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A
Welcome to Soul Sessions with Creative Mind with Debra berndt Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of CreativeMind. Join us each week for an inspiring conversation about personal development based on Jungian philosophy, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. Explore deep topics in a practical way. Let's begin.
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B
Foreign.
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C
Hello. Welcome to another episode of Soul Sessions, a Youngin podcast. I'm Deborah Maldonada.
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B
I'm Dr. Rob.
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C
And we are here to bring you the best of Jungian spiritual psychology and neuroscience in a practical way. And we're covering emotions this in this series, this past few episodes. So if you missed any of the previous episodes, please go back and watch the other wonderful episodes. Of all the emotions we talked about before, today, we're talking about sadness and it's universal. We've all felt it and we're going to talk about how it's really a gift. But before we begin, I do want to remind you to subscribe to our channel if you're watching us on YouTube and if you are listening to us on any of the podcast services, don't forget to subscribe. It helps us reach more people and get our message out to and help more people feel better, get out of their sadness or work with their sadness. So, okay, let's talk about what sadness is. And you know, it's like kind of universal, too. Like all these emotions we're talking about.
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B
We all feel what it is and what it's not. Yes. So the way we're speaking about it now, and for those of you who haven't listened to our previous podcast, we do not see emotions as good or bad or negative or positive. All the emotions that we have are there for a reason. They're really useful to us. They give us the meaning of human experience. So think about how useful that is. We wouldn't have meaning without them. So sadness, well, let's distinguish between sadness and depression because often people mistake the two. So depression, we can say is. Is a pathology of mood. It's called the mood disorder, which means the emotional system is depressed. And it's depressed to the point where it impedes the individual's functioning.
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C
Is it like not even sadness, it's more numbness Depression. Would you say it can? I've never had serious depression, so I can't speak to how I feel.
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B
Yeah, it can be. Or one of the components is the inability to experience happiness and joy from the things that you used to find joyful. So you don't enjoy being with friends, you don't enjoy going out, you don't enjoy shopping, you don't enjoy any of the typical activities.
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C
So it's kind of like this lack of feeling almost. And in a sense that is sadness. Because we, we want to feel. That's a natural. We're in this body that has all these emotions. But when we're talking about this, sadness is not where it's that severe, where we're suppressing anything. We're actually feeling a feeling of sadness. And I always find it such a beautiful feeling. I know it sounds weird to say, but it's a way to feel alive. And many times I know the saddest time I've ever felt was when my father died. And just that sadness was, is so pervasive. And then I realized I loved him so much. That's why I feel sad. And so how can this sadness be a bad thing? And so it's kind of, kind of not as dark and negative as you want. You think it is. It, it doesn't feel good. But it also has, it's like a part of love or something we love. And we'll talk about that. That it's not even just emotion. It's. It's something like a trigger from the unconscious saying, yeah, something needs to change in your life.
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B
Yeah. It has a soulfulness to it. That's why it's been connected with art, with music, with emotion all the time. Because it's, it's kind of a romantic feeling as well as sadness. Right. It's a depth.
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C
Some people enjoy watching those sad movies because it just helps them cry and they, oh, I want a good cry. Right. But a lot of people say, I just had a really good cry. And I think that's very healthy for us to feel those emotions. If you don't and you're shutting yourself off and not allowing yourself to feel it, that could lead to other.
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B
Yes.
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C
More serious like numbness and lack of desire for living and life. You know, like the pursuit of things that you want to pursue.
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B
Yes. There is a condition that's called dysthymia, which is a kind of a low level sadness that persists for a long time. So if it persists for six months or more, then it might not be the sadness that we're talking about. Might be more of a, of a clinical condition that needs attention. Right. Because you don't want to always be kind of low energy and just kind.
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C
Of, you know, crying all the time.
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B
Yeah. Mildly depressed tragedy, not enjoying your life.
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C
Yeah. It needs to be a balance. And so when we talk about all these emotions, we want to feel them all and then notice which ones you're not feeling and not inviting in. And so sadness is one of them. You know, I see a lot of people when they. When we do classes and someone gets emotional, and what's the first thing they say? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Or you see someone getting interviewed and they're crying about something, and it's like, I'm sorry. There's this, like, why do we. Are. Why are we apologizing for feeling sad? Like, why is that, Rob? It's like, you're not supposed to. You're supposed to be happy. And maybe it's this family, you know, your family tells you, don't cry.
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B
And, yeah, stiff upper lip, you know, and keep it together kind of thing for others and for the kids and all that stuff. But the. The sadness that we're talking about, again, it's. It's the universal typical sense of loss that we have about something, that we lost something, right? If we get sick, maybe we feel, oh, we lost our health. Well, if we lose a relationship, uh, it's a powerful kind of indicator of there's something going on in your life that you should pay attention to, and that's sadness.
