← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
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- [00:04]
Narrator
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.
- [00:28]
Deborah Maldonado
Let's get started. Foreign. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Jung on Purpose. I'm Deborah Maldonado.
- [00:42]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
And I'm Dr. Rob.
- [00:43]
Deborah Maldonado
And we have a very special episode for you today. We get this question a lot from our students, from our clients. How do I know if I'm acting from ego or my true self? And so when we pursue our purpose, we will dive into that today and hopefully give you some tools that you could access to figure out if you are or not. And before we begin, I do want to remind you if you could please subscribe to our channel on YouTube or if you're listening to us on one of the podcast services, don't forget to subscribe and download our episode every week and make sure you don't miss a single one.
- [01:18]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Absolutely.
- [01:20]
Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. This. This question comes up a lot because I think there's this idea that we don't want to come from ego. Like it's a bad thing to come from ego, and we want to live our full potential. But what does that mean? Rob, what do you think when you hear that question from students? What do you see that?
- [01:39]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, I mean. Well, let's back up and talk about the ego, and it's what its function is. In particular, we're seeing Jung's individuation model. So Jung kind of saw the ego as the. The captain, right? The one that sits in the captain's chair of the conscious mind. Not consciousness, the conscious mind, our waking mind, waking experience. So when we're awake, we're thinking, we're feeling, we're problem solving. Who's sitting in the captain's chair? He says, that's the ego. It's like the core of our waking conscious experience. So what function does it play? Well, first of all, it gives us that sense of identity. There's an I experiencing these. These things that I experience in relationships, in my work, in my everyday experience. That's. That I gives us a kind of a. It's a placeholder for the self, but it's not the true self. So Jung says that that is the crucial mistake that we make, that we start to think we are the. This ego, I, because it's always present in our waking experience. So we start thinking, that must be me. That that is Thinking and problem solving and doing these things. But really it has two primary functions. One is to keep us alive, which is a great service. It keeps us safe. It also says it creates this Persona for social interaction so that we can present ourselves and be presentable and acceptable to society. Again, a great purpose or a great function that it does for us. So keeps us safe and makes us social, socially acceptable, hopefully. Right. Unless our Persona is the rebellious one and that kind of stuff. But it's still a Persona and it's.
- [03:40]
Deborah Maldonado
Operating from this place of very limited information. It's faced outward. So it's looking at like the senses, it's looking at some memories of the past, of how we, we made decisions before. And so it's almost like a little, tiny, little like bubble in the top of the ocean that's kind of making all our life decisions, but it's such a tiny little part of us. So when we're making our, when that's running our life in the captain's chair, it's, it's. And you're not working with what's beneath that. You basically are basically repeating patterns, wouldn't you say? You're just kind of using old information and just shining it up a little bit. I call it rearranging the furniture.
- [04:19]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. Because if you think of those two functions, one is that you're not going to risk much once you establish your safety comfort zone. Because why would you. If, if you're letting the ego run your conscious awareness, the ego will say, don't take risks. You just repeat what you did yesterday because we can see that it got you to today. Therefore you survived. Therefore just continue to do the same and you'll be fine. And then the other one is always be careful of what people think about you because you've created this personality for yourself, this Persona, the mask. And if you do something strange and different, people might criticize you, people might reject you, people might think you're crazy or that you're not that a well put together person that you presented yourself to be in the past or shaming you.
- [05:15]
Deborah Maldonado
Right. Like someone else is going to shame that perfect Persona. And so when we think about that, we think about that we constructed this Persona. It's, it's a, it's a necessary part of our life. I mean, Young says that the first part of our life is to build up this ego, is to develop this ego so it's not wrong or bad. And he says, said the way we approach psychology in the first part of life is very different than the way we approach our psychology and personal growth from our second part of life. And when I learned about Jung psychology and I did a lot of pop psychology, you know, reading all this best selling self help books and you know, kind of the think positive and manifestation and all that, what I didn't realize is that many people are applying the first part of life psychology on people over 30. And when you're over 30, you need to have a different approach to your own personal development. So he says the first part of life we are afraid to live. And the second part of life we're dealing with our fear of dying. And so we want to have a legacy, we want to make our life meaningful. We're hanging on to now this precious life that's slipping through our fingers. But if we think about most people, they live their whole life being afraid to live. You know, you had shared with me, you worked in the hospital in your early career and would see, be on deathbeds, see people on deathbeds and regret their life. And why didn't I take more risks? Because the ego is running our life, most of most, for most people. And we never really transcend it. We never. What Jung called individuate.
