← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Discovering Purpose: A Jungian Journey to Your True Self
00:48:38
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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.
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B
Personal growth for purpose seekers and the.
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A
Incredible inner journey of becoming your true self. Let's get started.
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B
Hello everyone. Welcome to Young on Purpose by CreativeMind. I'm Debra Maldonado.
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C
And I'm Dr. Rob.
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B
And we are so excited to share with you our premiere episode of our new branding of our podcast, formerly Soul Sessions. Now, Young on Purpose. And what we're going to do here is we're going to share with you how we can go on that inner journey to, to find who we really are and what our purpose in life is and fill it with meaning and fulfillment. And if this sounds good to you, you're in the right place. Before I begin, I do wanna remind you to subscribe to our channel if you haven't yet on YouTube or if you are listening to us on one of the podcast services. Make sure you subscribe and we'd love to hear from you. So we're always anxious to hear what you have to say and also any ideas for future show topics. We'd love to hear from you. So, Rob, are you excited about this new adventure, this new name?
- [01:34]
C
Absolutely. I mean, I, I think any good thing has to go through an evolution. So we've been evolving, the world is evolving and changing, and so we want to keep up with that. And we're still going to bring you, of course, the great content of Jungian psychology, Eastern philosophy and neuroscience. But the focus will be more on the meaning of, of our lives and how we find meaning and how we create meaning as human beings and how we find our purpose, which is so much, so many of the people that we work with and that we see, that's really the central question that they're coming with, is what is my purpose? What am I doing here? What, what, what is all this about?
- [02:22]
B
Aren't there the three questions from Eastern philosophy? Who am I, Why am I here? And what am I meant to do? I think I can't remember the third one, but who am I and why am I here? Is always the question. Famously, I think it was Mark Twain that said, there are two most important. I might be misquoting the person who said it, but the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you realized why. And you know, many people think of purpose as this. I got have to change careers Or I have to do something, I have to find my gifts and talents. But when we're really talking about purpose from a Jungian perspective and Eastern spirituality, non dual philosophy is our true purpose is to find out who we really are and then all that other stuff flows from it. Our, our, our talents, our skills. And because we could express ourselves in a new career, in a new art form, a new be an actor or write a best selling book, but we could do it from the ego perspective. So the true real purpose and fulfillment comes when we're doing it from our deepest, truest self. And that's what we're going to talk about. I do want to mention that the name of our system is called the Neuromindra method. Neuro as in neuroscience. Mind as in my D N D, which is mind. And then Indra which comes from Indra's net, which is the collective and the expansiveness of who we are. So Neuromindra is Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. Every episode you experience with us, even in the previous ones, those are the core tenets of our work and how we operate. And one of the biggest foundations of our work is non dual philosophy.
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C
Love it. So I wanted to start off with a quote by Viktor Frankl.
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B
Hmm.
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C
Put us on the right track. What is this question of purpose and meaning? Kind of, how do we start to untangle that? So he says, to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and dying. But no one can tell another what that purpose is. I love this quote because Viktor Frankl himself experienced these things firsthand. He was in the concentration camps, he survived them, then went out to teach the rest of his life others. This, this concept of meaning in life. And I love that the last line, no, no one can tell another what that purpose is. In other words, we all have to find it for ourselves. So we can't copy anyone. If you're copying somebody, that's not your purpose. Right. If you're just following the crowd, if you're doing what your, your parents told you to do, or your, your peers are doing that, or you're doing it.
- [05:26]
B
For the money or for the flame, for the glory.
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C
Yeah, yeah. And also the question of suffering, which is central because it's always a philosophical spiritual question is if we're here and the Creator created the universe in this way, why include suffering? Is it necessary for our human experience somehow? Or what role does it play? Is it evil? Is it just artifact? Is it a mistake, an error? Is it a punishment for what we do in this life?
