← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Awakening the Mana Within: Jung's Archetype of Power and Purpose
00:32:50
Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:00]
Deborah Maldonado
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Podcast Announcer
Welcome to Jung on purpose with CreativeMind, hosted by Deborah and Dr. Rob Maldonado, creators of the NeuroMindra coaching method based on Jungian psychology, non dual spirituality and social neuroscience. Join us each week as we explore personal growth for purpose seekers and the incredible inner journey of becoming your true self. Let's get started.
- [00:35]
Deborah Maldonado
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Jung on Purpose. I am Debra Maldonado.
- [00:40]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
I'm Dr. Rob.
- [00:41]
Deborah Maldonado
And we have a great episode today talking about the mana personality, the archetype of power and purpose.
- [00:50]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
But before we begin, just a friendly reminder, subscribe to our channel if you're watching us on YouTube or anywhere you get your podcasts, Spotify, et cetera. It really helps us out and we want to reach more people with this wonderful content and we appreciate you listening.
- [01:09]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. Yes. You don't want to miss the series as we continue this. So I love this idea of the mana personality, and I never heard it before except with Jung. So I'd love for you to give everyone an overview of what it is.
- [01:24]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So to put it in simple terms, this means a person's spiritual power. It comes from Polynesia. You know, we recently been watching that show, the Warrior Chief.
- [01:37]
Deborah Maldonado
Chief of war. Chief of war with Jason Momoa.
- [01:40]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yes. And which is all about the. The Hawaiian islands and their culture. And there they mention the warrior's mana. The mana personality is their spiritual power. In psychological terms. Jung understood it to mean the individual's connection with their true self and how it is expressed in the world as psychological, emotional, spiritual power.
- [02:08]
Deborah Maldonado
And so most of us start off in life not thinking we're so great. You know, we're like the spiritual. We're just human beings trying to survive. And we don't realize that we have the power within us because we are very powerless, especially as babies. We're dependent on people around us. So I would say the first person we project that power on is like our mother and the people around us, us. And then as we go to school, the popular kids have the manna or the. What we perceive as power. Money has power. And we start projecting this spiritual power onto people and onto things.
- [02:41]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, that's right. If we think about early childhood, we definitely projected onto our parents. Our parents are bigger than, larger than life. They. They're powerful beings. And we experience them almost as gods because of this projection that we project the mana personality on them or to our. Our peers and our friends and our teachers. As we grow up, we see them as leaders, as wise men and women who guide us. And we project this Power onto them as well doesn't mean they don't have it. We all have a little bit of mana, personal power. But there are people that cultivate it intuitively or methodically through spiritual disciplines or psychological disciplines or even martial arts, where they cultivate this power in a very conscious way. Jung would call it individuation.
- [03:37]
Deborah Maldonado
And so let's talk about. We're going to talk about how to do it or how to start that process for yourself. But let's talk about when people don't activate it or they like. I think there's a lot of projection. I mean, we all have teachers and gurus that we look, you know, authors that we follow or teachers, and we're like, wow, celebrities, politicians, leaders that people admire. Or we feel like they have power. Whether we like them or not, they have power. And we just kind of project that power outside. And that's usually for people that aren't individuated, people that are operating from ego. But another element of this is the other side of that is when someone believes that power. So if you are the leader, you are the teacher, you are the coach, you are the thought leader, the motivational speaker that if you're. It's not true, like your ego can get inflated from absolutely power that people are projecting on you. I always feel like with celebrities, they have like a light around them. Like when I used to work in the entertainment industry and there was something weird about their energy. It was like. There was like almost like a glowing, numinous quality about them. And I think it. And I assumed it was because people were projecting all this, like, power onto them because they were famous. And. And so it was like, not really theirs. It's like everyone else's lifting them up and. And we can always. All of us can get attached to praise and. And. And being, you know, being on stage or being recognized at work, achieving things. And then we think we have captured the magical power of the universe. And so what happens with ego inflation?