- [06:50]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, absolutely. One of the risks that we take in, in not pushing the boundary of the ego is that it's the biggest risk. Perhaps not taking risks, staying in our comfort zone, staying well within the mandates of society that gives us this role and rewards us for being a pillar of the community and doing our job and taking care of our family and those things. And of course those things, there's nothing wrong with those things. We, we should be applauded for those things. But there's more to, to the psyche, to our soul, to our human nature than socially fitting in and surviving. That's the crux of it right there. Jung says that's not a complete human being, or at least for some of us, right it, that's not a complete life. To simply survive and, and fit in socially, that's quite a task. You know, we're not denying that, but there's something more. There's a, there's a soulfulness that's calling us. There's a creative spark in us. There's a need to transcend those limitations that society puts on us.
- [08:00]
Deborah Maldonado
So let me share a little story and then we can continue. It's called the sleeping seed. So imagine a seed lying deep in the dark soil. Seasons pass, storms come and go. Still the seed does not bloom. Hidden underground, it begins to wonder, why am I here? Why am I. Why do I not shine like the flowers I've seen in my dreams? Then one day, the seed feels a pressure from within. Its shell begins to crack. At first, it feels like breaking, like death. But what is breaking is not its life. It's the shell that once kept it. Small roots begin to push downward, searching for nourishment. A fragile sprout reaches upward, guiding by a light it cannot see. The seed realizes its purpose was never given from the outside. It was already encoded within, waiting for the right moment to emerge. This is how it is for us. We spend so much of our time searching for purpose in the world. Through approval, through success, through what others tell us we should be. But our purpose is not something to be found out there. It's already planted in the psyche, waiting for us to break open the shell of conditioning the Persona and allowing the self to grow. And so when we think about the Persona, the ego, it's like that shell that kind of keeps us in. And we can't get rid of the ego. That's like, I think, a misperception. Like the ego's the enemy. Let's get rid of it. We need a sense of I to kind of navigate the world. But we. We don't want it to be in the captain chair anymore. I guess that's the. The path of individuation is letting our true self now make decisions in life. And the true self wants to live. It's the ego's afraid to live. The true self wants to live fully, completely, deeply. And that's what gives us meaning. It's not really a purposeful career as much as our expression of who we are.
- [09:50]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So now we can answer the question of how do I know if. If I'm acting out of ego or my true self? There are no hard and fast rules for this. But once you understand ego function and that sense of I and you're. You're well practiced in observing that I ness in. In us. Right? That sense of me that we get when we're acting in the world, you can recognize it, and you can recognize when you're acting out of survival. Needs, defensive. Needs ego defensiveness. And you're. You're concerned about socially fitting in and making sure that you're perceived as a sane person. All those are clear signs that you're acting out of ego, that you're concerned about how your actions are going to be perceived by others instead of really acting out of your passion and out of your. Your purpose, like we're talking about. And that you are Very much in that Persona, in that mask. Or you are the actor clinging to it, almost.
- [11:02]
Deborah Maldonado
Right. Yeah.
- [11:03]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. We become. We. We get attached to it. Because Jung says that whatever is in the unconscious and as we go deeper into the work, we'll have to confront our shadows. Meaning what is in the unconscious? What haven't we looked at that we need to integrate? Whatever's there, Jung says, threatens everything we built as Persona. In other words, everything we've spent the first part of our life building up, constructing this personality, this mass, this role that we play in our careers and our friendships and relationships. The unconscious now threatens that. So in individuation, what we're actually doing is deconstructing it ourselves. We start to deconstruct that role that we've been playing, that Persona, that mask, opening the shell. Yeah, because a lot of people wait until some tragedy happens in their life where now they're forced to face their shadow. And that's not a good way to do it because it could be something really tragic, something really harsh that falls upon you and it appears to come from without. But it's really that you built up this shadow by playing a certain role that's not really you and pushing away what you think doesn't fit into that.
