Life makes shapes. Life is a natural, evolutionary process in which series of shapes are continually forming. These shapes are part of an organizing process that embodies emotions, thoughts, and experiences into structure. This structure, in turn, orders the events of existence. 

Each person's shape is his embodiment in the world. We are the body we inherit, the one that lives us, and a personal body, the one we live and shape through volitional effort. We are citizens of two worlds, rooted in the animate, immortal and timeless.

Shapes manifest protoplasmic history. Molecules and cells organize into clusters, which further organize as layers, tubes, tunnels and pouches. These give structure to liquid life and set the stage for embodied human consciousness. Through the act of living, a personal human shape grows, one that is changed by the challenges and stresses of life.

Formative psychology is based in the evolutionary process in which life continually forms the next series of shapes, from birth through maturity to old age. At conception each person is given a biological and emotional inheritance, but it is through volitional effort that this constitutional given fulfills its potential for forming a personal life. Form gives rise to feeling. The smallest volitional effort begins the process of self-contact. It brings forth the existential truth of one's immediate personal bodily experience rather than ideas, mental concepts or someone else's notion about appropriate behaviors and actions. When individual identity is grounded in somatic reality, we can say, "I know who I am by how I experience myself."

The gift of cortical function makes possible volitional participation in our lives. Through volition, distinctions can be made in a general pattern of experience. Volitional function is learned with practice over time. This forming practice proceeds from the simple to the complex through a continual chain of events, establishing patterns that have duration. In this way, an inner dialogue grows, giving our lives a personal and sacred dimension.

With practice and commitment, we can have some say in our embodied life. How we encourage or inhibit our innate actions personalizes and establishes the autonomy to transcend the past and present and orient to the future.