It strikes me that this "activating force" covers far more ground than those two words might indicate. For example, we could say that life is "electricity" which is some kind of activating force. However, when I put electricity to my toaster, I have not really changed the nature of that toaster in the way that the "activating force" changes a living system that it inhabits.
Here we can speak of a continuum. There appears to be effects of the "activating force" that stretches from providing a "core" that innervates the entire "occupied" object all the way to a "self-aware identity" that occupies the object.
This is all speculation and since this "force" seems to occupy and cease occupation, it appears that as a mechanistic process it "could" have (perhaps, 'must have') developed other than simultaneous with the object it occupies and then leaves.
Imagine a something developing while steeped in a "radio-active" environment that permeates the entire something. Imagine that "radio-activity" have a short half-life such that 50 years later it is half, then 25%, etc., until it is gone.
Life draining/evaporating/halving/subsiding/preparing/readying to the point of being "out" of the formerly "steeped" object.
Someone call the mental squad...X is wildly speculating! :>)
We often speak of the "will to live" which we observe in everything from bacteria to whales, the struggle to survive, the "want to". I hadn't meditated on it as waxing/waning force.