- [12:24]
Deborah Maldonado
Well, I mean, do you think that. I think everyone is like, we have this path in life that everyone has where we build up a Persona enough that something has to crash it. And so at that moment, we always have the choice to start the journey of individuation or we double down on the ego again. And, you know, either shrink further, withdraw. Like, I've seen people, you know, let's say you get your heart broken, or someone, you know, marriage falls apart, and then people get smaller. They want to shrink back from life, or they started a business and it failed, and they shrink back and they go almost revert back to where they were on the journey. Like we talked about the hero's journey in some of our other episodes. And there's a. There's a feeling of shrinking back. But at that moment, there's always a. An opportunity to spring forward. And so the shrinking back is the ego. And this. And when I. It's. It's once more life, more expression, more growth. That's where, you know, you're led by the self. Because the self is always just like. I always talk about this like a tree. You see a tree, you know, you plant it in your backyard. And maybe it goes like three or four feet. It doesn't like, go to six feet. And Say, you know, I think I'm good. I don't want to go too high into the sky and you know, have to deal with the winds up there. I'm going to stay here. No, the tree's natural tendency is to continue to grow and as long as no one cuts it down, that tree is going to keep growing and growing and growing. And that's really, if we think about nature, that's nature, it finds a way. And I think in the modern western world we've disconnected ourselves from that. That truth of nature is this life giving, constantly growing evolution of who we are. And it's scary though, isn't it? It's scary to just step out into this unknown. It's scary to face ourselves in a very honest, vulnerable way. It's, you know, I, I really don't blame anyone for wanting to shrink because it is, it takes a lot of energy and a lot of courage to do that and it feels safe. It's such a, it's not an easy thing to do. So it's not like oh, you should do it, it's easy. Of course it's going to be hard and sometimes we have to shrink back a few times until it gets so tight that we're forced to change.
- [14:41]
Narrator
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- [15:56]
Deborah Maldonado
So I think everyone approaches that entering the individuation process and, and finally trying to free themselves some ego in different ways, don't you?
- [16:05]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
There's always growth definitely because people have to continue to grow in some way even if it's just biological. Right there you're aging.
- [16:15]
Deborah Maldonado
I can't stop the clock from, from.
- [16:17]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Ticking and hopefully you're gaining some wisdom and some sense of the purpose of Your life.
- [16:24]
Deborah Maldonado
But maybe the shrinking is more the outer, like kind of, like kind of keeping up, going. Not that we're still like our psyche still learning and growing from that. And it's maybe slower, like it's almost like a dam in a river. It's not fully flowing.
- [16:39]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, that's a good point. And that was certainly one of Jung's criticism of modern society is that there are no real pathways for that transformational growth that he was talking about called individuation, that it used to be fulfilled by, by church or synagogue, where people at a certain point, you know, were asked to, to really step up and step into a higher role in their lives.
- [17:09]
Deborah Maldonado
Like in the tribes, the wise. You become the wise person or the mentor.
- [17:14]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah.
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Deborah Maldonado
You know, maybe you're training the young boys how to hunt or something. You're kind of moving, changing your role into a teacher.
- [17:22]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yes. When those practices become empty rituals, then people don't have a way to enact that transformation. And therefore they're, they feel stuck, they feel frustrated, they feel like something went off the rails in my life and they start to blame society or the institutions. And there is some fault in, in those institutions, of course, but it's the collective that has failed them or has failed us. Right. In other words, what is the collective? It's individuals like ourselves that we've lost the thread of. What is the individuation process? Which means what is the purpose of our life? So if we talk about purpose in this context, your purpose, the generic purpose, let's say for human beings, is to free your mind so that you can do and enact this transformation. If you don't do that, you're failing yourself, which means because you're operating with.
- [18:19]
Deborah Maldonado
Like a small amount of information just from the ego, like we talked about. So, you know, like we have, like they always say we only use a small percentage of our brain. Like we want to use all that we have to, to live our life. Is that what you're saying?
- [18:32]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, that, that, that is the general purpose of human life. So when we think of a bird, what is its purpose? Its purpose is to fly in the sky. Right. It's designed for that. So we ask, well, what are we designed for? What is it that we're meant to do in general, as a species of human being? We're meant to, to self reflect and transform our biological nature and transcend our ego. That's what we're designed for. Like we have all this, the tools we have this great imagination, intelligence, dream that life gives us to dream, to use our skills and our creativity. It's not just to build the 9 to 5 career. That's part, part of that first phase of life. Like you said, the first 30 years or 35 years, definitely focus on that. That's what you're meant to do. Create a Persona, an ego structure that is strong and supports you. But after that, Jung says, then you have to start to let go of that. You have to transcend that. Otherwise you, you're stuck, you're stuck in, in a phase of life that you're not meant to stay in.