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B
I think that's very important. I know the Buddhists, the famous Buddha said, life is suffering. And I know so many people have told me, oh, I don't like that. I don't like that. Life is suffering, it shouldn't be suffering. And we make this suffering wrong and we pathologize suffering and we have to fix the suffering. And in that suffering is where we really transform, where we really have the opportunity to break free. So let's talk about the Jungian perspective of purpose. You know, I love this quote. Can I read a quote, Rob? This is one of my favorite quotes from Jung. Actually, one of my clients sent it to me years ago, who her mother gave it to her. And so she's like, listen to this quote. I was like, wow, I never heard this before, but it's so beautiful. And it's a part of a longer quote. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning. For what was great in the morning will be little in the evening. And what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. Our purpose must shift with the stages of life. That's the Stages of Life by Carl Jung, chapter eight. I mean, we always talk about, how do we explain this process he talked about of individuation or becoming your true self and living your purpose. There is a map. And he says the first part of life is building up this ego, this Persona, pursuit family, success, make friends, fit in with society. And then at midlife, we start feeling that these things that we pursued early in life and they made us happy temporarily, aren't really fulfilling anymore or at the fulfilling as we thought they would be. You know, when I have children, I'll be happy. When I have that job and that promotion, I'll be happy. When I buy that house, I'll be happy. How about that new car smell? It goes away. I'll be happy if I just get this thing. And so we have this hunger and then it's not satisfying. And not that those things are wrong, we need to go through that stage. But at midlife we start asking ourselves deeper questions. And instead of looking outward for the answers and looking outward for the thing that's going to make us better, we start to ask deeper questions and looking inward. And that's really the. What Jung says is the first part of life, we're very outward focused. The second part of life is really that inward focus of Individuation.
- [08:22]
C
That's beautiful. And of course, it gets to this question, question of, of growth, that we're always evolving into new stages of our life. It's not a static thing. In other words, we don't hit 18 or 21 and. And say we're done. We've kind of figured it out and that's it. On the contrary, it's really when the questioning begins. What am I going to do for my work? What am I going to do about relationships? What is my belief or my faith in life and how do I practice that or do I believe in anything? Am I a nihilist, an atheist, or a theist, or someone who cultivates their spiritual life? And also this is universal is how do we deal with this body that we know is going to experience growth, aging, illness, and ultimately dissolution. Right? It's not meant to last forever. And that piece, only, only spirituality really deals with it in a, let's say in an intelligent, mature way. Because if we look at the scientific, the, the medical perspective, it's all about fighting it and, and not really thinking, well, it must be a natural part of life, right? If everything that lives dies in. At the end, how can we approach it in a meaningful, creative way? Not to say we want to die or we want this body to dissolve, but to ask, if this is our life, what does that mean for us for the time that we do have in this world?
- [10:08]
B
I think the tragedy would be if we live forever and then we wouldn't have this urgency to make this really mean something. It's just like a vacation. Think about if you were on vacation your whole life. Although everyone says I want to just sit on the beach and drink margaritas, I want to find that happy place for the rest of my life. I could just win the lottery, but you'd get bored of that too. And so it's like the vacation from the ordinary world feels. It's almost like special. You know, we have this consolidated amount of time to really enjoy this, you know, different city or this different experience, this different culture, this different environment, and then we have to go back. It sort of makes that those days precious and meaningful to just like other people in our life. I mean, looking at like, I remember when my little niece and nephew were, were real little. And I remember thinking I was holding my niece when she was just born at like a month old. And I was holding her thinking, she's going to be a grownup one day and she's going to be able to. We're going to have adult conversations. But right now she's this little baby that has no voice. And it's like holding onto that preciousness of every stage of life. And I think that's really, we want to honor that. And so we can't hang on to anything. And that's, I think what makes life meaningful is to know that we're not here forever and we gotta make the best out of this life and we wanna make it like a ride. The most wonderful ride, the most wonderful adventure. I always see like we're not just here to pay bills and die. We're here to have this incredible experience. And the thing is that most people, we're all taught it early in life to seek it out there. Like, you know, the joy and the fulfillment are somewhere outside of us. And so Jung, you know, probably very influenced by eastern philosophy, knows that the real gold is inside and the real journey is within. And so, so yeah, it's, it's not going. I think that people go inward sometimes to try to fix themselves. I have to find out what's blocking me. But with, with Jung's work in individuation, it's not about fixing anything. It's about understanding more of who you are going into the unconscious and seeing there's so much more to you than the surface personality and, and there's so many resources that are beyond the personal that can support you in having an incredible life.