- [05:19]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Well, one of the things that we want to be aware of is. Is spiritual bypassing. So spiritual bypassing is this idea that because we're doing spiritual work or deep psychological work even, that we're somehow better. Now, what's happening there is we're attaching the significance of the spiritual work or the psychological work to our ego. And so the ego becomes inflated, meaning it's taking on all that power, but for its egotistical purposes, puffing up or increasing the Persona instead of its real purpose, which is to enlighten and to move towards the self realization. And that's a very different psychological situation. The individual, the Persona, the personality becomes inflated instead of real growth towards the self. There's this sense that I am the big person, I am the biggest big personality, the important individual, because I have done this work. Or we see it very often in, in materialistic cultures like our own, that people that have money or fame, like you were saying, are imbued with this, this magical power, this mana, because they have more money or more fame or more prestige. And that is. Jung warns about this. This is not real mana or real spiritual power. It is the kind of the false sense of power, the full mana, simply on the surface, it's simply about the Persona.
- [06:54]
Deborah Maldonado
And so the danger of that is if you're tying your mana to your Persona, the Persona is not really solid. It doesn't have any kind of consistency to it. It appears consistent in a way, but it's always changing. The world is always changing. So you're on the surface and then you have to uphold it all the time. And I see so many people, I've worked with coaches for over 20 years, and I've seen a lot of them feel this pressure to have to keep it up, that they can't look weak, they can't look like they're struggling, they can't look like they have a personal problem. They're a love coach and they can't get divorced. They're a divorce coach and they can't find love. This kind of need to make everyone see them as all knowing. And I just feel like that hinders a lot of people that want to be coaches or leaders because they think, well, I don't know, have it all together yet. I, you know, I don't want to. I don't have all the answers yet. And then we see people that are famous coaches or famous authors, and everyone's always trying to tear them down when their life, you know, something happens and like there's like this tearing down of that person. They lied to me. They. They told me they were perfect. And I'm finding out this secret thing about this person. And. And it's just so much pressure. And that's the danger is that we create this kind of false, loaded Persona. And eventually it's like a heavy weight, like this mask is so heavy and so constricting to carry all of that projection of people around. Just like, really a lot a big burden in your life or. And this can happen in an individual life, right? With being the savior of the family, you know, you're the one who comes to save everyone. You're the one who has the magical spiritual power to save everyone. And then, you know, that's a lot of pressure on you where you don't get taken care of either.
- [08:40]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yes. And also keep in mind that the. The typical Persona creates a shadow, which is a typical shadow, relatively easy to deal with because it corresponds to a normal or typical shadow or a typical Persona. Right. Now think of the Persona inflated or over inflated. It's going to create an inflated person shadow as well.
- [09:04]
Deborah Maldonado
So the opposite gets created in the shadow.
- [09:07]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
It gets created. So instead of the savior, they're building up a shadow of a destroyer or.
- [09:15]
Deborah Maldonado
Someone who hurts or harms.
- [09:17]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
That's right.
- [09:18]
Deborah Maldonado
Or even someone who's famous. And then they lose all their fame. You know, you see sometimes what happened to the celebrity. And they're like kind of living, you know, in a small. They used to be so big. And that if they identify with that, then they end up, you know, they can create the opposite as well.
- [09:35]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. It's like when people talk about buying into their own hype, it's like they fell for their own, their own trick, building up this Persona that is not genuine, not their true self. And it's creating the shadow, the opposite of what they're intending as Persona. Then it blows up in their face. It ends up sabotaging their plans or creating some kind of scandal or humiliation for themselves. And it's not a pretty side and it's not beneficial for anyone. Most of all, society, we see this with politicians, often with movie stars, with rock stars, artists, but also with typical business people. Often they might fall into the trap of believing their own hype as well and inflate their ego and which only is going to pop sooner or later. And the shadow is revealed.
