Don't bother to look it up. Ontogeny refers to the growth of an infant from a single fertilized cell.
I wouldn't write about this, a subject I covered in my self published Mental Snacks in 1987, but two people at morning coffee the other day mentioned the same experience that provoked my first writing on the subject.
I, and my two friends, had the experience of being awaken during the deepest part of our nighttime sleep to answer a phone (my case was my father calling from India without knowing the time in San Francisco). In all three cases we found ourselves struggling to wake up, the metaphor we agreed upon was of climbing a ladder, with the top of the ladder being the place where we could talk coherently.
This
just suggests to me that everyday we recreate our personality. That
coming out of a deep sleep with no notice is when we have no
personality, not even our language. We wake up each day slowly enough
to allow ourselves to recreate our personality. The daily recreation
of our personality would be ontogenesis...that is where my title word
comes from.
My best reasoned argument to support this thesis is that all meditation practices have their adherents wake up early and start meditation immediately. It is this first meditation, I submit, that enables meditation to change personality and behavior to some extent.
Do you think we recreate our personality every day when we wake up? Do you connect this to the difference between people who have trouble waking up and people who wake-up with vigor?