← 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. Let's get started.
- [00:35]
Deborah Maldonado
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Young on Purpose. I am Deborah Maldonado.
- [00:39]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
I am Dr. Rob. Welcome to the program.
- [00:43]
Deborah Maldonado
And we are with CreativeMind, we're the founders and we teach young in depth coaching either to train or to receive the coaching. And today we're going to talk about everyone's favorite topic, self improvement. And we're going to talk about the difference between self improvement and individuation. But before we begin, I do want to remind you if you can check if you're subscribed to our podcast on your podcast services. And then also there's a link here in the corner if you're watching us on YouTube to subscribe to our channel CreativeMind. So the question we get or I used to, you know, do love coaching, which that was a very emotional self help junkie experience. A lot of people were really into growth and self help and therapy and you know, all the pop books that were out there. And one of the things I kept hearing from people is this, I'm tired of working on myself. And I really felt that if you're tired of working on yourself, that means you're not really doing it, I would say, right or wrong, but you're not really doing it right or the way you should. That's really going to fulfill you. And because personal growth should be a journey that is always opening you up and exciting and adding more to your life, it shouldn't feel like a job. And then once you're done with that job and fixing this broken piece, then every, your life will magically work out. And so that's what we're going to talk about today, that shifting, that fixing the ego to really having a fully embodied living experience of who you are.
- [02:22]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, I like ending with this because, you know, we, early on in the series we talked about the ego and why it resists change, the defense mechanisms. Then we talked about a little bit about complexes which are kind of the backbone of human behavior in the sense that they, they give us the patterns of our life and they help us survive. They, they have really good functional roles. The only problem is that we want to be free from conditioning as much as possible so that we can decide, have real agency, real free will in life instead of just following the old patterns and then individuation. I mean, it to, to me, it brings up a lot of deep questions like are we all meant to individuate? I mean, are we. This is hard stuff, you know, for me, it's still an open question. I can see the value of people individuating because they, they mean. That means they, they will have a sense of. I'm the driver of my life, right? I create my destiny. I'm not waiting for things to happen to me. I'm. I'm making them happen. That's an empowered way of being in the world. And I. I greatly appreciate my sense of agency in the world. Whatever to the, you know, to whatever small level I have. It is the empowered sense of myself. But we know it's difficult and we know people often have built up a lot of. They have a lot of equity in their Persona and their ego and their life in a limited way or the way it's played out. So individuation. And Jung often kind of addresses this in his own way. He says it's. It's going to put you through a test. It's going to test you. In other words, it's going to see what you're made out of.
- [04:28]
Deborah Maldonado
It's like the hero's journey.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
Absolutely. And it's not going to be easy. He says, I'm paraphrasing, but.
- [04:38]
Deborah Maldonado
But it, but it's like, if you think about. I remember when I first started learning about personal growth and I just wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to just tell me, let me have an insight. Let me get my life back on track. And you don't want to use personal growth just to get stuff. And I think that's the thing, is that if I just work on myself, then I'll get the goodies. And that's a trap. The ego loves to stay in. And generally, I mean, our society is all about cheap, easy, fast. And if it's cheap, easy and fast, yes. That's why some of these, like, magical techniques seem to get. Become very popular and then they fade around because everyone's looking for that. That secret thing that's not going to make me go through too much to survive. And when we say it's hard, it's hard in a way. That heavy catharsis. It's more hard because we're really facing a lot of resistance from our ego. And there's. Individuation is not about becoming a better Persona, becoming better in your life, but it's about Becoming whole. And wholeness always comes at a cost to something. The ego does not want to give up. And so the battle is not, I have to face all these dark feelings and, and, and go in my past and dig up the skeletons in my closet. No, the biggest challenge we have is realizing that we're not the ego, because the ego is, is what causes all our suffering. And, but the ego has such a tight grip on us and we relied on it so much. And it's our comfort zone that that is the challenge. So when we say it's hard, it's like taking away our training wheels when we had our bike that first time, riding that bike and being wobbly, we'd rather go back to those training wheels. Do you all remember that? Please, can I just have my training wheels back? That's what happens when we start individuating and we take the training wheels off. It's very scary because now we're consciously in control of our life and we don't have to rely on those patterns anymore. But in some cases, that's. The patterns have comfort. I think a lot of times when I would do meditations with people about their future, I did a lot of relationship work in the beginning. And they would, they would cry when they would visualize them being in love. And they were like, why am I crying? You know, because it's just not a normal experience. We're so used to being heartbroken that it becomes a habit. And it's such a weird thing that the ego likes to cling to the familiar, even if it's so irrational. And so that's what we're really battling. It's, it's, it's difficult because we have an ego. It's not difficult because there's scary things
- [07:23]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
in our unconscious that the more we resist something, the more we suffer, which kind of makes sense when we, when we don't resist things, we're just present and we, we understand we have to get through these things and that they're challenging, but we're not kind of dragging ourselves through it. We're doing what we need to do and acting in non attachment.
