When we return to the working definition of the becoming self, we find that it goes along very well with the "Yes" of seeking balance with the rhythms, freedom, and uncertainties of life.
The self exists as a conscious, independent entity which perceives the world, takes information from that perception, learns from that information, makes choices based on that learning, and acts freely on those choices. The self experiences the results of those choices, accepts the responsibility of those choices and results, and the process begins again.
The choices for "Yes" and the choice for self show their unity in this definition. Perhaps we might add something about critical reflection of unexamined meaning perspectives: "The self exists as a conscious, self-reflective, independent entity. . ." The self-reflective addition can suggest the need for us to remain aware of our natural tendency to form and re-form meaning perspectives. The result of our newly spawned ability to critically examine unquestioned meaning perspectives and make them into choices of awareness of our prejudices brings us to entering more fully into our human potential to experience transformative learning. Out of the transformative comes a new way of seeing and experiencing the world, in a way liberated from but still helpfully informed by the past.[75]
It will help us the keep to the process of the transformative in our lives, to make the choice for "Yes" to the balance and the rhythm in life, to remain aware of our tendency to make meaning perspectives about our past as we live each moment fully, build our present, and enter our future every day. Our examination so far has kept us in our more distant past, this stable past, but we don't want to stay there and tell ourselves we are done with self-awareness. Transformative learning can come every day even as we live through the present and create a vision, tell our heroic story, of our yesterday. We also want to make sure that our awareness of the past doesn't become a new, unquestioned meaning perspective about ourselves which may produce the very sorts of restrictions about the self from which we wish to become liberated.
Many of the students with whom I worked came to me labeled if not encumbered with some diagnosis of mental or emotional difference. I always assured these students that I had no degree in psychology. I was not shrink and had no shrink wrap on the wall. We did not consider the work we did together as therapy. We could see the work we did together, the learning we did together, as therapeutic and even transformative. Any achievement we realize, can offer us a transformative experience because when we achieve, we see ourselves anew, as successful, capable, and ready for a new form of learning. In that sense, we did not deal with their diagnosis at all directly, but we critically examined and reflected on that diagnosis by way of seeing not what was wrong with them but what was right with them.[76] It could actually happen that through a reinterpretation of the past realities, such a diagnosis became part of the positive and heroic story of the present and future.
We often talked about the fact that we are the story we tell ourselves. When students came with a diagnosis, they often spoke as if they felt burdened if not trapped by such a diagnosis. They often spoke as if such diagnosis served as the end of their story not as an interpretation of their story. They spoke of themselves as "I am a . . ." and then named their diagnosis. They had become their label in their own minds. The diagnosis served as a meaning perspective which also had become part of their identity, their inner vision of who they were to themselves and in the world. As sad and limiting as their diagnosis felt, their ego defended it and kept it in place as an essential part of their identity. That made the internalized diagnosis very hard to escape like the slammer.
We often spoke at length about the process of this diagnosis, and its result. Many had been involved with recovery programs wherein they discussed the problems they experienced in their lives which seemed to direct them to damaging choices in their lives. They had learned to identify these mistaken choices of their past as "my issues." That they referred to these past occurrences and difficulties in a possessive way and in the present tense disturbed me. That the phrase "my issues" also turned these mistaken choices into an immutable element of their own, and made them definitional to the students who reported them. It sounded to me that every day when they woke up, they would put on these "issues" like a pair of glasses. They would then look in the mirror, and there they were, not the becoming self of them, not their whole being, but their "issues."