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C
Or also if something's missing, if something's.
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B
Missing in your life. Some people feel the loss of their. Their youth as something important, right? That they've lost objects sometimes, you know, cherished family heirlooms that we lose or. Or get destroyed in fires or things like that. We feel a loss, right? Or when we lose loved ones. Of course, it's the most universal. I remember a Buddhist teacher, teacher once saying that the one thing we all have in common, regardless of race, color, status, is that we all lose loved ones. And that is true. We all lose the people that we love.
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C
Isn't there like a saying where he gave her, like a acorn or something and he made her go to house. She was crying. She lost her children. Her child died. And the guru said. She said, bring him back to life. I'm so sad. And he said, well, I want you to go and give this acorn or whatever back. I forgot what object it was or something like that. To a person who hasn't had any loss. And so she went to all through the village and everyone was telling their sad story about who they lost. And then she realized that she's not alone. Everyone loses someone. Like, it's not just her. And it transformed her. I thought that was a really powerful story. Do you remember what the object was?
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B
I do not.
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C
But it was like an Acorn or something like a token. And he said, bring that back. And if you can't, you bring that back in or you can't bring that back. I'll bring your child back. And she really. She got on her knees and said, I'm so sorry I would ever take away. Like, why would I bring my son back when everyone else is suffering, you know, and realize that we all suffer that way? And it is, it is. Life is sad. I mean, it's temporary. And if we're not sad about our life, then there is something wrong. If we're like whitewashing everything and making everything. Everything's fine. Everything happens for a reason. That's another thing that people do to push away sadness or the seriousness of things and sometimes even joke about things because they can't. There's people that laugh at funerals because they can't feel the sadness. So they giggle or get nervous giggle because they can't deal with it. And so it's okay to. To feel these. So Jung would say that these. Any emotion is a sign from the unconscious. It's. It's showing us something. So it could be just life is sad. And it's, you know, a passing mood, a passing kind of state that we all experience. But then there's also this again, existential sadness, which is something that we need to address deeper.
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B
Yeah, all emotions have the potential to lead us into the unconscious because they're. They are arising from the unconscious mind. It's. It's the personal unconscious as Jung defines. It makes meaning. It relates to things that we've experienced in our life. And so sadness, let's say the loss of a loved one, if we start to examine it right, it. It will lead us to deeper, a deeper understanding of what our relationship with that person was really about. Not only on the surface, right, oh, we'll never see them again, but at a. At a deeper layer of what was the connection that was really there. And that. That's a beautiful thing because you. You really then start to see the depth of the relationship instead of just the loss. And that's part of the function of. Of an emotion, is to point you to the deeper aspect of what was your relationship with this loss.
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C
I also think that sadness is a great way to get us to look inward, to change our life and, and look for answers. And if we're just whitewashing everything and everything's fine, even though our life is, you know, not where really when we want to be, that we don't. We're not listening to that inner nudge. And I remember, well, I've worked with single people most of my career as a coach. And there was such a sadness to a lot of these women and men that were alone and they were, they. They really didn't feel like they fit in with anyone and when am I going to find that person? And there was this sadness. But that desire, the thing that's missing is that love that they're missing. And the sadness is the absence of love. It made them look inward. Most people, people that didn't do work with me, they might have looked at dating tips or something to find someone. But those who were willing to look inward, they discovered something much deeper. And they realized that, you know what that longing was. What is that sadness? Sometimes is a longing for something that's missing in your life. And you, you look inward and you realize it's not about finding a partner, it's about something deeper. And for me, it was purpose. For many of my clients, it's been to find my purpose and see how attached I was thinking I gotta be a certain, have a missus after in front of my name to feel like I fit in. And I, you know, there's some kind of security in having a person in my life and I can't be alone, flailing out by myself and finding that powerment within. And then you find the relationship that is really worthy of you versus just trying to fix the sadness. And so I see that many people say I came to you for love and I found myself. And that is really powerful.
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B
It's so unfair to put that on the other person that you're going to fulfill my life, you're going to make me happy. Your, your job is to make me happy. And of course there is something to that in relationships. But if you're really putting all the onus on them and saying it's your responsibility, that's too much of a burden for the other person. You have to be happy yourself and then share that happiness. In relationships, that works.
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C
And so the sadness was the. Almost like a part of my ego saying, you need to be in a relationship to fit in and to feel good about yourself and be accepted and feel confident or whatever. But there's another part where the ego, where the soul is saying, love is a beautiful experience. You want to have great love. So it almost, in a way, I was protected from going into the wrong relationship and getting married to the wrong person and being single longer so I can do the inner work in order to know what I really want and what my Soul wants in a relationship. And if I didn't feel sad, I would've never entered the process. And so many of my clients, thousands of people I worked with over the years, the sadness was the reason they picked up the phone and said, I need to. I need help. Can you help me? And yeah. And they always say they got way more than just finding love. They have a new sense of themselves. And that is priceless.