- [07:47]
Deborah Maldonado
So I just want to pull back a little bit and talk about what is individuation, what Jung would say. And quite simply, he said the first part of life is building up this ego. So there's nothing wrong or dysfunctional or broken about our mind because we have an ego and the ego's not the enemy. It's very useful to have an ego. If we didn't have an Ego, we'd be in trouble. But the second part of life is about growing beyond the ego and knowing who we are in a multifaceted way. And the ego is really the ruler of the conscious mind and that first part of life. But there's this whole unconscious world, not only our personal experiences that are unconscious and parts of ourselves, our shadow that we need to face, complexes we talked about, but the collective unconscious. There's this really well of resources and power and energy that. That is there to help us and live beyond the ego and really direct our life in powerful ways. But if we're afraid to let go of that ego, we just can't get there. And so that's. Individuation is about realizing our whole personality, our whole psyche, the conscious and unconscious versus just let's fix that little. Little mask on the surface and. And get some. Get some love, get some money and. And call it a day.
- [09:03]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah, I mean, the. Like you were saying, some of the easy traps is this self improvement, right. That we have a lot of people think when we talk about the self or the true self that it's some kind of shiny version of who you are. Right. That it's like the super person in you or the superhero in you. That's not really what the self means in. In the individuation process that Jung is talking about. It's more like you were saying the complete self, the complete psyche. Like if you think about your conscious life, you're living at this conscious level, making decisions, working, having relationships, et cetera. He says there's more to us than that, obviously. Yeah, it's. It appears that this. This conscious world of this waking world is so important to us that that's where we do stuff and, and we create an experience. But that the. The unconscious is perhaps even more important, that it sustains our conscious life and it balances out our conscious attitudes all unconsciously through dreams, through intuition, through emotion, through symbolism. It feeds this world and creates it in a very direct way.
- [10:32]
Deborah Maldonado
So would you say that it really is creating your life, you think your conscious self. We talked about this in the last episode, that your conscious self is making choices, but everything's unconsciously being chosen for you. And then your ego makes up a story and a rationale for why you chose that route, why you chose that job, why you chose that partner, why you chose to invest in a certain thing that didn't work out, and why you chose to invest in something that did work out. And. And it's. But unconsciously, we're. We're just. We don't. We're not really connected to our fate unless we understand our unconscious mind. And how many times have we had dreams that we feel like are meaningless and, oh, that was a crazy dream. Meanwhile, the real life, the waking life, is so important and so real, but what's really true is that the dream is actually more real, the waking life. And it's really about coming together. It's like having a conscious and unconscious, bringing that to consciousness so we know more of ourselves and know the depth of who we are and the nature of ourselves, which is beyond just a human being. We're a spiritual being. And so how do we. How do we access those other aspects and facets of ourselves? And if we looked at it even from a spiritual perspective as spiritual, the soul doesn't judge for good or bad. The soul is like there just to experience. It's pure consciousness. It's pure bliss. It's not. It's not trying to improve itself.
