It is through constant interaction with the material world that both our identity and ego operate to establish a stance to the world and defending that stance. These tasks represent real and necessary forms of survival for our whole being. Our becoming self constantly interacts with both of the materialistic reactive facets of our whole being and remains continuously aware of what they choose to see and how they choose to react and to act in the world. The becoming self never ceases to learn and to make sense out of the experiences of our being in the world. It performs the function of the self we have defined although material choices and actions are implemented through our identity and ego. It is here that meaning perspectives can interfere with the balance of these facets of our being.
In the eventual awareness of our ego and identity their relationship to the becoming self and their ultimate unity with the becoming self more and more of our being feels the wholeness possible for us as a being. The apparent separations work as useful fictions for a good deal of our lives, but they stay fictions. Our mind, body, and spirit exist as a whole being which lives within the painful and powerful illusion of personal alienation and separation of the elements of that being.[81] Forces within the world can make such demands on our identity and ego that those forces can distract or even prevent us from reaching our unified existence as a whole being. When the demands feel so great, so overwhelming, our ego and identity may make choices about how to see life and respond to that perspective that prevents any realization of that sense of unity even though it exists for us endlessly closely.[82]
These forces within the world happen spontaneously, as we have discussed, through a deprivation of our need for unconditional positive regard. The force exerted by a conformist, dominator society or culture works against the becoming self because that self appears as an individuating being. Such a being, such a person, meets the working definition of the self. An individuating person simply thinks and sees for her/himself and acts with conscience, freedom, and responsibility in the world, a state of mind and being in the world intolerable to a dominator model. Such a person loves others. Such a person finds little or no place in the world that the dominator has defined for them. People do not differentiate freely in such a model. They must find a place defined by the dominator and its conformist culture. Domination brooks no difference, no differentiation from the categories of existence dictated by the dominator.[83] If the individual fails to conform to the dominator model, the model places that individual into an outlier category such as "nonconformist." As we discussed, the rebellion and the "No" of nonconformity poses no threat to the dominator. Reverse conformity remains attached, a part of the general domination and conformity. The dominator model can and does consciously use our needs and vulnerabilities to keep us from attaining individuation and the unification of the elements of our being: ego, identity, and self even as it deals quite happily with the rebellious non-conformist. The individuating, becoming self does not rebel, does not shout "No." The becoming self simply acts out a profound sense of the ends principle and the moral sphere wherein the self speaks the "yes" of affirming meaningful life.