- [19:42]
Deborah Maldonado
Well, I want to say too that I think for me personally, not understanding what individuation is and again using the same self help tools that I learned early in life, like thinking positive and rewiring your brain and believing in yourself and building up your confidence, all those things. When I started, I changed careers. I left the corporate world and became a hypnotherapist and a coach. I didn't do, I didn't meet you for like almost two. And in that time I still wasn't individuating. I was using my old, like the old tools from early life to you know, think positive and be successful. And what I learned is I was, even though I, on the surface I thought I stepped into my purpose because it was a different career, but I was still operating many, mostly from ego. And so I think the danger is that a lot of people, they do the outer shift, they make an outer change in their life and they think, oh, that's now I'm living my purpose, I'm doing this now. I became a doctor, I became a therapist. I always wanted to be an artist and I'm doing that. You can do those things that seem more purposeful, but that you can do them from an ego level which is not going to make you happy because you'll end up resenting those gifts and the work that you're doing because you're still an ego. And so for example, like I was still needing approval from my clients, I was still looking for, you know, to get my book out there and be on television and do all these things with which is great. I think some part of us needs to have that little magic and that little showbiz for us to be successful. And part of me really did want to help people. It came from a genuine place, but the ego hijacked it. And if I did individually, I didn't do shadow work. What happened was that I got, it was very stressful to create this new image of myself. And you know, they talk about imposter syndrome. That's where it comes from. It's the ego. The ego is an imposter. And there's a part of us that knows we're not, that's not who we are. We're just playing this role. And so there's some questions that you know, signs that you're coming from ego. So those of you who have like stepped into a career and you think, I'm living my purpose and. But here's, here's some signs. You need your clients or the people around you, maybe your, your board members to feel validated or feel like you're admired. You're measuring your worth by numbers, by how many, how much income you make, by the followers you have, by the recognition where you feel anxious or defensive if others question your work. And the last one is your purpose feels like a role you perform, but not at deeper truth you embody. And so the ego's very sneaky. It uses spirit, your spiritual language, it uses your, you're doing a good thing, you're a do gooder, you're helping others, you're a healer. But then the ego can, can sabotage your, your, you know, that beautiful thing that you're doing, the work from your heart because it gets tangled up in that recognition. And so we have to understand it so then we can be free and truly be happy. Because what happened to me is I started getting burned out. I was working so hard and I was like, I gotta like make, you know, more money and be successful and I gotta get that book deal. And you know, you get caught up in basically recreating what you did in the corporate world to like, I felt I was like recreating the same pattern and operating from that same place. And then I met you and you introduced me to the shadow and, and I was like, oh, this is a missing piece here. So I just want to say that this is so important that the self help you did early in life is not going to apply. The second half of life, you have to individuate.
- [23:13]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. And I think Jung goes even beyond kind of sabotaging ourselves. We're setting ourselves up for kind of a tragic life because if we never do that, self inquiry about what is our purpose here and what are we doing with our lives, it builds up the, a lot more than, than just kind of a wasted life. Most of us are fearful of that. Right. I don't want to waste my time, I don't want to waste my life. So it's already kind of built in for us. But what it sets up is this kind of living out the opposite of we're in what we're intending to do, we're moving towards the light, or we're trying to do good and help the world, we end up hurting it and doing the opposite. Precisely the opposite.
- [24:02]
Deborah Maldonado
Well, you know, a great, great example of that is the guy who was in the Secret and he had that sweat lodge thing and he got all caught up in his fame and he didn't, he didn't do his shadow work, obviously, and he got caught up and he was calling himself God and then he ended up actually there. A couple people died at his, his retreat and he ran and, and he said, which I thought was very important. He's like, here I am thinking I was saving lives and I ended up destroying lives, including my own. And he's still, I think he just passed away, actually. And so if you don't do this work, it could have, like, that was a very extreme case, but it could have harsh consequences. And if we keep pushing away our shadow and, and, and what, what, what we're trying to create in the world is these good. Like most people that listen to our podcasts are really good people and they have great intentions, but the ego can really get sneaky and make it all about it. Like, and it's not your fault because it's just what the ego does. I mean, I got caught up in it too. And, and it can make you miserable and you could be doing like just great work and feeling stressed out and burnt out and frazzled and, and stressed. I don't have have to tell you how many people I've spoken with that are when, you know, people are afraid to open their emails because their clients are, you know, demanding stuff of them and they just haven't done the inner work to not take on the projections and dealing with their own shadow. And it can be really, really hard. And so I encourage whatever you do, whether it's not through us, but do individuation, because it will save your life. It will save your life. I mean, we're not saying that lightly. It really is. You don't want to go to the end of your life thinking, oh, I thought I'd live my purpose, but it's still not. It. It's not something you do, it's something you are.
