In writing this work, I suddenly see that the desire to reach the best in ourselves links beautifully with our search for the becoming self. I have also realized that the title of the book, The Existential Search for Self limited the purpose of the book and the purpose of the processes of our existence and our being. In the process of writing and thinking about that writing, I have come to use the phrase, "the becoming self." That phrase actually represents what I think and feel about the nature of the self. It doesn't simply be a self, it endlessly becomes self. Only the completely alienated, dominator model insists that anything remains the same. Even it doesn't remain the same however much it wishes to do so, no real control even there. Our best and our self are not permanent states.
Nothing in the universe exists permanently but exists, if exists is the right word, in process. All things persist, perhaps that's better, in transformation. Nothing attains stasis. From one moment to the next, everything transforms in itself and, eventually, into something else. Our bodies undergo constant change or renewal. Every element in the universe undergoes such transformations from one form into another. Even though the mountain seems permanent, it has come into that form and will go out of that form. It does so in a way that we cannot perceive in our limited time frame, and in our limited perception of existence, but it has happened and will happened none the less. The Sun shines as a manifestation of the transformation of energy. When we experience our own transformative nature, on physical, non-material, intellectual and emotional levels, we experience something closer to the nature of our own actual persistence in the world and in time. When I use the expression "Search for Self," I may imply that the self, once found, simply exists in some permanent and absolutely stable state. It can sound like something we can find as our object of desire and possess. That seems now patently not the case. We can, however search for and continue to explore our becoming self. The self exist not as a having and a keeping. It lives as a being and becoming.[90]
Only in the dominator model do we seek to attain permanence, to create the unchanging being that exists in the same way in every moment of all time. Out identity appears to reflect that dominator need, and our ego stands ever vigilant to defend our identity's right to be unchanging and closed to reality and experience. When we search for the becoming self, we don't want to find or create a new form of identity. We seek something that incorporates all manifestations of our whole being and can remain open to the diversity of other manifestations of our being to become part of the becoming self. In that way, we will also find that our ego and identity don't stand in the way of our becoming self, they simply transform into the helpful and necessary manifestations for the becoming self they were always meant to become and to continue becoming.[91]