← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
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- [00:04]
A
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.
- [00:34]
B
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Jung on Purpose. I am Deborah Maldonado.
- [00:38]
C
And I'm Dr. Rob.
- [00:39]
B
And we're so excited to be here today to give you another episode on our neuromindra coaching method which is based on Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. It's a coaching model, self improvement after the second half of life when we need to really grow and expand ourselves and instead of looking back in the past. And so one of the things we're gonna talk about today is how do we distinguish illusion from truth when it comes to Eastern philosophy? And one of the terms that I've heard Dr. Rob talk about, I'd like to him to give us a little intro. This idea of the intellect. And can you just tell the audience a little bit about what that is or remind them if they've heard it before?
- [01:24]
C
Yeah, it comes from Eastern philosophy. In Sanskrit, it's called the Buddhi mind. It's the Ro word for Buddha, of course. So it's, it's the awakening, enlightened mind. And it's, it's a very powerful way of working with the mind and very few people know about it because in Western psychology this is completely ignored. There is this idea of meta consciousness which is kind of looking at your own thoughts or meta cognition as it's called in cognitive sciences. But it's, it's very different, let's say it's perceived in a different way. But the intellect, the Buddhi mind, is the ability to reflect pure consciousness. So you can imagine the power of that. It's your mind's ability to reflect pure awareness. And pure awareness, what that means, it's Brahman in Sanskrit, meaning absolute reality. The absolute reality.
- [02:21]
B
In simpler terms, it might be called pure potential, pure consciousness, pure awareness. It's really the, the formless substance that we sit in the soup of the field, of invisible field that we're in and we can't see it, but we can access it. And so I want to start with a metaphor. It's, it's sort of like imagine sitting in front of a mirror and you're look, trying to look at yourself in the reflection, but there's a lot of smoke in front of the mirror and it's clouding that perception, you can kind of see, you know, what your head looks like or your upper body, but it's still just very like covered. And that's basically what we see as our ego mind and our regular ordinary mind. It, it has all these assumptions and conditioned responses and perceptions. And the, the intellect or the booty mind is when all that smoke disappears and you could see that pure reflective, almost like seeing yourself as you truly are, which is unlimited. Would that be a handy way to think about it?
- [03:23]
C
Yeah, it's a great way to describe it. If we think of its power, what is the power that this intellect has? It's discernment or discrimination. But discrimination has kind of a negative, let's be positive discernment simply means you're able to understand the subtle differences. Now what, what we're applying it to in, in this case is discerning between truth and illusion, the real and the unreal.
- [03:53]
B
And in Vedanta and non dual philosophy they talk about that. That's really where freedom and happiness comes from. Not by acquiring things in the world. I mean those things can make us temporarily joyful. But really true happiness comes from being able to see things and ourselves as we really are, which is infinite. So when we think about the ego, like to talk about that a little bit too. The ego is that clouded, smoky way. And from a neuroscience perspective, from a psychology perspective, and from even Eastern perspective, it's kind of a limited mind, a protective mind that arises when we have a body to help us navigate the world and help us survive in this like what appears to be this real world out here that we're, we're exploring.
- [04:36]
C
Yeah. The reason the ego gives us a very limited perspective on ourselves is because it, it goes on the personal narrative of our life. So your personal narrative is very small story in a huge universe. So you feel tiny. Yeah, you feel very small. You know, you're just a little brick in the wall like this.
- [04:56]
B
A little brick in the wall. You're. Yeah, that's a, or a cognitive. Brings me back to junior high. But yeah, the, the idea that the, the ego, which is mostly for most people, it's the center of their consciousness, like how they operate every day is just I and me and mine. And am I going to get that promotion? Am I going to find love? My husband love me or my wife love me? My kids respect me? Are they going to grow up kids, are they safe? Is my house safe? Is my country safe? Is, you know, my body look good and do I, am I looking older? All that stuff and then, like. Kind of like wanting to have experiences in life and all those things. There's nothing wrong with them. But if that is our center of consciousness. It is. You are setting yourself up for disappointment all the time because there's never enough things in the world. And nothing lasts. Nothing lasts. We kind of. We age. We. I mean, even if we hang on to our youth, we age. And. And so discerning the ego from the self, we start to. It's like we have two parts of our conscious mind that's available to us, but we. The ego kind of covers over this pure intellect, that mirror of our true self, because it gets caught up in the world. Is that what you would say happens?