- [12:26]
A
Have you ever felt called to something greater? A quiet knowing that you're meant to guide others, help them rise above their limitations and live with purpose. This is what creative mindset coach training is all about. A life changing experience that not only transforms your career, but also your consciousness. Our immersive 12 week program is designed for mid career professionals, aspiring coaches and conscious leaders who are ready to make an impact. You'll learn to coach with depth, presence and power. You'll be learning Jung's active imagination process to explore the unconscious, visualization guided meditation, core coaching competencies, understanding the brain and neuroscience of change, as well as a deep philosophical grounding based on the Upanishads and consciousness studies. Creative Mindset Coach Training is only 12 weeks and is also ICF accredited. Schedule your free call with admissions today by visiting creative my life.com that's creative.
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My mind life.com.
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C
Yes. I love that you bring up a couple of unique aspects of Jung's psychology, which is the search for meaning and that only the individual experience can give you that. Again, no one can teach it to you, no one can give it to you. No one can tell you, here's your purpose. Just follow that and you'll be fine. That won't work. You have to find it for yourself. And how you do that, you have to search in. You have to take that inner journey which goes into the unconscious mind. And the unconscious, for most people, unfortunately, especially in modern societies, does not exist. So they have no training, no concept of what the unconscious mind is. And for those of us that have experienced it, it's such a rich storehouse of treasure for us because is the source of our creativity, our soulfulness, our connection to nature, to our dreams. In essence, it is the source of meaning for us.
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B
Yeah, I love that. You know, there. There is a point, but like we say in midlife, some people call it the midlife crisis, and it's not really a crisis. I call it the midlife opportunity, is that we start to question things that we assumed were the way things should be. You know, we're told by society, our parents, the culture, have what. What you need to be happy. You need to pay your bills on time. You need to be, you know, have a. You know, be a good spiritual person. Maybe go to church and uphold your. Your values and your morals, and you need to be good and give back and all those things and. And be, you know, have a career and be ambitious and have children maybe. And then, you know, midlife, we start questioning ourselves of, you know, the pursuit of those things. They're. They're not giving us what we really wanted or they're not fulfilling us. Not to say they don't make us happy, because, of course, these things can make us happy, but the happiness is fleeting. It's not something you can't grasp and hold. And there's always just that hunger. And so we start to question, what is life about? Is this job what I meant to be in? Is my partner someone I should be with? The love isn't there anymore. We fell out of love. And what is out of alignment? So I want you. This is a question for the audience. Think about a moment recently where you felt a bit lost and out of alignment with, you know, something is missing. You have that question like, there's gotta be more. And you don't have to know what it is yet. But just to ask yourself, that question starts opening up almost like a doorway where the unconscious starts to have these synchronistic events that point you to teachers or books or maybe this podcast you're listening to. Like, I've been thinking about this, and there you are. I'm hearing this idea and it's opening my mind. Those things start to happen for you just by starting to ask that question. And I think we fight that feeling because we feel guilty for questioning those things. We feel guilty and like we did something wrong. And this is not about doing anything wrong. It's about the stage of life you're at. And it's like you're maturing. Jung says that when you're a teenager, you're not going to act like you are in the first stage of life where you were a kid and you're. You're becoming a, you know, more of a more social adult, like young adult. You're not going to act like a child anymore. And it's just that same stage after you have those younger years. And when you're midlife, you're not going to act like you were in college anymore. You're maturing, you're changing, you're evolving into hopefully. Yeah, well, I act like I'm in college still, but that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that every once in a while. But if you're. You're kind of still stuck in that stage, you're going to be unfulfilled in a way. And there's a force, just force that keeps moving us to evolve through our.
