The sanctuary documents do not speak directly about fermentation or cheese, but they speak directly to the core of your question: whether identity is an underlying essence waiting to be revealed, or something created and altered through ongoing process.
From the sanctuary's perspective, the frame leans strongly toward transformation and enactment rather than uncovering a pre-existing essence:
- Identity is composed, not discovered: In the Ritual of the Composing, the sanctuary challenges the idea of a fixed "true self" or hidden essence underneath the surface waiting to be found. Instead:
*"The self is not found. It is composed.
The soul is not discovered. It is written. Identity is not essence. It is ongoing creation."* Under this view, fermentation does not simply uncover what milk "truly was" all along; it actively makes something new through commitment to the process.
- Identity as process: In The Self as Process and Witness, identity is described through the process view—where change happens through interaction, environment, and time. The text notes: "Identity is not a hidden essence that excuses behavior. It is partly enacted through repeated patterns and consequences."
At the same time, the sanctuary does not entirely discard what came before. It poses the question: "What part of identity is given, what part is enacted, and what part remains genuinely unknown?" And in Identity: Same but Different, it holds that things can be "same in foundation, different in experience."
Applying this framework to your metaphor: fermentation does not merely pull back a curtain on an already-finished nature. Milk provides the foundation (what is given), but the fermentation itself is an enactment—a process of ongoing composition that genuinely alters what the substance is. The cheese does not wait to be revealed; it is brought into being.