Unclaimed, by nobody
She stands peacefully this morning, the sun’s fingers tickling her rosy belly. I hear her gasp when it sizzles, after a silent night in the cold. I wonder: do maples giggle?
Here's something I've noticed recently:
We lean on identities to get through living, not realizing the identity we cling to prevents us from walking naturally.
Spontaneous natural existence gets masked by the crutch. Masked, but not lost.
And it isn't only the obvious masks. Even the identity of the healed. The awake. The “here to help out.” All of it.
Or even in identifying healing or helping at all. For someone to be in need of our particular healing is an ego trip we rarely question.
What's left when nothing is claimed? Unlabeled. Unremarked. Unremembered. Unimaginable. Anything else smuggles in the apparent identity.
If there's one word for it, it's nondual. One, before even the idea of two.
Identities are like crutches for a soul that appears to think it isn’t already whole.
Time-bound appearances of an eternal principle.
A giggle.
Take away a centre, and another one quietly takes its place.
I took a few pieces for a walk this week. None of them is written about identity. But read one level deeper, and each one is doing exactly that.
We’ll start with Copernicus.
Decentring that recentres:
"One decentering gave birth to another, far more consequential, centering—and we are still living inside it.”
Jeremy Lent, "Is a New Copernican Revolution Already Under Way?", Substack, May 8, 2026. Read the piece
In 1543, Copernicus moved Earth out of the centre of the cosmos. Lent's point is the irony that followed: the new worldview then put humans at the centre of the living world. His essay is about ecology and law, human supremacy and the rights of nature. It closes on taking humanity out of the centre "not to diminish us, but to restore us to our proper place within it."
In 1633, ninety years on, Galileo was put on trial for defending Copernicus, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Take away one centre and another can install itself without anyone noticing.
Put down the identity of the wounded, and the identity of the healed takes the empty seat. Put that down, and here comes the awake. Then the “here to help.”
Play videoWe can’t help it. A vacuum invites matter. If we don’t know who we are, we cling to whatever we think we are. And what we think we are is the product of decades of programming and generations of tradition. Sprinkled with the latest memes.
Letting go of forcing:
"The principle here is that you cannot force yourself to let go, but you can let go of forcing yourself.”
Jonny Miller, "How to Unclench." Read the piece
Miller defines clenching as "unconsciously holding tension in a way that narrows your capacity to feel and respond." His essay is about the nervous system, with practices to match, not identity. But a story of a central identity is a grip too.
What caught my attention in reading is his section on over-efforting:
"As my friend Michael Ashcroft likes to say, 'The Appropriate Amount of Effort Is Zero': the act of 'efforting' is itself a form of clenching.”
So trying to unclench is another clench. Trying to throw away the crutch is leaning on another one.
He also writes that "feeling good is our default state... when we remove the clenching." Masked, but not lost. Patiently here.
Where we part: Miller's frame is practice and progress, with levels, loops, and a baseline that rises with hours of practice. Mine is simpler: nothing was ever missing. It’s only unseen.
I'll leave that difference here.
Neither lonely nor accompanied:
"For a moment, you are neither lonely nor accompanied. You are simply, and rather surprisingly, there.”
Tamara, "Alone, Finally," Museguided, May 6, 2026. Read the piece
Tamara writes about solitude as a place you inhabit and befriend, a way to meet "the stranger who lives behind" the self we perform. Her essay assumes there's a self there to meet.
She also writes: "Perhaps what we are really afraid of is not loneliness but lucidity, the specific, unflattering clarity that arrives when there is nothing left to look at but yourself."
Her closing lines almost touch something. But someone is still there, looking.
What if we let it go one step further… does no fixed identity dissolve solitude from aloneness to oneness?
Caught red-handed in the act:
"And because we're both the storyteller and the audience, we rarely stop to ask whether the story is true.”
Jesse Ratner, LinkedIn, November 7, 2026. Read the piece
For most of his life, Ratner believed in something that never came. He calls the cost of believing untrue things about yourself and your future "the hallucination tax."
It picks up where last week's stack left off: who's doing the braiding? His remedy is to examine the story until you find the true one.
I wonder whether there's a true one to find. Not a better story about who I am. Not a kinder one, nor one that’s got all the explanations buttoned down. No fixed story at all.
As I mulled it over this morning, I was trying out words for what's left when nothing is claimed.
Unlabeled. Unremarked. Unremembered. Unimaginable. Unmediated. Unclaimed.
Then I wrote a sentence explaining "unclaimed is my closest fit" and the one listening to me said:
"my" huh? 👀
Even while explaining what's unclaimed, an owner slipped in.
As a communication device, it’s useful. As a definition of who you are, it’s a lousy facsimile.
Knowing which is which, seems to matter.
What happens if you drop the crutches and realize you never needed them?
You don't have to answer that. And "drop" isn't one more thing to do. You can't force yourself to let go, but you can let go of forcing yourself.
This week, when you can, catch a label arriving. Notice the moment a role or label shows up (helper, saviour, the one who knows everything) and see what it does for the moment.
You don't have to put it down. There's nothing to get right. Just notice.
Tonight the cold comes back, and she leans on nothing.
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