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C
Yes. So a couple of quotes along those lines by. Not Jung, but Jungians, post Jungians. So James Hillman, he says, we discover our purpose not by imposing a willful plan, but by listening to the images of our soul. Purpose is a calling that pulls us towards it, not a program. We push forward. So in other words, it's not your academic career, it's not your corporate position that you're aiming for. Again, nothing wrong with those things. Those things are there for a purpose. And Jung also emphasizes this, that we're going through these stages. And the first stage, like you were mentioning, that early adulthood, we're developing our. Our Persona. We're constructing this social construct of ourselves that we present to the world. And we say, this is who I am and this is what I do. Right? And, and this is my spiel and my, My story. But he says we're meant to do that. You have to do that. You. It's part of the training that you. You must fulfill this process of building a Persona and believing yourself to be this Persona. But then he says, Towards 35, 40 years old, you start to question, is that all there is? Am I just meant to prop up this Persona for the rest of my life and make sure, you know, it's taken care of? There is no satisfaction in that, not in the second stage of life, he says, because that those images from the soul that are coming through through dreams, through synchronicity in your life, through wanting to build deeper relationships, not only with others, but with society, with culture, what is your purpose towards the collective? Let's say, what are you here to do? Those questions come up around that time, and if you don't have an answer, if your answer is simply to build a more Persona, to get more money, more prestige, shinier cars, then you start to feel that emptiness in life. And that is the source of suffering for many, that there's a vacuum, there's an emptiness in all the hard work that they're putting into their life because they're on the wrong track. Or essentially they're building in the morning when now they're supposed to be building in the afternoon.
- [20:20]
B
I just think of it too, as well, less of building more, but letting go of things and then making room for something else. The personality that you are in the first half of life evolves into this new you, which is the you that, like, basically your true self, you know, their true personality, as Jung would say. And I do think. I love what you said about dreams, because I do think that we are prompted sometimes by dreams, and we're not even. We're not even even asking those questions yet. I remember when I was. I was about 29 years old, and I had a dream that my brother and I had both died, and they're having a funeral, and we had, like, strings, like, kind of tying us into the casket. It was open casket, we're Catholic, so you have the wake where you can see the body. And I remember just trying to get the strings out going, I'm not ready to die. I have so much more to live. And I was fighting. And then my mother comes over and she goes, now, Debbie, we paid for the funeral already, so you're just gonna have to die. And I was like, fighting, of course, you know, all you out there, youngins could probably like, oh, the mother. The mother complex there. But I was fighting that old pattern of just get married and have kids. And. And because my. That's what my brother did. And so I remember that dream always. I didn't know what it meant back then, but it was right after that I moved to. That year. I moved to Colorado. I. I left my corporate job, and I was like, in search of my something, you know, and so it can happen as early in their late 20s or 30s. It doesn't normally. Doesn't have to happen at 40. It just depends. And, and yeah, it's just interesting how the dreams are sometimes showing you before you're even conscious of it. And it's, it's like paying attention to. Those are very powerful. And really we, we move into a stage of life where it's like the outer world doesn't seem as important as the inner world. And it doesn't mean we live in fantasy, but we're less attached to the outer material things. And so let's move into the Upanishads and we're going to go deeper in all this in future episodes of Individuation. But I'd like to talk about the Upanishads and that idea of that non. Dual reality, dhana, attachment that, that we have to embrace in this stage.
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C
Yeah. So we know Jung read the Upanishads. We, we visited his library a few years back and we saw the copies in his bookshelf. So we found him out. He. He was out of the closet there, read the Upanishad. And in the Upanishads, we see this, this emphasis on the stages of life that, yeah, in your youth you're supposed to study, work hard, train yourself to serve others so that you. You're well prepared to serve others as you go into adulthood. And that then you. You build your home, if you're a. What do they call them in Eastern philosophy? A householder. If you're a householder, that's your duty, right? To have your kids, raise your family, build a career, et cetera. But after that, it says, then you start to think about the forest meditation. What is my connection with the spirit, with the psyche, with the Atman, as they call it, which is the true self or the soul? The rough translation, but it's the closest one we have in the West. The soul. What is my connection with soul? And that period is. Begins that introspective part of your life where you start to question, what is the meaning of my life? And therefore what comes after that? Because it's a continuous journey, right? And so we don't have any comparable thing in the West. You know, it's like work till you can't work anymore and then retire. And often that is very kind of a dramatic shift for people because they're used to being useful and thinking of themselves as their connection to their job, right? What they do in society. And then when that ends, often they're not prepared to just kind of face themselves. Like, what do I do? Just watch TV or play golf or, you know, hang out with my friends, that's not enough.