- [06:07]
C
Well, the world itself is limited in the sense that nothing appears to be permanent. You can test this. I mean, this is not metaphysics. You can observe the world through your senses directly and try to find something that remains constant throughout. Throughout life. And there seems to be nothing that remains constant. Everything is in flux. Everything is spinning. Everything is shifting and changing. Therefore, in Eastern philosophy from the Upanishads, when something appears to be always shifting and changing or is that way it's considered unreal because you can never really define it. Like, what is it if it's. If it's morphing and changing? Is it what you define in this instant? By the time you finish defining it, it's already moved on and become something else.
- [06:56]
B
I have a good metaphor for that, too. It's like there was, like five blind people touching an elephant. And they couldn't see the elephant, but they can only see a part of it. And they were like, oh, it's like long and skinny, the tail or it's big and wide and square. And you know that it has, like, a big body. And they're all trying to figure it out from touching just a piece of it. And so that'. The illusion is that we see a piece of our life or a piece of ourselves and we can't see the whole picture of who we are. And we make these decisions based mostly on the pa. Like you said, the past, who we. The identity that we form based on our past experiences, what we were good at, what. What our talents are, or what people told us was a talent of ours or a gift of ours or what is not a gift of ours. And I, you know, and then we live our whole life thinking, you know, this is who we are. And this is all like, maybe I could cope and make it through. And that's not living. And that's why people get sad in the middle, middle of midlife. We, we build up our life. We are chasing all these goals and even if we achieve them, and most of our clients have been very successful in their careers and their work and do even great work nonprofit and all this stuff. But if they define themselves by those things, it's like a slippery slope because it could ever last and you can't really hold onto it. And it's not really you. It's not a lasting self. And so, so there's the lasting self and then there's the temporary changing self.
- [08:20]
C
Yes. So the power of discernment, or this meta consciousness or meta awareness that the intellect possesses or is able to give us, the power comes in, in discerning what is the impermanent self, ego. And what is the true self. Now here it's very simple, actually. It sounds very complicated, but it's very simple. If you think of the objects of the world as impermanent because that's what they are, right. We can observe that, that they're always morphing and changing and disappearing from our lives, essentially, that is unreal. And so that is ego, that is ego perception. And the ego is creating its narrative based on those perceptions. So it's very limited, very insecure, very anxious because it doesn't, it can't depend on anything discerning that from the true self. What is the true self? It's the awareness in which all those objects of the world arise. Now that's permanent. And it's always the same. It was the same when you were born and when you were growing up, when you were a toddler, all the way throughout your life up to this moment. It's the same crystal clear awareness in which you perceive the world and you perceive objects in the world that it says is the reality that seems, it's not tangible, right?
- [09:45]
B
We think, I want to see it, I want to give it a image, I want to give it a shape or a symbol. And there really isn't. I mean, they try to in, you know, in different religious traditions or they.
- [09:57]
C
Projected somewhere out there and heaven is out there. And when you die or when you meditate and go into a deep trance, you're. You're transported somewhere else. Whereas the philosophy is very simple. It's telling you it's always been you. It's always been there for you. You, you've been kind of using it and experiencing it all your life, except you're focused on the objects, the ego experience instead of the awareness which is the true reality, the absolute reality.
- [10:27]
B
And I love what you say about the ego actually being an object in awareness. So our ego, our identity, our body, our self concept is also an object that the awareness is aware of. So it's the aware, we're aware of ourselves, but the awareness, the part that's aware is unlimited. And then we could see the self, our individual life as this little character that's, you know, having this experience in life. But we are the awareness watching all the time. And it's been with us through our whole life. It hasn't been touched by anything. It's that non judgment witness. The part that we feel is, has touched. Like when we have tough times or something bad happened to us early in life or even recently or go through a tough time. Those, that's just the ego managing the symptoms, you know, finding ways to survive. And so those things affect the ego, but they do not affect the self. And that I think is so beautiful to think about because I know I've worked with so many people over the years, probably thousands of people, and they think that because something bad happened to them that they're damaged or they're wounded and there's like scarred for life. And it's like they can only hope to, to, you know, maybe have a better, little better life or they'll never have a relationship because of something that happened to them and, or they'll never be successful because of something and it, or never be a leader or be able to speak or you know, do what they love. You know, all that limitation. And that's, and so what we're doing is what's the truth? We're discerning what's the truth. And the, and the, the lie, the illusion is that we're limited. And so I think a simple question anyone can ask is, is this thinking or this assumption I'm making about my life limited or impossibility? And, and you already see like, are you collapsing or expanding in life?
