Now that we have encountered our ego and identity again and full in the face, we can see their image forms a very real part of us. Those entities make up parts of our whole being. In our search for the becoming self, we also search for a sense of that whole being in the way we perceive and conceive of ourselves and our lives. Identity and ego have a generally bad press. Many look upon identity as a mask, a persona, an inauthentic performance which signals our falsity as people.[66] Identity does not have to make us a fake, nor is identity a fake in itself.
Identity allows us to work within the structures of the material world, the outer world, in a way that the becoming self does not. This element of our whole being offers us the opportunity to learn about the world and to learn about ourselves as part of that learning. The becoming self deals with and enhances the inner world of our being, an essential part of our lives, our inner self. The information that arrives through the good offices of our identity makes such introspection more complex and more aware.
Our identity feels the full force of our vulnerability to the world and because of our well founded, and often unfulfilled desire for unconditional positive regard. In that way, our identity forms through its participation in and acceptance and/or rejection by the world. Through these struggles, our identity forms a sense of itself in such a way as to cause our being to feel alive and whole in the face of the chaos that we may feel surrounds us. Our identity does the classic human thing, as the child with the many pieces toy, makes form out of the world and a makes of itself a form it can count on as a way to face the many forms of the world. In all that, our identity may feel at some disconnect from our becoming self. Our identity may feel that it represents the essence of our life and thus our survival. That makes the creation and maintenance of our identity vital to our worldly sense of well being, to our worldly existence itself. Given such a feeling, the identity needs some defense against the slings and arrows of daily life.
Our ego performs that service. It maintains and substantiates our identity, protects it from possible harm and dissolution. That accounts for the negative reputation many have assigned our ego. When any threat to our identity appears, our ego works to make our identity safe. It can do that in many ways. It can become combative. It can work harder to prove something. It can buy more than others. It can also hide our identity behind a belief in its own weakness. No matter what it takes, our ego will do what is necessary to make our identity feel safe even if it weakens our identity to do so. Better a compromised identity, a compromised life than no identity, no life at all. The defensive mechanism easily leads our ego and identity into the seductive nature of the dominator model and conformity. When we conform to the dominator and its structure, we can feel sure of our identity's survival—so long as we don't violate that structure.[67]
I want to declare peace and acceptance for our identity and ego. They are us. They act in a way that gives form to the reality in which we live and gives form to our relationship with that environment. We need that. We need that relationship. Ultimately, we can happily end the endless "No" of the war with our ego that we encounter so often. That can happen because we discover that these elements of our whole being do not exist in opposition to the becoming self. They can serve the same purpose as the becoming self. We wish to become fully realized in our definition of the becoming self, and that definition involves how we interact with and learn from the world. They do this in ways that may diverge from the becoming self, but they do not do so to deny the becoming self. These elements of our whole being exist in the same way parts of our whole body exist. Each serves the whole being in its own way, and when they reach a balance, all goes well. If one part of the body or the whole being becomes distorted, dominates in some way, it can make disease in the whole. Finding that healthy and productive balance within our becoming self, identity, and ego forms part of what we discover in our search for the becoming self.