Nameless

Here's what happens when I lie awake at 3:17AM and pretend I can't remember my name. ⬇️

If we weren’t given names, if the spell of “me” and “you” were never cast, perhaps we’d awaken inside the living process itself, not apart from it. We wouldn’t mistake the wave for something other than the ocean.

The word “I” is a doorway. But when believed as a separate entity, it becomes a prison.

This “I” we speak of, prior to name, prior to gender, prior to history, is not a person. It’s the pure, intimate knowing of Being itself. Not yours, not mine—just Being knowing It is. The “I” you utter to refer to yourself is the same “I” that I am. That “I” is the still, spacious hum behind all experience. It is not a noun. It is a verb. A flowing, aware unfolding.

We love newborns for a reason. Looking at them is literally enlightening. They haven’t yet learned the spell of separation. They don’t have the capacity to divide with words. When we gaze into their eyes, we remember. And for an instant, we are ourselves re-born. For we glimpse the undivided field, consciousness prior to concepts, love before language. Their presence is a mirror to our own original wholeness.

Words are nothing less than spells. Each syllable we learn becomes a wand in our hand or a veil over our eyes.

I, you, he, she, they, we, it…

…each one a spellbinding contraction of the seamless whole.

It’s how we conjure separation. With just a flick of the tongue, we divide what was never divided. We say “the tree” instead of this trembling green expression of Being. We say “my thoughts” instead of the weather of consciousness.

Einstein’s “optical delusion” of consciousness refers to the illusion that we are isolated “selves,” floating in a world of “others.” But this notion of “others” only arises with language. All perception is self-recognition in disguise.

This is why the observer effect in quantum physics is not just a curious anomaly; it’s a mirror. Observer and observed are not two. They are the same “I,” caught in a hall of reflections. It’s like looking in a mirror and being surprised that the image only moves when I move. But who else could it move for?

There is no outside. There is only this pulsing, sentient, self-aware dance; Being, seeing itself.

And yet here is the great irony: language, for all its bewitching power, is also the tool we use to point beyond itself. Like a finger pointing to the moon. It can’t be the truth, but it can guide the gaze. Words can mislead, but they can also sing open the heart, nudge the mind to stillness, crack the shell of the false self.

Without names, we might fall into the wonder again. We might notice how this one “I” listens through you and speaks through me. How it dreams in every language. How it breathes in every chest. How it weeps every tear and laughs every belly-laugh. Always the same “I,” tasting itself as multiplicity.

And if we truly remembered this, how could there be war? How could there be exploitation, cruelty, indifference?

Without the spell of separation, compassion is not a virtue but a natural reflex.

Let’s keep unspelling the world.

Let’s look past the labels and meet as what we truly are—before language, before division, before even the idea of two.

We are not nouns.

We are the verb that never stops dancing.