- [12:18]
C
That's a good, that's a good approach to working with your own mind. So there's, there's this discerning of what is real and what is unreal. And the Upanishads put it very simply and very profoundly. It asks or it states, you mistake the unreal or the real, right? You mistake the unreal, meaning the ever changing conditions of our life. We mistake that for reality. We think, if that's my reality, that's why I'm anxious, that's why I'm depressed, because everything is falling away, everything is changing, morphing. Nothing seems to be Permanent and solid and real. But once we understand that there is an absolute reality immediately in our experience, right here, right now, not somewhere in heaven, not somewhere in some mystical state, right here, right now, then you start to ground yourself. You feel grounded, you feel centered. Like they say, the other power that discernment or the intellect has is seen through projection. And projection, we know, is a very powerful mechanism in our mind. And it's there to serve us initially that if something in us we feel is unacceptable, we project it onto others so that we see it out there, we see it in others, but it's not us. So that if I'm angry, but my family taught me that anger is unacceptable. You cannot express anger. It's bad, it's uncivilized, it's wrong, it makes you a bad person. On and on. Then I have to project that anger onto someone else and they become carriers of it.
- [14:01]
B
The burden goes on them, right?
- [14:03]
C
Not only that, I think we attract people, that, that angry people.
- [14:09]
B
If we push it, whatever we push away, we attract those people. Is that what you're saying?
- [14:12]
C
Well, Jung says the internal conflict becomes an external conflict. So we are essentially attracting people that are going to show us our repressed emotions. Whatever we've been stuffing or pushing into the unconscious, it's going to show up in our relationships, in our work, in our friends, in our partners. So we can't run away from it. The more you try to run away from it, the more it shows up right in front of your life.
- [14:41]
B
And this happened to me for many years. I remember being in a delusion, trying to find love. And I was doing a lot of self improvement to if I was more confident, if I was, you know, knew how to like be cool and, and not be so anxious on a date or wanting to see them or be too available. You know, I remember the book the Rules came out and, and my friends were like, you should read this and all this advice and. And then I also thought maybe, maybe something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm just not attractive enough or, you know, men don't like me or I'm, I'm not sexy. There's something not appealing about me as a wife or a girlfriend. And, and I, I just was caught up in this like, the smoke, just this like crazy world of I was in. And what happened was I realized through projection, I used my intellect. I was starting to examine, this is really interesting, how I'm projecting unavailability on my dad. And then I said, oh my God, I'm the one who's not available. I'm the one who won't get close to him. I'm the one who pulls back. I'm the one when he wants to talk about things and like, oh my God, I'm doing this in every relationship. And it was like a moment we have. And this is where discernment comes in. It's like the intellect almost like comes in. If you're quiet enough and you're willing to accept responsibility for everything you're creating and being like, what is this about? This challenge? This challenge I have? What is this about? The light comes in, the wisdom comes in, and it kind of cuts through the delusion. Like, the smoke cleared and it was like seeing something so clearly that I couldn't see before. And that's how powerful it is. And I think most people, they work on the wrong problem. Like, I was, I was trying to be. I needed to be confident. It was a confidence issue, it was a worthiness issue. It was being in the right place issue. I gotta date more issue. And it was really me giving myself permission to be vulnerable and open up. And then as soon as I had that smoke clear, the smoke cleared. I saw you. And you were a reflection of my intellect, not my ego. And finally I got to see my true self through you.
- [16:44]
A
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 and 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.
- [17:56]
C
Yeah, that's beautiful.
- [17:57]
B
Which was. Yeah. And it's like. And it's not like a magical cure, like one day, it's like working at it and asking those questions and challenging yourself.