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B
Sit on the island with a pina colada.
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C
Yeah, that's not an appropriate kind of level of meaning for a human being like our. We're complex. And especially at this age of retirement, you know, in 60s and 70s, you need a lot more than simply saying, I'm just going to relax and do nothing.
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B
Well, the indigenous cultures always honored the elder and the oldest in the tribe as the wise one, the wise man, wise woman. And that's really, I think, our role in the second half of life. The first is learning all the. Making all the mistakes, learning. And then the second half is becoming a person of wisdom, understanding ourselves in a deep way and holding the space for others to become who they're meant to be and give back. And not only just spiritually, but you have so many talents and you have so many. So much wisdom in different areas as a mentor. And that could be really fulfilling in life too. I think one of the things about the Upanishads and the study of Vedanta, which is non. Dual philosophy is that if you're in the dual philosophy, the duality of pleasure pain, that cycle of pleasure pain, I feel bad, I'm gonna feel good for a while, but then it wears off and I'm in pain again. And that. That's kind of the cycle that we're in when we're in the ego. And then what we wanna do in this part of life, which is aligned with Eastern philosophy, I mean, psychology is you wanna examine what you're attached to. The conditioning that has kept you in suffering and now discern and make a choice. And that's really the beginning stages of shadow work. But then you can act from your true self. Because now you're. You're in a wiser, higher. They call it the booty mind, the intellect that you can actually make decisions from in your life. Before we're kind of asleep at the wheel and we're just kind of led by society and we think we're making conscious decisions, but we're not. And so I love that idea. And I also love the idea in Upanishad. It's about the Atman and the Brahmin.
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C
Yeah. And there you see the real power of this. Because in the west. Well, in general, in the world, right. When we live from our senses, it appears that we are this body and that, therefore, that's our individuality and that's our. Our essence. And then we're in this. This stage of the world. The world is a stage. And we're the actors. But in the Upanishad, it gives us a very different vision. It says, that's not really you, that's an actor.
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B
That's a.
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C
You're playing a role that's like a mask. Like Jung says, it's a mask that you're wearing the Persona. The. The body is the actor. It's simply playing a role. The real you is the awareness that is observing the actor play his or her role. That's a very different concept of your life. You are the awareness that is observing yourself as a child, going to school, growing up, interacting with your parents, with peers, becoming a young adult, getting into relationships. All the while the self, the Atman, is observing. They're supporting you in a sense. But it's not impacted by the experiences that you're having. That's why we emphasize, or the Upanishads emphasize, that you, the real you, the real self in you cannot be hurt. It cannot be damaged, it cannot be killed, it cannot be cut in any way. So we don't worry too much about that. Once you understand the message of the Upanishads, because we're indestructible. In essence, what we're experiencing is this over identification with our Persona. We think we're the actor. We start to believe we're the actor. And we identify as that. So where does the suffering come in in that picture? It comes from that over identification, education, that we're caught up in the role that we're playing. And does the actors go through pain and suffering? You better believe it. Right? Because if you're only a body, you're experiencing all the transitions of aging, loss, illness, on and on, that those are the human experiences, right, of living in this body. When I think you're able to. You're able to disconnect. Now, that's where the non attachment comes from. That it's pointing to this ability to observe yourself and be in your life, but in a non attached way where you're not caught up in what's going on in the body.