- [11:59]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. That was certainly Jung's criticism of modern society, was that we had kind of painted ourselves into a corner by saying, you know, the. The material universe, the way it appears to us is the ultimate reality and everything else is fantasy or just, you know, wishful thinking, perhaps, or mythology and religion and all that stuff. You know, the idea and materialism and scientism is that the physical material universe is the place to be and where things really happen. And he says that that's a. Let's say it's giving us. It's given us a lot in terms of material success and material culture. But you see that it leaves people empty because real meaning comes through symbols, through mythologies, through stories, through kind of our. Our emotional connection to things and what they mean for us. And he says without meaning, even if you have all the money in the world and all the material in the world without meaning, all that is just going to be useless to you. Meaning you're talking about more. Well, not only that. I think meaning is why we love the world, because it. It's like it gives us something to be alive. Yeah. And so meaning is that elusive quality that we all know what it means, but we don't know how to find it.
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Deborah Maldonado
Yeah, yeah.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
How to create it. We don't know how big, how it's created, because it arises kind of in a spontaneous way that we often don't choose it, but we see it and we understand it when we experience it and see it and feel it.
- [14:03]
Deborah Maldonado
Jung says that the achievements which society rewards are won are at the cost of the diminution of personality. So we diminish our personality to get these, these rewards that society says we need. And then that's where we feel. Because it's not really us, it's not who we are. And I think that sometimes we go through hard times in life. We even like as an entrepreneur, we have ups and downs in our business. You first start out and it's tough, and then you look back and you've built something. And you look back at those times where times of lean times, and instead of thinking those were bad, and I never want to go back there, you say, wow, that was. I got so much out. Like, that was an incredible ride. If everything came easy to us and everything was always good, we would never really understand the nature of life and the duality of life. And so it's the same thing with ourselves. We have to look at all the parts of ourselves that we don't like and love them and embrace them. And that's really where we, we find meaning. We only, we don't only find meaning when we're perfect and everyone praises us. We find meaning even when we look at ourselves with the toughest lens to really examine, you know, what we need to do with our life and ourselves. Those are really powerful experiences. And so we're not, again, not trying to improve it because the mechanism of self improvement is really about building up a character that's going to get achieved something out there, relationships or success. Those, those aren't really who you are. And you'll end up being unsatisfied.
- [15:45]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yes. So.
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Deborah Maldonado
And maybe not even realizing it to your deathbed. You know, you may be blindly thinking everything is great. You see, you know, some people that have great success, this doesn't seem like it affects them, you know, or they're just, you know, happy to be successful and they don't have any problems. But we all have problems. We all have. We have to deal with a body that doesn't stay well. We have to deal with sickness, we have to deal with death eventually and aging and all those things. So. So the perfect life is really that it's not what we're taught by society is a perfect life. Or with Instagram shows. We want to show on Instagram or on social media this ideal life. And so when we talk about individuation and the growth, one of the things that Jung talks about is that it's not a linear process that we have to really. It's about the self who. Our true self, that big self is in the center of a Mandala. And we're constantly getting closer in different ways. So it's a circumambulation. We're always circling it and getting closer to it. But it's not that. One day we'll be there, and then. And then everything will be fine. Like, there's like an ends zone to it. It's like almost like the petals of a flower unfolding, and we're seeing ourselves unfold. And so this is the way. If you stop fixing yourself, then personal growth becomes interesting and inviting and you're moving toward the things that maybe you used to run away from that are actually gold. And it becomes more. It becomes boring when you're not getting triggered. When you're getting triggered, you start to get excited because, you know, there's a transformation or you're hitting a challenge. It's approaching life in a very different way.