- [10:29]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. And I think that on a lighter sense that even some people, like, what we see is a lot of people that have achieved a lot of success in their earthly life. And that kind of. They built their ego on that. Maybe not from a manna perspective, but a little bit of like, you know, I got it together, I reached all these goals, I have this power. But then they feel disenchanted at, like, it's not really real. Like they know they have this, like, it's like more awake. People have more of a sense of this, isn't it? You know, I need. There's something else I need.
- [11:02]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. And you find that absolutely. In regular terms, we could say, oh, the person is dissatisfied with their accomplishments. They've spent all this Time and energy, creating this false sense of Persona and pumping it up with a mana personality. By putting it in the wrong place, they've built up their Persona instead of working towards realization of their true self, which is a very different endeavor. And so their immaturity, unresolved complexes eventually catch up with them and they crash and burn.
- [11:43]
Deborah Maldonado
So like you said, it's like the mana is a bypassing in a way that if I just keep accomplishing great things or being praised and I don't have to pay attention to the things that I don't like about myself or that I. You know, even making excuses for what you're doing that are kind of not right. You know, maybe you're like conning people or something, but you make it seem like, well, I'm, you know, this all great person, so I can't possibly do anything wrong. Or the spirit told me that it's okay to do this. And this recults, you know, form. And these leaders kind of go off their way. And I think there's a trap because with that mana personality, especially as a leader, there has to be the counter of someone projecting that onto them as well. And so that's a very powerful, powerful image. Right. To uphold. And then we become the guru and we blur the boundaries between what is the archetype that's acting in me and what is actually just an ego identity inflated with this archetype. So when we think of manna, we think of it as an archetype. And I know archetype is a strange word that a lot of people use in different ways. So I'd love for you to talk about just a little bit of what an archetype is so we can understand mana more as an archetype.
- [12:57]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So Jung talks about it in different ways, but the. The typical consensus, let's say, is that you meant an inherited pattern of thinking, almost like a we're. We're born. And it's. It's an innate pattern that we're born with that helps us approach life situations in a particular way. So the leadership question. We can say that there's an archetype of preparedness in our psyche to. To deal with it in a. In this particular way. So that's the archetype that. That structure in the psyche that allows us to deal and understand leadership in this particular way. Like who has.
- [13:40]
Deborah Maldonado
I like how you say it's kind of like the Matrix, you know, like what the building blocks of how we see the world and circle as an archetype. And there's only three shapes that we actually have that we work with and they're just re configured over and over. Masculine, feminine, you know, that type of archetype. So there's like universal patterns. And so when we think of mana, the universal pattern of it is that there's this like energy, almost like we all share in a way from the collective unconscious, from the self that we have access to. It's not. Doesn't come from outer accomplishments or living a life. It's like we were born with it. It's just not conscious to us. And so if we're not conscious of it, what we tend to do is project it or we use it. The ego uses it for its own means, which is I'm going to use this energy and power and think that I'm actually working with real power and it's not.
- [14:34]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
And so the true, the true self, or the self as Jung calls it, that is the source and the power of mana. In other words, where does manna come from? Where does this spiritual power come from? From self. There's no place else it can come from. So self realization is always the aim of individuation. It's moving towards the center, the core, the source of our power, our spiritual power.
- [15:07]
Podcast Announcer
You've spent years building success and achieving what others would only imagine. But yet something deeper is calling. A desire for work that's meaningful, transformative and rooted in who you really are. At CreativeMind, we train professionals to guide others through real psychological transformation using Jungian principles, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. No cliches, no surface level tools, just depth, structure and purpose. Our ICF accredited Jungian life coach training program provides a profound professional training in small cohorts that includes personal transformation with a dedicated coach and powerful tools to help you guide others in a deep lasting transformation. Step into that next chapter of your personal and professional evolution. Join us by visiting creativemindlife.com and speak to an admission specialist today. That's creativemindlife.com.