- [29:45]
B
Um, I have a really great metaphor story to tell before we get into the neuroscience. I tell this story a lot in my book Like a Spark, teaching it to our students. And it's a really fun story. Rob and I would watch this show. It was like 10 years ago, I think, called I Shouldn't be Alive. And it was all these stories, survival stories. And I love it because it's like these people come to terms with their life and they're gonna, you know, not survive. And the Choices they make. So this one particular story was a man who fell off a cruise ship, which we see this happen very commonly. For some reason, people fall off. We don't know if this person was drinking or not, but this is why he fell off. But anyway, he fell off of the cruise ship and he found himself plunged into the ocean, pitch dark at night, and he had just a little bit of a moon, you know, to lighten his path. But the ship is leaving and he's here in the middle of the ocean, and he was a little overweight, and he was out of shape. And here he is treading water, trying to stay alive. And it's kind of like you could see how that mimics how we are born into this world. And we try to find a way. We're treading water to find, figure out how to survive. And so he starts, you know, getting tired after about an hour, just like, I don't know if I'm going to live. And then this thing starts coming toward him, which he thinks is a shark because it had a. Like a fin. And he said, well, I guess this is how it ends for me. The shark is coming right toward me. And he braces and closes his eyes and then realizes that it is a log, a big log of wood. And he was like, thank God. And he leaned on it and he was so happy to find this log. And he leaned over it and he just collapsed. And he was just so thankful for this log, and then fell asleep. In the morning, he wakes up, he's hanging and clinging to this log. And then in the distance, about a mile out, he sees an island. And he said, oh, I'm saved. I could just, you know, swim to that island pretty much. I. I know I'm outta shape, but I. I think I can make it. And as he's hanging onto the log, he's swimming toward the island to where he wants to go. But the current and the log is pulling him out away from the island. So he was basically going in, basically paddling in place, which is. That's what happens at midlife. We. We start to feel, you know, no matter what I do, I'm. I feel like I'm still in the same place. I'm. I'm not really gaining any traction. And so he has a choice. And this is where the awareness comes in. So instinctively, unconsciously, it's like, don't let go of the log. It's going to. It's helping you survive. Like, you. Why would you let go of it? But there's an awareness that arises with him and he notices how the log is pulling him away and that's. We start having that awareness of the choices I'm making are actually taking me away from what I really want versus, you know, helping me get there and I have to let go. And so he's tried to let go of the log and our instincts are so powerful that he grasped, grasped it again. He wouldn't let go, he was so afraid and it took him like three times and he finally let go of the log and started really swimming toward his freedom and he ended up getting rescued and that was the end of the story. But I think it's such a powerful metaphor of how we hang on to things and our Persona and our character and the things in life that we think are so important that we couldn't possibly lose them that we end up making decisions that take us further away from our soul and what we truly want and we're not even aware of it. And then when we become aware, it's even harder to let go. So my question for the audience is what are you hanging onto? What is your log in your life? Is it your career? Is it your job? Is it your, you know, credentials after your name and afraid to leave that behind to do something like non conventional with your life? Is it the marriage? Is it the identity as the wife or the husband or the family? What are you hanging onto that's not. That's limiting your life more than actually helping it in this stage to create. So I just love that story cuz it kind of helps people see like what is really stopping us and, and what are we hanging onto? And that when we let go there's abundance and possibilities that we never really knew were were there. Because if we were just hanging onto the log, it's just going to take us, keep taking us away. And the longer we wait to individuate, the longer we wait to get on this journey, the more we have to paddle to get to where we want to go. It's like we're losing traction and losing years. Like we don't. This is not something you can put off. It's something that when you start entering the process of individuation, you wish you would have done it 10 years earlier.
- [34:32]
C
Don't you think I serve personally? Absolutely. I feel that way. But we also hear it often from our students that once they get what the process is about, they say I should have started 10 years ago.
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B
And so let's start. Yes, it's never too late. And some people we've had clients in their 70s that started, they did our coach training and they, you know, said, you know, the same thing, better late than never. It's never too late. Have had amazing experiences. Whether they found the love of their life finally in their 70s or their find their purpose in their 70s, there's still time. Like that's not that old. There's still plenty of time, plenty of life to live. So lastly, I would like to talk about the neuroscience aspect of this and like what is happening in our brain and what does individuation do from a neuroscience perspective? And specifically like how we perceive ourselves in the world.