- [17:27]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Absolutely. The way, you know, students often ask us is, is Jung talking about enlightenment when he's talking about individuation and. Yes or no? Yes and no. In some ways it's similar because he's talking about wholeness and transcending the ego, meaning not living in our sense of ego or individuality, but living in the sense of connectedness, connection to everything and everyone. That. That's very similar to what Eastern philosophy means by enlightenment, in that there is no sense of you as an individual anymore. You're everything. You're the, you know, pure consciousness, in a sense.
- [18:13]
Deborah Maldonado
So there's the whole self, that. The conscious and unconscious on a personal level, and then there's the collective self. That's everything on a conscious level and unconscious level. That's collective is you as well. And in Eastern philosophy, Vedanta, they talk about the self, which is a little. I think that's where. That's where Jung got that term, the self. And it's not like a true self in, you know, the pop world. It's more everything. It's like allowing everything in.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah.
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Deborah Maldonado
Versus teasing what. What you want to take and what you don't want to take. The whole smorgasbord of human experience and loving every part of it. Because I really, truly feel that their suffering leads us to change. It's a. It's a. It's a system in us that's telling us something's off, and then we have to adjust. It's not suffering, and I did something wrong. It's. No, the suffering that we mostly feel is that dissatisfaction and that lack of fulfillment. And so you listen to that and then get curious about what that means.
- [19:17]
Narrator
You've spent years building success and achieving what others would only imagine. But yet something deeper is calling. A desire for work that's meaningful, transformative and rooted in who you really are. At CreativeMind, we train professional to guide others through real psychological transformation using Jungian principles, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. No cliches, no surface level tools, just depth, structure and purpose. Our ICF accredited Jungian Life coach training program provides a profound professional training in small cohorts that includes personal transformation with a dedicated coach and powerful tools to help you guide others in a deep, lasting transformation. Step into that next chapter of your personal and professional evolution. Join us by visiting creativemindlife.com and speak to an admission specialist today. That's creativemindlife.com
- [20:28]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
yeah. And the other side of the coin is that individuation, the way Jung means it, is different than enlightenment because for Jung, it's more about alignment with the self than transcendence. Meaning that we're not leaving our life for the monastery. We're not.
- [20:49]
Deborah Maldonado
Wouldn't that be nice just to go. I used to go to those Buddha centers and I'd be like, oh, he's so nice to leave. I was in the corporate world, I was like, be so nice to just sit in a nice quiet little meditative place.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
And that would drive me free
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Deborah Maldonado
maybe, maybe for a moment. But. Yeah, but like out in the world is where this. It's like a practical spirituality in a way.
- [21:12]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
The world is spiritual. I mean, that is the great lesson, right? That he. It's not. The world is not going to hell. If you think the world is going to hell, you're simply kind of creep, you know, like lending more energy to that, those negative ideas. The world is a creative place. We're here to create it, and we are creating it. It's simply that we're, we're doing it in an unconscious way most of the time. So the more conscious we become, then we can express, we can align with the higher principles, with higher knowledge, with the, the collective unconscious, as Jung says, and participate in our creation of the world instead of just seeing it as it's happening to me, and I'm just waiting to see what happens. No, you act in the creation of the world through individuation. So it's a different type of enlightenment. It's that it's one of collaboration with this cosmic consciousness, this intelligence.