- [16:19]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
So what that means is that the Persona, meaning the false self or the the ego self has to die. It has to fall by the wayside in the hero's journey, which is kind of a mythological playing out of that process of individuation. He the personality of the hero has to go through an actual or a symbolic death. It must be buried, it must go underground, it must be destroyed and must be killed somehow in order for it to be reborn and reconfigured.
- [16:52]
Deborah Maldonado
Destruction of the ego, which seems kind of scary when we have dreams about death and Destruction. But it's really. It's just like how the cycle of life is. And we have to let go of the lower nature to actually express our higher nature. And that's a challenge because we love our ego. Our ego loves what we created. And in a way, sometimes not everything. But it's comfortable in its own Persona and its known patterns and its known, you know, habits and world. And it's like shaking it up is shocking.
- [17:25]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, that's not why. Not everyone can do individuation or not everybody is ready to do it. Yeah, there's. There has to be kind of a. Kind of a crossroads in life, right, where people, all the elements come together and the person is ready to let go of their past conditioning. Because psychologically, what that death means is that you have to let go of the old story about who you are.
- [17:56]
Podcast Announcer
Hmm.
- [17:58]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
That identification with your personal history. It doesn't mean you reject it or you. You nullify. It simply means you understand that it's not the true you. It's an aspect of you or your individuality and. And the way your biological life played out. But it's not that mana power that comes through the self. That is a very different kind of way of being, being in the world. So it. We can say that the mana personality, when it takes hold of the individual, it transforms their beingness in the world and gives them their purpose, which is a higher purpose is not the old purpose of becoming a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher. Whatever their endeavor was. Now it's. They're being guided by this mana personality, this vision, this new energy that's come into their life, directing them in a very different way. And often it might not be anything even close to what they were intending as. As Persona, as individuals sometimes.
- [19:05]
Deborah Maldonado
So it could come in the form of like, someone who's just like, using your ego for your life is very exhausting. So when people are saying they're burnt out and overwhelmed and tired and exhausted and like, kind of like even just like, want to collapse, like they're just tired of playing the game. That is, like they've used all their. Their ego energy, basically, which is very protective, very like, keep me safe, very powerless. And it's survival, you know, like you're just treading water. And then either that happens, they realize they're overwhelmed. They ask, you know, ask somewhere guidance from above. Or say a statement like, this can't go on anymore. Or they. Something happens to them, like they have a death of someone they love. They hit a milestone age, and they look back and they're like, wait a minute. This is not where I thought I'd be at this time. Or just something happens. And then I would say the teacher appears like the right person. Like, we see this a lot with our coach training. We see a lot of people say, you know, I was kind of figuring stuff out, and then there you were, you showed up online, and it's like, that's how this works. There's a synchronicity that happens. It's like the manna is, like, unconsciously pushing us toward it. And almost, in a way, if you're feeling overwhelmed and tired, it's probably from resisting the manna and not letting it come out. It's like your. Your ego's resisting it, and it's like. And you think it's about the external and your. Your workload, and maybe I need a couple mental health days. But it's really that resisting, of really owning all this power that the ego's terrified. Because once that mana starts taking over the conscious self or that we're able to use that, the ego loses its significance and it gets afraid, and we need to have it step aside. And then the manna is. We're not the source of the mana. The manna is what, the energy that we use in the world, but not from the ego. And so how would someone. We all talk about. Shadow work is always the first step. But is there something else that we could tell people that are listening of, like, I feel this, I want to connect with my man. You know, I feel all these things are making sense. What would you say would be something they could, you know, start thinking about what they can do?