- [18:06]
C
Yeah. And the, the great thing is we don't have to get rid of our projections. All you have to do is see through them. In other words, recognize them. That I'm projecting my anger or my emotional unavailability, I'm projecting it onto others. And therefore I keep seeing it out there. I keep seeing Seeing it in others, but I don't see it in me. So once you accept that, that, oh, this is part of me, I am the one that is emotionally unavailable, which was me, then the pattern changes because you're no longer caught in the apparent reality, in the. The illusion, which is ego. Again, it's the old narrative of that story that we tell ourselves of who we are, of that limited self. The. The third one, the third power that comes through intellect is cultivating reflective awareness. Now, what that means is if we. If we ask the question, so what is. What is this intellect in the mind? What is. What is it doing? What is its function? You know, we know what the ego does. It gives us a sense of ourselves, a narrative, this sense of identity. So what is this intellect doing? So this is. This is beautiful because what it's saying is it's reflecting that pure awareness. It's like a mirror or, you know, they often use this metaphor that if you put a bucket of water at night and the moon is up in the sky, you'll see the moon reflected in the bucket. Right in the water in the bucket. And it appears that you're seeing the moon. So our mind and our intellect is very similar to that bucket. It's reflecting the true self, the pure awareness, the absolute reality in our mind directly. That's why we. We are aware, we are experiencing. We can think and experience and. And observe our own ego. Like you said, if we were the ego, we would not be able to observe our. Our ego. We would be the ego.
- [20:07]
B
Well, you know, what I like about this idea too is because what we want to tend to do is fix the thoughts, fix the feelings, fix the perceptions, talk positive. We can do it, you know, believe in our dreams and visualize our dreams or even on a spiritual path. I used to feel, and I think many my clients I talked to over the years have felt that they have to kind of work for enlightenment. Like, it's something I have to work for and I have to, you know, build up my capacity for. For this spirit, like, almost like, generate this spiritual energy and like, find a way to cultivate it. But what we're really doing is we're again parting the seas of the cloudiness of the ego and allowing it to emerge. It's already there. And I think that is so powerful to think about that you don't have to work for it. It's already in us. We just have to remove the misperceptions and the illusion that we're not already there.
- [21:02]
C
Yeah. So if you've ever wondered what are people doing in meditation? Why is meditation so powerful? Why have people studied it for and practice it for thousands of years? It's because of this power to reflect that pure consciousness. They're cultivating an openness to reflecting that pure consciousness without the interference of the ego narrative. So you have to still the mind and you have to look inward and you have to cultivate this. So this is an aspect of this, this inner work that a lot of people shy away from because they think, well, it's too difficult. I'll have to study and practice for 20 years before I make some headway. But remember, this is you already. There's nothing to gain, there's nothing to achieve. What you're doing is clarifying the misperception that you're the limited ego self and not this pure awareness. So the pure awareness we can think of as the true self in you, the absolute reality that is you.
- [22:09]
B
So for someone who's maybe meditated for a while or new to meditation, what would be a really good way for them to begin understanding the. The intellect? Getting in touch with the intellect. I know there's like simple ways that just being aware of your thoughts and sitting there and just watching your thoughts. What would you recommend would be a good first step for someone who's just lear. How to meditate?
- [22:31]
C
Yeah, that's a good question, because we don't want to give the impression that you have to meditate in order to cultivate this pure awareness. The pure awareness is right here, right now. It's, it's what's allowing you to experience this talk or this, this podcast. So it's you, you already have it. It's simply becoming aware of it. So you can cultivate it in many ways. You can cultivate it simply by observing your own thoughts, your own emotions, and your own behavior. That self reflection. What you want to do is become aware that you are the witness of your behaviors, of your emotions, of your thoughts. You're witnessing your mind, body, experience the world. That's a very subtle but very powerful distinction that you have to make in your mind. Instead of believing that when an emotion arises, that, for example, anger, that I am angry, you want to observe my mind is experiencing anger, not I have anger. It's like witnessing your mind experiencing anger. And that's really the right perspective to have. When you're taking an action, you're witnessing your mind, body, and your body taking action. That's behavior. But you're, you're the witness of that. You're not the person Taking the action you're the witness of you taking, or your body, your mind, body taking action. So the what are thoughts? The same way you're witnessing your mind having thoughts, remembering, having memories, experiencing sensations, emotions. You are the witness of your mind experiencing these things.
