I'd like to return to the question of Vegeta, Ultra Ego and connection with the abilities of the Gods of Destruction, to make a suggestion (which I'd also like to flesh out in a proper topic of its own at some point, when I find the time and energy):
The connection is to be found in the tenets of Daoism, and its notion of realisation of the True Self by means of alignment with one's Innate Nature - in so doing, one becomes whole, and entirely natural and spontaneous, realising one's own virtue -
De, in Chinese (meaning 'virtue' not in the sense of 'moral excellence', but rather 'power' or 'capacity', like a herbalist may refer to the 'virtues' of a particular plant). A being whose existence is truly aligned with
De is a being who will act spontaneously in the most fitting manner for a particular situation, because they are acting in a way consonant with their own proper inner nature, which is itself a product of the
Dao.
"Dao preceded Heaven and Earth. It unifies the many threads. It is the development of things, and the emergence of Nature. Without form, it contains all vastness. Its transformative energy precedes the formation of Heaven and Earth. Nothing can see its form; none can know its name. It is called Divine Power." (Guiguzi)
The
Dao is the ultimate ground of being; an organic but Divine cosmic nullity that serves as the root of All things and the awesome power of which creates, nurtures and supports all that exists -
Dao is the unitary, divine cosmic principle of which
De is the concrete expression in the particular, specific innate natures of the myriad things that ground their being in the
Dao). To become truly one's own self, a unitary being who realises one's own
De and acts in accord with it, aligns with the
Dao and its limitless power; one acts
spontaneously from one's true nature.
For Human Beings, their True Nature is
qing (Silence, Tranquility, Stillness), which explains why those things stand behind Ultra Instinct for Son Goku (who, despite his Saiyan biology, is by sentiment and training an Earthling - in addition, these characteristics have a deep affinity with the
Dao as a whole anyway, which could sustain a whole discussion of its own), but Vegeta is by sentiment and training a Saiyan Warrior; his True Nature is that of combat, the joy therefrom, and the strength it gives. He only activates Ultra Ego when he enters his "Happy place" of true battle for its own sake without diversion, because
this is when he is most truly himself. His current state is one that
spontaneously arises (as he notes when he says "A God of Destruction taught me...that power derived solely from instinct...is
unbounded", and "
This power is my own. This battle has awakened it for the first time. This
innate power within me"), and produces a constant welling up of Divine Power.
The connection with Beerus and the Gods of Destruction specifically is twofold:
- Firstly, Beerus's teachings connect on the level of realising one's own True, Innate Nature. As a God of Destruction, Beerus thinks about Destruction all the time, as he notes in Chapter 69. This alignment with his De is the ground of his own Divine Power, and the connection of De with Dao means that this power is the power of the All - "That's why there's no limit to my power". He expounds on the joy Destruction gives him in Chapter 70 - to align his true nature with his virtue like this is what he's teaching Vegeta.
- Secondly, Beerus also mentions in Chapter 70 that the use of destruction is what makes him "turn something into nothing", which itself releases massive power. I believe the literal line is "We turn 1 into a 0", which sounds to me like a direct reference and a counter-movement of a well-known Daoist precept:
"The Number One of Dao was born.
A dyad from this monad formed.
The dyad next a triad made;
The triad bred the myriad,
Each holding Yang
and held by Yin,
Whose powers' balanced interaction
Brings all Ten Thousand to fruition." (Dao De Jing 42).
So, 0 begets 1, 1 begets 2, 2 begets 3, and 3 begets 10,000 (that is, all the things that populate existence). All the things that exist therefore find their root in the formless Dao, which holds the abundant power of spontaneous generation of all things. Therefore Beerus and other Gods of Destruction, when they use Hakai, move in reverse along this same process to make 1 into 0 - this means their technique is a path directly back to the Dao, which is the thing that generates all this power (this also provides a clear and direct linkage to Beerus's statement that "Before Creation comes Destruction" - turning things back to '0' via Destruction will spontaneously produce a new '1' from the Dao in due course).
So, for the TL;DR, Vegeta's Divine Power in Ultra Ego is the power of his Innate
De, which is the active and particular aspect in Nature of the general, hidden cosmic principle of
Dao, and
Dao is the power that Gods of Destruction move back towards and access when they use their own Hakai power, hence the connection both to Destruction
per se and to Beerus's own personal proclivities (his own
De).
Welp, there it is. Maybe I've made some error, or future material will make this interpretation look wrongheaded, but I thought I'd throw it out there to contribute to the discussion of what Toyotarou and Toriyama might be going for in this arc particularly - I feel like this idea is strengthened when one interprets Vegeta's and Goku's forms as fundamentally opposed but also complementary with each other (as I noted in a previous post, like a Taijitu - 'Yin-Yang').