all must agree to hold these sovereign self-identifications sacred in mutual respect.

No one else can claim or define your identity for you. In similitude I continue to drop pronouns, to stop calling the dog a dog, to embrace every blade of grass as a friend. And I especially will greet every human being with respect and without prejudgment.

While I often fail to fully engage with the world as an individuated drop of loving awareness swimming in an ocean of same, I do sometimes achieve the pinnacle of interface between myself and the world: no interface. And I will continue to improve.

Either way I am going on record here as an Un-ist. Now that I have claimed an identity that could apply to a plurality, “I” have become “we”. We Un-ists invite you to help us to develop and fulfill this simple Un-it of philosophy.

Un-ism

An Un-ist holds no ideologies, no ‘-isms’ aside from Un-ism, and no identities aside from Un-ity. We cannot be delineated or identified as meatbags who stop where our skin ends. We extend from a single point, from the well of being at heart center, out into the world and the cosmos infinitely and eternally.

An Un-ist rejects all isms, and accepts all beings, all one and each one.

An Un-ist has only one belief: no belief is true. An Un-ist is a true Unbeliever. Truth is witnessed by the inner eye. Truth is spoken by the silent voice.

An Un-ist upholds only one principle: every point is the center. This means that no one is more valuable than any other. There can be no accounting for taste, no price placed on essence, no weight in authority. All perspectives are to be respected with equanimity, isopneumatically, since they share the same unified spirit. As Alan Watts puts it, “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”

An Un-ist has one ability: we tend. When we tend to, this is attention. When we tend in, this is intention. We harness our abilities to attend and intend to evolve as conscious conduits of love. We direct our attention to what matters; we pay attention to obtain value. We set intentions to love and be loved, then observe thoughts, motion, and emotion emerging from the enactment of our intentions.

(You may wonder whether we say Un-ist like “universe” or like “understanding”. It’s both and either. The Tao is both the one thing and no thing at all.)

Identity as Un-ity

With all this Un-ism now swimming in our cerebral cortices, let’s briefly revisit identity. Identity like any manifest quality, has two sides. The side you see is self-identity. It’s what comes after “I am” when you speak. I am. With what do you follow this acknowledgment of entity?

The other side of identity is what the other sees. What we imagine ourselves to be perceived as. This is often a multi-faceted crystallized turd of stereotypes and generalizations. An unpolishable turd. If we separate ourselves from the world, we give power to this other side of identity.

To paraphrase Donny Epstein, we awaken into awareness, acknowledgment, acceptance to apply our energy to a world of information in order to live an extraordinary life of great impact. If we are aware of, acknowledge, and accept our place at the center of everything, we give power to our self-identity. Seeing the extent and entirety of the intricately interwoven tapestry of life can be difficult when we are bound up in it. Our minds arise to protect our body in that bound state. But our spirit is free and unbound. Soaring up to the crown of sovereignty, we can see the tapestry in all its uncountable dimensions.

We entreat you to join us, to molt your self-identity, to refuse the other identity you were imagining for yourself, and to return to the well of being deep in the core of your heart center. There you will find, as we have, an endless source of joy and peace, a supernova of loving kindness and compassion, a cascading waterfall of forgiveness. This is where everything meets nothing and becomes one thing loving itself. This is where you start. And you are endless. Drop your bags, shed that skin, it’s time to don your sovereign crown and fly.

Ours truly, Kerry et al.

P.S. We acknowledge the presence of these lovely beings who tend the official home of Unism. As Un-ists, we do not necessarily espouse the beliefs they profess, but we agree with their unifying aim and respect their offerings.