- [35:29]
C
Yeah. And here we're looking at the actor or the body. Right. Because the brain and the way we define neuroscience and psychology and in Western science is as the bundle of neurons in our skull that are communicating and helping us make sense of the world. In other words, we're perceiving the world through our senses, but it is our brain that pulls it all together and creates a cohesive experience for us. Very much like a movie, it produces this movie that we call our life. With sight, sight, sound, color, temperature, meaning all that is going on in our mind. And it only really exists in our mind, which is mind blowing. Right. The more we study neuroscience and the more we learn about the brain, the more we understand and we see that the wisdom traditions were right. Everything is consciousness, everything is mind. There's really no way to experience this life without it. So what happens in individuation is that we begin to over identify as this body. Rightly so, because from the sensory perspective, right through our eyes, ears and touch and taste and smell, it appears that we are inside this body, in our head, in essence, or in our heart. You know, some people feel it differently, but, but that the senses are giving us a true picture of what, what's going on out there and that the out there is separate from us. I mean, that's how I see the world right now. The stuff in the room appears to be out there separate from me. My body is in this, in my skin, you know, and my, my brain is in my skull. That is an illusion essentially. It doesn't exist that way. And this is verifiable. I mean, it sounds like metaphysics, but it's not. This is neuroscience. We understand that all the colors that you're seeing right now, including that beautiful blue that you're wearing, periwinkle. Periwinkle does not exist out there. It's a, it's created in the mind. In other words, where does that blueness exist only in consciousness, only in the mind, only in experience. It doesn't exist that way out there. That's. That goes for the. The whole. The whole experience of the world.
- [38:05]
B
So when you say a. A pre. Pre. A person who's in their conditioning, like we've been training ourselves to see the world in a certain way, and we're training ourselves to perceive limitations because that's what we believe is out there. What we think is what that's possible for us, how. What our limits are. And then. And then when we're undergoing individuation, it kind of changes the way basically the effect is the brain starts changing because we have neuroplasticity and we start to see the world differently. Where a lot of people think, well, let me just rewire my brain. It's like, no, we want to go deeper than just like the brain, body, particular or the energy. We want to go into the. The psyche, in the deep psyche and make it from that deep root place. And then the brain will naturally emerge. You don't have to train it. It starts to naturally start seeing things and even perceiving reality in a different way. You could even have the love of your life sitting next to you on the train for 10 years. And you don't perceive them until your mind is open for love. And then all of a sudden it's that same person. You start noticing differently. A good example of that is I had a friend of mine who read my book, one of my books early on when I did love coaching. She was with a guy for 26 years. And she says she read the book and she started thinking like, kind of expanding her mind. And then she's like, she was just friends. And she said, something shifted to me, and now I see him in a different way. And we're. We just got engaged. We were like, he's been. He said, I've been waiting for you to realize that I'm the one for you. And so imagine that in every parts of life, like, you don't have to go out there and chase things. It's that your mind starts to perceive those opportunities that have always been there. But you're. But if you're in that limited ego thinking, it's almost like you ignore them. And there's even neuroscience tests, those that bear the bear that runs back and forth, and no one sees it because your mind's focused on something else. Is that the. That test? They did the psychological test. So there's a lot of evidence that we don't. Our Brain can't process things that we're not ready to see.
- [40:21]
C
Yeah, that's part of it. The most. Well, one of the most amazing things though, that we learn through neuroscience is that what we call personality, which most of us think that's who I am and therefore I can't change that. That's a false assumption. Personality is very malleable again, because it really doesn't exist anywhere except as a social construct. In other words, it's. We bring it out when we're interacting with others, when we're kind of presenting ourselves in society and saying, this is who I am. But it's a narrative that we've created. Our brain essentially created it from our past experiences, and it just assumes that it's a reality.
- [41:05]
B
That also mean, like, people who think they're insecure or they're not strong enough and they have to build up confidence. And so basically it's your mind telling you you're not confident and then you've trying to fix it. But all you need to do is, you know, shift that idea that you are, you know, and kind of do the inner work to what's stopping you from expressing that part of yourself. It's already there.
