A New Journal by Joe Perez: The Unitivist
A Welcome Message ... and a Summary of the Core of Unitivism
The Unitivist is a new journal for developing and communicating the next level of my way of thinking about and moving through life. I hope you will join me on one of life's greatest adventures: meeting Reality headstrong and open-hearted.
Over the course of a year or more, I will be writing about topics that are incredibly difficult to put into words. No doubt, I will often fail to capture what I want to say perfectly. But that won't stop me from trying.
My aim is to get across to you, my reader, a glimpse of:
a life (being conventionally identified as a fifty-something, Seattle-dwelling, Harvard-educated, gay man, technical writer, arctophile, etc.) which is being lived increasingly without seams despite wearing many garments;
a view of culture and politics being forged without borders in a climate of intense polarization;
and a spiritpraxis (spirituality-in-action) in which the All is being/doing/met both in nonduality and in relativity.
In short, I will be talking about the emergence of a new philopraxis (philosophy-in-action) based on:
a well-integrated and other-oriented life,
an integral worldview and an evolutionary ethos in a metamodern movement,
and a nondualistic and relativistic spirituality.
My views are my own, of course, shaped by the exigencies of my life experience and the necessities of this genre, the word "blog" only having been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003.
I encourage you to join me here or elsewhere in social media to journey alongside me and improve my own as a result.
Please leave comments as you are moved to do so. Perhaps some of you will come to identify with the philopraxis of which I speak: Unitivism?
What is the Core of Unitivism?
In war and peace—you are the combatant and you are the occupied.
In wealth and poverty—you are the rich and you are the poor.
In the quest for justice—you are the oppressor and you are the oppressed.
And regarding God and Creation, you are the transcendent divine and you are the immanent human.
There is nothing that you are not.
You are, right now and always, one with All-That-Is.
When you think you are not, this is because you have been programmed by culture and religion to think otherwise.
Most importantly, you have been taught language by means of which you have been trained to identify with a particular body, particular emotions, and a particular mind.
Now it comes naturally for you to see yourself as a "skin-encapsulated ego," a poignant phrase I have borrowed from Alan Watts, an individual “I” in a sea of “Yous,” “Hims,” “Hers,” and “Thems.”
Perhaps you have been told there is another way of understanding Who You Are, one in which you become aware of a consciousness pervading everything, everywhere and everyone at all times.
Perhaps you have heard of the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, a strand of Hindu thought which understands that Atman—the True Self, our Ultimate Identity—is one with Brahman, the World Soul, the infinite consciousness without two-ness of any kind.
Perhaps you have heard similar philosophies espoused by Daoists, Zen masters, Buddhist monks, or other strands of Eastern religions.
Perhaps you have heard of Jews, Christians, Muslims--or the Neo-Platonists such as Plotinus who have influenced and continue to influence the Abrahamic faiths--who say that the deepest truth is the realization of unio mystica in which the self is absorbed into God (Allah or Nous) or becomes united with the essence of the One or the Source.
Perhaps you have heard of hermetic or esoteric traditions which tell you that the Ultimate Secret or Great Mystery is radical oneness of all things.
You may have heard of secular philosophers and scientists who have rejected subject/object dualism in favor of monism, nondualism, or Whiteheadian process thought.
What we are talking about, as many of you have certainly surmised, is a stream of philosophical and spiritual traditions known as nonduality or nondualism.
There are many varieties of nondualistic philosophy and we will eventually come around to discussing some of these in greater detail, but let’s not be purists. Let's not draw a map with so much rigidity or detail that we aren't free to roam and wander about.
The first thing to know about Unitivism, which is what I am calling the sensibility demonstrated by this blog/book, is that it makes room for these varieties of nondualism within its umbrella.
Unitivism even makes room for their contradictions, denials, and confusions. For example, some nondualists tell us that there is no-self and others tell us that everything is Self (and these positions actually have a great deal in common). Scholars such as David R. Loy (2019) have even advanced theories to unify a variety of similar accounts of nonduality into overarching positions.
Unitivism as I understand it tells us that nondualism is a core truth about Reality, what is really and totally true, not partially or half true—if we have properly understood ourselves. If you have properly understood yourself, then something like Unitivism will come naturally to you.
And if we haven’t properly understood ourselves, then nondualism is an option, a beacon, a refuge, or a doorway to self-knowledge and knowledge of what we need to know to move along from where we find ourselves getting stuck.
And so, if you don’t yet see yourself in everything and everyone, then you have a remarkable journey ahead of you, if you choose!
When you see the word "Unitivism," I want you to think about a way of being that is both a path and destination for you, a way to walk with an orientation towards greater coherence. Actually, it's better if you think of it as a path and destination for everyone, those of us for whom these ideas are nonsensical and also those of you who may even think you have already arrived at an always-pervasive stage of nondual consciousness.
One can't very well talk about nonduality without saying something about duality, whatever that means. Glenn Hartelius (2015) says that dualism comes in many different varieties, including mind and matter dualism, body and soul dualism, and phenomena and noumena dualism, to name a few. I don't see anything objectionable about that description.
As you will see, Unitivism makes room for you at any stage of your awareness of the all-pervading consciousness because it insists that nondualism and dualism are actually not-two (i.e., indistinguishable).
What does that mean?
Perhaps we shouldn't seek an answer to that question at this stage, without first traversing some of the territory together.
But let me say that it something to do with seeing monism and pluralism as distinct and overlapping stages of a single unfolding. And so even the deepest, most profound, most fully enlightened realization is always both self-knowledge in itself and other-understanding (true love) in relationship.
Not every nondualist sees it this way. But for those of you who have heard something that interests you in the way I am introducing Unitivism, then continue reading as this journey unfolds.
There's more. I am not speaking about a one-note philosophy. As you will see, Unitivism is based not merely on the historical mystical teachings of the Great Traditions or the monistic speculations of philosophers, but on direct experiences of Waking Up and Freeing Up as aspects of an integrative life practice and a somewhat metamodern outlook.
First, please be patient with our neologisms. Unitivism must introduce some unfamiliar words and concepts that you won’t find anywhere else.
Second, please be patient with our borrowings from kindred philosophies such as integrative metatheory, metamodernism, Meta-Reality, and evolutionary spirituality. You don't need prior knowledge of any of these things, but from time to time we will have to refer you to other places to gain a fuller understanding of some of our derived and shared terminology.
Third, recall that language has made you to identify with a particular body, particular emotions, and a particular mind. And so, among other things, you must relearn how to use language to free yourself and others from its prison.
The core of Unitivism is emancipatory, not abstraction or speculation or dogma. You come to a unitivistic understanding of God, the world, and everything only if you need to and desire to know the truth about all things. And only if the Universe responds with a path of learning that gives you what you need to know.
Enjoy the blog/book. I will do my best to finish it and provide you with my best articulation of the worldview I want to tell you about.
Hartelius, G. (2015). Non-duality: Not one, not two, but many (Editor’s
introduction). International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 34(1-2), iii–vi.
http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2015.34.1-2.iii
Loy, D. R. (2019). Nonduality: In Buddhism and beyond. Wisdom Publications.
sounds like a 4th stage religion under adi da's model of 7 stages (outlining esoteric anatomy)
remember to keep growing, for as adi da says "the 4th stage error" is the avoidance of full commitment to God because of straining to see god as a separative other