At first, the idea of the meaning perspective seemed interesting and worth thinking about. After further thinking and deeper examination, we find that the idea and operation of meaning perspectives takes on a much larger, if not dominant, role in the conduct of our external lives and our internal lives. As a whole being, we want to discover or rediscover the definition of that self or becoming self and see how we can get more fully engaged with it:
The self (or the becoming 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.
Looking at this definition now, it seems a little spare, but it still works in a way that we can use. Given that it describes the functionality of the becoming self, it keeps us from value judgments about the choices made in its operation and simply presents us with what it does for a living. What the meaning perspective does to prevent the operation of the self becomes evident when we drop the meaning perspective in the midst of this definition. The definition ceases to operate in every place where a meaning perspective operates. The becoming self, the one that perceives the world directly, finds that perception denied or limited by these meaning perspectives.
A clear perception and conception of the world highly influences our ability and power to learn no matter our inherent ability to learn. We can even find our perception of our inherent ability denied or limited to us by a meaning perspective. Such perceptual problems came up repeatedly with students while we worked on the seeming purely instrumental process of learning to use the computer and word processing and spreadsheets.
Such a learning process will almost inevitably lead to mistakes. How we learn in such a process depends very heavily on how we choose to respond to those mistakes. If we choose to respond to a mistake by accusing ourselves of failure and filling ourselves with blame and derision, our ability to learn what the mistake offers can nearly disappear. We just relearn the lesson, the meaning perspective regarding our learning has to say—over and over again: "You're so stupid." What we actually hear comes in our own voice, the voice in which we hear meaning perspectives: "I'm so stupid." In that we hear that perspective with our own voice makes it all the more irresistible. We believe what we tell ourselves. That's part of the power of the meaning perspective. We don't know it's actually the voice of an artificial construct, the meaning perspective. It sounds like it’s an incorrigible and irrefutable truth we have known all our lives. Generally, this attitude toward failure manifested itself in the force of the "tyranny of the shoulds" which we discussed earlier.
We return to this example because it gives us insight into how meaning perspectives can deny us a full perception of ourselves and the world. When we perceive of ourselves as stupid and some task before us as beyond our ability to grasp, it limits us in every way possible. We can never engage in that form of learning for that kind of subject. We cease to feel we can choose our freedom of response to a mistake, to the process of learning itself. In this way, the meaning perspective stops us from participating fully in our life, in our becoming self.