- [22:22]
Deborah Maldonado
It's like if you had, you know, you lived in your house with your parents your whole life and you were limited to their rules, their assumptions, the people around you from when you were younger. And basically just that was the world to you. And individuation is about uncovering, you know, outside of the house. Like, what else is here. Not getting rid of the house, but expanding that sphere of awareness beyond just that personal, tiny little piece and seeing a whole world out there that is vast. And what reminds me of this is there's a movie called the Room, and it was a true story, I think. And the woman was being kidnapped by this man and had a baby with him. And he was like, you know, had her locked away in this room for years, and she had her little boy there. And so she created this whole world for him. Like, each corner of the room was a part of the world. And then when she finally got rescued, she was, like, so excited, and the little boy was terrified. He was so used to that room that he didn't want to believe there was anything outside. Like, he built his mind around that limited room. And so if you think about that idea, if you watch that movie, the whole. That's how our ego is. It's just, I'm so comfortable here. I know everything. And no, no, no, there isn't anything else out there because his imagination hadn't seen anything else. So what we're seeing in individuation, we're becoming aware of other parts of ourselves. Just even on a personal level of our personality we didn't know we had, and gifts and talents maybe we didn't know we had, but then we had see the spiritual power that we didn't know we had. So it's really an incredible journey. And again, it's not fixing yourself. Real change happens when we stop trying to change, when we're not working on that ego and trying to fix ourselves or seeing anything in that judgmental way, even being willing to step out into the unknown of what it would be like to just be outside of ourselves and outside of, you know, the limited ideas we have and assumptions that drive our life, what would be possible? And that's where, like, rebirth happens and we get to really live our purpose. And we see this all the time with people who can never leave that corporate job. That's my steady income. I'm used to getting money from someone else, and I just show up and I get my paycheck. And you're conditioned every day to show up on Monday, even though you're not really happy because you feel like that's the only place you can get money from. And then our clients leave the corporate world and they start their coaching business and they're like, oh, I can create my own money. Like, I didn't know that was possible because we hadn't done it before. But the ego will resist and will cling to that job and cling to that way and resist change because it just hadn't had the experience of anything else. And so individuation allows us to have access to greater parts of our mind and expansive parts of our mind beyond just that ego thinking, so that we can make those big changes in our life not to improve it, but to expand it and give us a more complicated replica repertoire to participate. Instead of playing like two, two notes on a piano, we're playing, you know, a concerto in our life.
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Dr. Rob Maldonado
I love it. That's. That's what individuation is.
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Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. And it is a very spiritual process, but it's not religious. So we have people from all religions, all backgrounds. They can actually. It doesn't replace religion. If you're very into your religion, you can incorporate it into whatever your faith is. It actually makes it even stronger. So what would be the final word, Rob, about individuation? This. This idea of what is possible when we do this?
- [26:12]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. I think ultimately it is a calling. Many are called, a few are chosen. And then out of the people that are called and some that are, you know, actually want to do it, often it's the people that persist and say, yes, this is meaningful and important for me, although it goes against all my social training, it's something I have to do. It's an inner calling. Right. An inner devotion to something kind of beyond our everyday life.
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Deborah Maldonado
Wouldn't you say that? It's not like you don't think, oh, I think I need individuation. Like something happens in your life where you're. You're like, I need to change. And individuation is the only thing that's actually going to get you to what you want. So you find it. It finds you. You see what, one of our videos or you read about Jung, the red book falls into your lap. Some friend is talking about Carl Jung. Or you see a Jung quote, and it's like calling you. And like you said that some people don't answer the call. And I think you have to be ready for it and you have to be. You have to want it, that you're willing to go through the resistance of the ego to make it happen.
- [27:20]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
Yeah. It's meaningful to you. And therefore you're willing to do whatever it takes a commitment to obtain it to. To follow that path.
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Deborah Maldonado
Yeah. And like again, you can go through your life and not individuate and improve yourself and have a, you know, good life. And, you know, but there's, there's some of you out there listening that are especially someone listening to young and podcast that are thinking, I want, I want it all. Like, I want to have more than just the ordinary life. I want an extraordinary life. And that's what this gives you, an extraordinary life. So this was a great little series. We will see you next week with a new topic. But thank you all for joining us on Jung on Purpose, and we look forward to another deep topic for you.
- [28:04]
Dr. Rob Maldonado
See you soon.
- [28:06]
Deborah Maldonado
Take care.
- [28:06]
Narrator
Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast before you leave and join us each week.
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Deborah Maldonado
Week. We'll see you soon.