- [25:48]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, like Jung said, it's a hell of a thing.
- [25:51]
Deborah Maldonado
It's a hell of a thing.
- [25:53]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
What he means is that it involves this kind of life or death drama that we're we're kind of thrown in this life. It's part of it, right? We have to all face it somehow. And at some point. So whenever you observe other people and you think, oh, they have it easy, or. Or, you know, they got it made, it's just their life is easy for them. That's. That's an illusion. Everyone has to face the same questions ultimately. And one of them is purpose. What is my purpose? If they haven't found their purpose, it doesn't matter how much they appear to have externally, their life is a failure. Their life has not really worked for them, because that is not the purpose of life. Just to accumulate this appearance of more Persona, a bigger Persona, a more successful Persona. No, that is simply a show.
- [26:48]
Deborah Maldonado
And it's very tempting, especially if you're a coach or you're a thought leader or a teacher or a leader of a company and you're really successful. Your ego's so temporary, like temptress. It just loves the shiny objects and loves to attach itself to these things, these outer rewards that you've gotten. So it's easy to slip into it and forget, you know, that that's not who you are. The world projects onto you, too. Like, people will project that you're so great and that you're helping them. I remember when I first started, I was so excited when people would say, oh, my God, you saved my life. And you're so. You're the best coach ever. And then I had a mentor who said, watch. Don't get excited about that, or you're going to get caught up in the opposite of when they criticize you. And so it's that kind of. We have to learn how to not be so attached to this ego and attached to other people, feeding it or these things that we create, feeding that ego. And there's a correction mechanism the self has a way of correcting. And so we can do it at like a tap or a knock at the door, or it can do it as a storm coming into your life and making you question. And many times we see those, like, storms coming into our life as this terrible thing that happened to us, this tragedy. But it's actually what really helps us on our journey, the real journey that we are supposed to be on.
- [28:08]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. So the bottom line of this conversation is that there is this ego in us that is natural, and it's there to serve this, that first phase of our life in developing a Persona, finding our way in the world, kind of creating a viable way of being in our. In the world through this self identity that we call the I and that there's nothing wrong with it, we'd never pathologize it, no matter how difficult it was for us. Those things shaped us, made us who we are and kind of got us to a certain point. But in this, in the middle phase of life, after 30 or 35, that's where we want to start to really ask the question, am I fulfilling my purpose? Am I? Is this Persona really serving that? Or is it simply the survival and the social fitting in piece?
- [29:01]
Deborah Maldonado
And also when you do personal development work and you hear there's so many teachers out there is ask the theory, does this build help me build up my ego more or is this helping me free myself from it? You know that that's always a good question to check in is a lot of times the words sound the same and it sounds. The psychology terminology all sounds the same. So we think it's all the same thing, but it's really underneath it. What's the subtlety of this goal of this work is, is it freeing me from the ego or is it reinforcing the ego? I also have a special little gift before we go. And I created this meditation and really something, a gift I'd like to give everyone who's listening. If you look in the show notes, there is a link below where you can sign up and get a free copy of this meditation. You just need to give us your information so we can send it to you. We'd love to have you explore, go through this active imagination meditation where you meet your inner wisdom and helps you kind of tap into that purpose. It's something you can do every day, something you can do to start cracking open the shell and revealing all the possibilities in you. So look at the show notes below and check it out. So we'll see you next week. Next week we're going to dive deeper and we'll go into the shadow. The shadow work how it's so important in the very first step for us to live our purpose. So exciting new episode coming up next week.
- [30:25]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Absolutely. And the shadow work, then we really get into what Jung called the unconscious mind. The unconscious, as you'll see, is. Is very different than what most people conceive of it to be. It is something living, an intelligence that we can get in touch with and the source of wisdom and creativity.
- [30:47]
Deborah Maldonado
Well, look forward to it. Thank you, Rob, for your wisdom today.
- [30:52]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
You're welcome.
- [30:53]
Deborah Maldonado
And we'll see you next week, everyone. Take care. Bye.
- [30:59]
Narrator
Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind.
- [31:06]
Deborah Maldonado
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast.
- [31:08]
Narrator
Before you leave and join us each week.
- [31:10]
Deborah Maldonado
We'll see you soon. Sam.