- [24:14]
B
I like the idea of thinking of it as you're watching yourself in a movie of life. One easy. Another way to think about the awareness that we have and the illusion of the world is if you look at dreams, you have a dream and there's all these buildings and people and events, and maybe there's a car and animals, all these experiences of forest or maybe other worlds that you've never experienced. And then you wake up and what happened to those things, those contents of the dream, those. Those symbols and people are made up of the same stuff as what's in the waking life. And to start to see that the dream and the waking life are very similar, except when you're dreaming, you're like, oh, that was just a dream and you don't worry about it. So imagine it's not pushing it away, but imagine being a little less involved in, like, every life and death situation, or everything's life and death. And you can really look at things objectively as you go through life and then have that wisdom, that pure awareness to guide you versus your ego, guiding you based on past experience and a protective, you know, being resistant and being resourceful, what the limitations are. You're opening up a new world, just like in a dream. Like the worlds that we experience are so much more vast than our ordinary waking life. And so starting to see those two. For me, dreamwork really helped me open up that intellect even more because it's starting to see both of these worlds are very illusory.
- [25:42]
C
And then there's a wisdom that comes from that pure awareness, because it is like. It is like an original thought, like bringing something new into the world. There's a freshness in it. In other words, some of the Zen masters talk about this, that what happens when you're in that state or. Or reflecting that pure awareness is that you're seeing everything almost as if you're seeing it for the first time. Because there's no projection, there's no judgment on it. You're seeing it in its pure state. So it's like this is the first moment that you've ever lived and you're experiencing everything for the first time.
- [26:21]
B
It's like meeting someone for the first time and you don't have any history with them. You don't have any Expectations or you just fresh. And then of course, typically they either lead to higher expectations or lower expectations based on your projections and all that. Initially, there's no especially. That's when we first fall in love, we see all the goodness in the person.
- [26:43]
C
That's why it's such a powerful experience, because we're reflecting that pure consciousness. When we fall in love, the ego falls away temporarily and we experience this connectedness with everything. William Blake said, when the doors of perception are cleansed, we will see everything as it really is, infinite. That's what he meant, that when. When we allow that pure awareness to come through that reflection of pure awareness in our mind, we are experiencing everything for the first time in a fresh, pure way.
- [27:15]
B
I really love that idea of seeing things in potential. You can always check with yourself when you're worried and afraid and stressed, you know you're not in pure awareness. You know that you're running from. Ego is running your life. Even then, you're not seeing things as they really are. When you're worried, afraid and. Or angry or all those, like, disruptive emotions, you're actually seeing something in an incorrect way. And so immediately, you should know when you have an intense emotion, okay, I'm reacting here. That means I'm seeing something not as it is. But what typically we do is we react to those internal reactions and we act upon them and we get caught up in those behaviors and cycles. So if we can learn, like, am I not feeling free right now? Am I not feeling like that pure possibility? Then I must be misunderstanding what I'm perceiving. And that discernment, like you said, the discernment of the truth versus illusion. And the ego loves to dance with its illusions and create mirrors and distractions and limitations. And that pure light is already there, like, waiting to give us everything we want. We just get in our own way. So it's a delicate balance. We are going to talk more in future episodes about the Booty Mind next time. We're going to talk about integrating the conscious and the unconscious. And we have another episode coming up too. After that. We're going to talk about how to use it for creativity and creating our will.
- [28:39]
C
So, yeah, there's a lot more to it.
- [28:41]
B
Yeah, we wanted to give you, like, a good intro today and we'll continue the next three weeks for this great time. Got some holidays here in the U.S. thanksgiving coming up, and you can relax and, you know, escape from your family and go and listen to some of these podcasts. Podcast and get caught up, get out of the illusion of the family dynamics, dude. All right. Well, have a great rest of your day. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next week.
- [29:05]
C
See you soon.
- [29:08]
A
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.
- [29:19]
B
We'll see you soon.
- [29:23]
C
Sam.