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B
Yeah, it is a kind of pain. Human beings feel sadness as. As kind of even like a physical pain almost. And so if that pain in prop prompts us to seek our growth, to seek individuation, to seek a deeper meaning of our life, then it's doing its job right, because it's. It's prompting us. It's saying, you need to pay attention to this and go into the unconscious. So one of the techniques that we use in Jungian coaching, active imagination, and active imagination, we can say, is a technique that we train our coaches in to help the client go deep into that emotion and to really follow the symbols and the images that arise from the unconscious mind, to decipher and kind of bring up the message that the unconscious mind is trying to convey to us.
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C
It's like the soul. It's a way to interact with our soul, our deeper knowing, our deeper wisdom. And imagination is the tool of the soul.
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B
Yes. And it's such a powerful technique. People have been using it in various ways, you know, through meditation or visualization for thousands of years. But Jung developed this formula for modern people, and so it works really well where it doesn't have to disrupt their lives. They can continue to do what they do, but still do the inner work.
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C
And sadness. What we think is going to fix the sadness is not really what the soul wants. So we have to go and explore, like, what is. Because it wasn't about finding a person, although I'm glad I found you, Rob. It was more about finding yourself, you know, and that deeper relationship with this wisdom that's in you, that is unbreakable. And then the relationship you find reflects that versus it's outside of you. And you have to bring it in different way to work. So let's go through, like, this idea. I love what Jung says, even though it's not very fun. It says there's no coming into consciousness without pain.
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B
Absolutely.
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C
And. And that is, I think one of the big misperceptions of change and transformation is that you can go to a workshop and then have this magical thing happen and then all your problems are solved and you're instantly a new person and you have all the mansions and the fancy cars and everything you want. And there it is. It takes a struggle. It's a struggle to transform. You have to face things that are difficult in order to transform. And that's like kind of the bad news. My coach said that to me once, my very first coach. She goes, oh, they only talk about the good news. They don't tell you the bad news. And the bad news is that, yeah, you have to roll up your sleeves and you have to be brave and courageous and face what you need to face in order to really change.
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B
Yeah. And I think that's why there's so much resistance to real inner growth. A lot of people want to play at it, right. And want to just like you say, experience the weekend or something mild and say, yeah, I'm doing inner work. But the real inner work will put you through a test.
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A
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C
It kind of brings you to your knees in a way where you're very humbled. I think that was one of the biggest things with the shadow work, is it humbles you.
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B
But we see that it's definitely worth it. The people that come through it, they say, that's the best thing I've ever done for myself. It's facing your fears, facing your shadow, facing that sadness and finding out what is at the core of that. What is what was lacking in my life. It reveals to you what you're meant to be doing in this world. And so it's an amazing experience.
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C
And so facing sadness is a very courageous thing because we want to move like our instinct is to move away from it. Let's distract ourselves. Let's watch a funny comedy or a horror film to distract us. They say that a lot of people watch true crime to escape their sadness or something. Know there was some kind of research where people are just like distracting themselves or going on or doom scrolling on Instagram. You know, and, and like feeding it, but really going toward it and examining it and facing what is really here is really what's going to help someone transform it.
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B
Yeah. One of the biggest mistakes that I've seen in a lot of different programs is, is that they try to fix it. Once you are, you're approaching the unconscious mind with this idea that it's broken, you're on the wrong track. That's not what you're dealing with. So the approach is one of openness, friendliness, kindness.
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C
It's like a relationship. Very much like a relationship yourself.
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B
Yes. Or dealing with the, you know, a child in your life. You're not going to approach them with you're, there's something broken in you and then, you know, let's try to fix you. It's the idea's openness of let, let's, let's hear what, what is happening here? What, what is going on? How do you feel? Tell me about your situation. That we have to apply to ourselves. That same attitude we have to apply to ourselves. If we cannot be compassionate and kind to ourselves, there's no way we can be compassionate and kind towards others. There's always going to be that undercurrent of passive aggressiveness.
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C
Like we're hard on ourselves and hard on these parts of ourselves that when they emerge and judge them and we shouldn't be like that, we should be better by now.
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B
And so that's one of the.
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C
Go ahead. Sorry.
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B
Yeah. That's one of the first instructions that we teach our coaches is that they have to convey the sense of openness, kindness, compassion, non judgmental approach to working with the unconscious mind.