- [21:15]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So one of the principles that we know is. Is part of the individuation process is to consider whatever is in front of you, whatever the task at hand is as a starting point. A lot of people think, well, no, I have to run away to India or. Or the Himalayas to. To start my. My spiritual journey. And that's precisely the opposite of what you have to do is you have to be in your life the way it's played out to this point and accept it completely. So that is one of the keys that you have to accept everything you created and take responsibility for it. So instead of running away. Right. Yes. It is a huge step for a lot of people because they. They've spent so much energy trying to run away, trying to create something different from them for themselves instead of what life has given them as the challenge. Right. So that kind of being present in the moment with A task at hand and accepting that this is what you have to work with. What it does, it opens up then infinite potential in precisely the things that feel to be blocks for individuals, to be obstacles, to be challenges. Those things are really the gold because they will give you the answer to what is your individuation process about? It gives you your work, essentially. So we can talk about it as purpose, because that's what we experience it as. As we unlock that challenge, as we stay with whatever is at hand and we face it, we. We integrate it. As Jung would say, it gives us our sense of purpose. What is my mission in life? What is my purpose here? And it's a. It's an incredible transformation because psychologically, what this is the death of the old individual, that you're no longer on the fool's errand. The fool's errand is to build a personality that pleases the world.
- [23:16]
Deborah Maldonado
That's funny, isn't it?
- [23:18]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, it's a fool's errand because you cannot please the world. And if you. You know, most of us have tried, and we see that it gets us nowhere. Because there's no way to please everyone. There's no way. As soon as you please one group of people, you're disappointing another group of people. And then you're running back and forth trying to please everyone. It does not happen. And now if you rebel against that, that's even worse because that means you're really caught. Now it's so kind of under your skin that you're trying to run away from it and create the opposite, but it's. It's not working. All you're doing is creating now another Persona that kind of. You've taken on the shadow, essentially, as your Persona and trade it. You swapped out the Persona for the shadow?
- [24:04]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah, the, like rearranging the furniture. Like, maybe get a new job, maybe get a new relationship, maybe change my look, you know, move to a different place. Maybe I, you know, move to a different city or country, and then that'll refresh everything. But you're only making the. The changes on the external. And I would say that I love the idea of just accepting your life as it is. I mean, if. If you just did that and sat with yourself and examined how much of your energy is going toward trying to regret the past, fix the past, holding resentment, wishing you would have did things differently. I wish other people would have done things differently. And then you wouldn't be here if you accepted it completely. Everything played out exactly as it. And you're right. In this moment, that's the only way you, you really have that window to open up to the future. Otherwise, your ego loves to work, it loves to play around with the past. And it's like the fool's errand. Continue on your fool's errand of thinking this all matters. And so that first step of just being aware consciously. But what you start to do is opening up a dialogue with your inner self. And the manna has been waiting to speak to you. The manna has been waiting to guide you. The manna has been waiting to move, move you toward where you need to go. And. But you can't do it if you're trying, still trying to fix the past. Because you have one, one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and then in the middle you're just kind of going in circles. Because you can't create from the way you created in the past. Like you have to create your life in a completely different way. You can't use the old tools of your self help, tools you use in your 20s and early 30s. You have to individuate, which is a completely different approach to psychology and your psyche. That's what your mature mind needs. And that's really where you can go to the deeper parts of yourself.
- [25:52]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, we've all heard that saying, that what we resist persists. Attributed to Jung, right? That's very true. But when we resist our life and our situation, it persists, meaning we simply recreate it over and over again. Once we stay and accept it as it is and take responsibility for it, then things change because the old self dies. Meaning we're no longer tied to our past conditioning. And that self that we created, that false self, it dies away because it never really existed. It only existed as a mental construct that we used to try to fool the world that we're a good person. We're this personality. We're this person that does this particular job. And Jung says what we end up doing is over identifying with our profession. So that the professor believes he's the great professor, the teacher believes they're the great teacher on and on. That's simply a mask, he says it's a mask that we wear. And it's a fool's errand because it doesn't get us anywhere except to be playing a role, right? To be an actor playing a role. The true self, meanwhile, comes from the mana personality. So the mana energy then gives us the power to stay and take full responsibility for our beingness in the world, but in a genuine way. And that requires a lot of power. That requires a transpersonal power, meaning it's not going to come from the ego and from our efforts and our cleverness. It's going to come from what people call the divine, the spirit, the spirit animal, on and on, whatever they conceive of as the universe that is going to help them establish themselves as the true self and find their true purpose and enact their true purpose in life.