- [41:28]
C
Well, yeah, we. Let's say we're. We're kind of presented. Presenting it in a simplified way, but we know it's not that easy. Yeah, but it's too confident now. Well, you could pretend, but it's doable. The reason it's not easy, it's because the. The brain itself have. Has mechanisms to defend itself, to defend that self concept that we develop and we call the Persona. In Jungian psychology, it. Because it helps us have a steady identity through the phases of life. Right? That I'm the one that grew up in a certain place. I'm the one that went to school in this place, and I'm the one that is now doing this work. So it gives us a continuity, a sense of continuity to our life. But again, that's that or that Persona that we identify with. It's a social mental construct that we created that we carry around in our head. And we think it's really a solid truth and reality for us, but it's not. It's simply a constellation of ideas, experiences, conditionings that we've identified with. The great news is that it's malleable. We can change it, but we have to get into what Jung called the unconscious. If you do not, which is why.
- [42:54]
B
The diagnosing someone or even labeling other people and labeling ourselves can be very limiting. Because then we are like tied to that label.
- [43:03]
C
Absolutely. That's one of the important kind of insights that we get right from understanding it this way. The other one is that if it's malleable, how do we change it? How do we work with it? And what, in what direction do we take it? Like, who is the one that's deciding what I'm going to do and how I'm going to be if I'm the one making up this Persona, this I that I experience and hold so dear? So you know, when you talk about non attachment or attachment, what are we attached to that identity?
- [43:43]
B
That it's a concept, right? Not a. Not a thing, not like solid.
- [43:48]
C
We're. We're so attached to that idea that we are that narrative, when in reality we can't even find it anywhere. It doesn't really exist except in our mind. So it's malleable. But we have to do inner work. And Jung, luckily for us, left the roadmap to enter into the unconscious and begin to begin to become conscious of our own personality and to express ourselves as the true self, not as the actor, not as the Persona, not as the mask, as he calls it.
- [44:27]
B
And yeah, and I also think too, not only how we perceive ourselves, but how we want other people to perceive us. Like, I wish my mother would acknowledge me finally, or I wish my partner would tell me I'm beautiful. I wish my boss would tell me I'm good enough. Those things are like, when they do that, does that give you solidity? Does it help build you up in a certain way? And that attachment to what other people think is really just pervasive in our culture. And we are social creatures, so we do want to be liked and acknowledged. But when it becomes a place of limitation and of stress and anxiety that we're not living up to society's expectations, or our parents expectations, or our partner or our boss's expectation, then there's something wrong. And we want them to change their opinion of us. It's really just. It's inner work. We need to like kind of put our own oxygen mask on and ourselves before like serving everyone else. So it's very, very powerful. So I know we have so much to cover and we are almost at the top of the hour, so I wanted to. To let you know that we're going to go deeper into these topics in future episodes. We're going to really focus on maybe career transition in one of the episodes. We'll go deep into relationships, we'll go deep into spiritual crisis. Spiritual awakenings and how that works in individuation and the Upanishads and the deep spiritual work that we do. And our hope is that you're inspired to grow and change and get curious about yourself and your life. Maybe this is the wake up call for you to, you know, really become who you're meant to be.
- [46:13]
C
Yeah. And the wonderful thing is that for us humans, these periods of crises, whether it's personal or collective, they're really opportunities to grow. They give us the big opportunities in our life, but we have to understand them as that, not just to see them as blocks or barriers or. Or trauma. They are opportunities because they're opening up that window of the unconscious mind for us. And that is the goal in our life.
- [46:47]
B
I want to end with a quote from Marie Louise von France, who's awesome if you ever see our videos on YouTube. She's a funny woman. She's so funny the way she's like. She laughs at, like, humanity in the way we are. She was a very close collaborator with Young and she says, when the self takes the lead and we're talking about the true self, this bigger self, life begins to arrange itself around a new center. One no longer asks, what do I want from life, but what is life asking of me? This shift is the birth of Purpose from her book the Psychological Perspectives on the Life of Jung. I love that. Shifting from what do I want from life to what is life asking of me? I got goosebumps from that beautiful way to end. Well, we hope you enjoy our new format and our new theme, Young on Purpose. We hope to see you next week as we continue the journey to go inward and explore this amazing work of Carl Jung and his individuation process. Take care, everyone.
- [47:55]
C
Yeah, thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.
- [47:58]
B
Okay, bye. Bye.
- [48:01]
A
Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind.
- [48:08]
B
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast.
- [48:10]
A
Before you leave and join us each week.
- [48:12]
B
We'll see you soon. Sa.