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C
Young would always, in one of his books, Claire Dunn said that something has come alive in me that needs my attention. I love that it's like this friendliness approach toward something's trying to get my attention and it's coming alive in me. Let me, let me look at it, let me see it. It really is that gateway to the soul. It helps us find out what do we really want. And the ache like, it's like a soul ache that we feel when we're not individuating. It's like the soul is going, come on, there's so much more to you. You're limiting yourself. And we try to. The ego TR tries to distract us from it and it keeps coming back. And it's that pebble in our shoe that is this all saying, wake up, wake up, wake up.
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B
Yeah. Once we approach it in from that perspective of kindness, compassion, friendliness, then it starts to give us a message. We start to hear its voice because it's a, it's kind of a whisper. It's not a loud thundering voice. It whispers to us from the inside. What, what is the message? What are we meant to be learning from this sadness, this emotion? And it's a powerful experience because it shows us in a very direct way that the answer is within us. It's not going to come from the outside. I mean, it sometimes shows up as dreams, intuitions, visions, synchronicities. Right. Things that happen appear to happen by accident, but they are very coincidental. But the, that, that voice that we hear through, through paying attention to the unconscious gives us the answer very directly. And if we listen to it and take it to heart and we trust it, then we, we, we're transformed. Our life is transformed. Literally. It changes everything.
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C
Well, one thing mistake I made, and I think a lot of people do, is they, they say, okay, I'm going to be with my sadness. And I used to put on sad heartbreak songs and cry all day. And that is not what you're talking about. It's like, yes, embrace your sadness. But there's no self inquiry. It's just like emoting. So what you're saying is there's this element of the pure awareness that needs to be a part of this process.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. We're paying attention in a particular way. Let's say we're understanding first of all what is the nature of emotion. We're not seeing it as good or bad or toxic like some people talk about toxic emotions. They're simply powerful indicators of the meaning of our human experience. So should we listen to them? Hell yeah, absolutely we need to listen to them. They're telling us important things about the meaning of our life and therefore we pay close attention. So that that's one of the adjustments or kind of approaches that we have to take. The other one is that we understand it's not going to be reasonable or rational. That's a, that's a function of the ego, of our waking experience. The unconscious is irrational by nature. It's symbolic, it's emotional, it's intuitive. Therefore we have to forget about this kind of logical kind of reasoning about what is right and wrong. We have to be open to this natural kind of approach to life that we are going to find meaning often in irrational, emotional, intuitive approaches to our situation. And that is hard for us because we are so conditioned to think in terms of, let's solve the problem, let's go directly to the solving of the problem. And the unconscious takes more of a. An organic, natural approach to it. It doesn't worry too much about time or, you know, fixing the problem. It's more about finding your true path and being true to yourself.
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C
And it's those times where you can't fix the sadness anymore, where you. The external doesn't fix it. Like we said, you go to a spa day because you're sad and you're hoping that cheers you up. Or you watch a movie and you hope that cheers you up. You spend time with people you love and you're still feeling. It's like, okay, it's not out there. The answer is ins. I have to go in. I have to find it. Someone loving me unconditionally and showering me with roses and chocolates and telling me I'm wonderful is not. If that doesn't fix it, then you know that something is deeper that is calling to you. And I just think it's a beautiful feeling and we have to honor it as it's very sacred.
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B
And also the. The definitions, especially now that are around, they're so. They're so judgmental about sadness. Right. That if you're sad, that's bad. And it's showing you that you're traumatized or sick or there's something wrong with you instead of seeing it. No, that's the soul speaking to me and trying to guide me into deeper meaning. And so sometimes, of course, they're right. People do need attention. As far as their traumatic experiences, of course, we're not denying that. But for most of us, sadness is the calling of the soul. It's there to wake us up, to help us find our path in life?
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C
Wouldn't you say that the ego uses the emotions to keep us in limitation and the soul uses emotions to set us free?
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B
That's a beautiful way to put it. Yes.
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C
And so it's really not the emotion itself, but how we're approaching it, how we're using it. Are we using it to survive or are we using it to grow?
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B
Yes.
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C
Great. Well, we are going to continue our series. I'm sure there's going to be more topics related to this. I hope you enjoyed this session today on Sadness. Enjoyed Sadness. And those of you who are feeling a little blue, got the blues, embrace it. See what emerges. Be aware. Watch the sadness and yourself being sad as you're watching an object in the world. And just get curious, not judgmental. Be curious and see what emerges. And you may be surprised that that knocking on the door of that sadness is the soul saying, I'm ready. Let's create something great. All right, take care, everyone. Have a great week, and we'll see you next week on SOU Sessions. Take care.
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B
Bye.
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C
Bye.
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A
Thank you for joining us. And don't forget to subscribe to Creative Mind Soul Sessions and join us next week as we explore another deep topic where you can consciously create your life with Creative Mind Soul Sessions. See you next time.