- [27:46]
Deborah Maldonado
If you're operating from ego, it's sort of like you're using such little bit of your energy, you know, it's such a, it's a very protective defensive energy that's like into survival. Like I say, like you're, you're treading water versus swimming marathons. You're doing a crescent ocean transocean, you know, swim, you know, where you're going somewhere. And I think what, what's really interesting, there's this law of. The law of least effort they call it. And, and so our ego, we're conditioned younger that we have to. In order to create something new in our life, we have to work hard, we have to think, study hard, we have to do all these things, we have to work hard for relationships. But this idea, when we bring the mana personality in and we use that and let the ego step aside and let like that mana spiritual power guide us, it's effortless. It's amazing how it's not. It's been always been there and we just don't know how to use it. And so individuation is a really great way because it's not bypassing. It's not like, let me get rid of the ego so I can be this, this spiritual guru. It's no, I, I want to love the ego, accept the ego for what it is. And now I know I'm even more than that. And so the ego's done a great job. It's our friend. It keeps us alive. It gives us an individual experience of this experience in us body. But it doesn't have to run the show, it doesn't have to drive anymore. And I think that's the real freedom. But I love that all this energy that we had, we didn't even realize we knew we had. Just like all the famous fairy tales. Like Dorothy had the slippers on her the whole time, all she had to do was tap them, you know, and find that power chasing around the world, trying to find it when it's already inside of us. But we just don't know how to look for it. And that's why you Know our young and coaching is so different than most coaching because it's not about just goal attainment and accomplishing things. It's more about really accessing the energy so you can have great things in your life but you're doing it from a different place. You're not doing it from a striving, building more ego up place less stressful. And when tying to purpose when we're we're in that we're connected and activating our mana personality. We know what we should be doing with our life. Like we're more connected to who we really are. We're not having a career because it makes sense because our father had that career or because society like looks up to those people. We end up choosing something that makes us feel happy and joyful.
- [30:12]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
That's right. It's not about kind of working just to build a career but it's a sense of meaning that your purpose gives you that you know you would be doing this regardless of what the circumstances are.
- [30:27]
Deborah Maldonado
If no one paid you and no one praised you, would you still do this? And I also think there's people that genuinely love what they do. Like when I shifted to coaching, like I loved it. But you can do something you love through ego and feel this still operating from that ego place or you can do it from the mana personality which is you're bringing in the force of spirit to guide you, to give you more opportunities to take the blinders off so you can see those opportunities that are right there in front of you and see the world in a different way than that limited kind of blinders way that the ego tries to keep you in. So yeah, lots of potential here. We're probably going to do another episode on this because this is. There's so much to share still on this topic. If you are interested in this too and you have some questions about it, don't forget to chat with us. There's on our blog we have comments, you can ask us questions. We can bring it up on the next show. We'd love to continue the conversation. Before I leave too, I want to say we do have a beautiful meditation that we're giving away right now. It's called the Inner Guide to Purpose Active Imagination Exercise. So in the show notes you'll find a link to it, you can download it and free of charge, our compliments. Any last words, Rob, before we go?
- [31:42]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. Just keep in mind that it's about accepting responsibility for your life. But through that acceptance of responsibility comes freedom. It's not about weighing yourself down. With all this moving towards perfection or anything like that. It's the contrary. It's that, that sense of wholeness that comes from accepting your higher purpose.
- [32:05]
Deborah Maldonado
Okay, we'll see you next week on Jung on Purpose. And thank you again for joining us. Take care.
- [32:11]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Thanks for listening.
- [32:12]
Deborah Maldonado
Bye bye.
- [32:13]
Podcast Announcer
Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast before you leave and join us each week.
- [32:25]
Deborah Maldonado
We'll see you soon. Sam.