← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Unlocking Potential: How Shadow Work Leads to Purpose
00:29:00
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Jung on purpose with CreativeMind, hosted by Deborah and Dr. Rob Maldonado, creators of the NeuroMindra coaching method based on Jungian psychology, non dual spirituality and social neuroscience. Join us each week as we explore personal growth for purpose seekers and the incredible inner journey of becoming your true self.
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B
Let's get started.
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A
Hello everybody, this is Jung on Purpose.
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B
I am Deborah Maldonado.
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C
And I'm Dr. Rob.
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B
And we're here to share some more.
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Juicy information around the process of individuation by Carl Jung.
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B
And also some eastern philosophy and little neuroscience thrown in there as well. And today's topic is shadow and your purpose and how shadow work can help you find your purpose.
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C
Awesome. And before we begin and get into that topic, just a friendly reminder, be sure to subscribe. It's free and it supports our channel. So thank you for listening, for watching. We really appreciate your time.
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B
Thank you, Rob. Always good at the plugs. So when we talk about shadow work, it's in the ether now, everyone, you see it everywhere. A lot of different takes on shadow work. Different, like therapy models and coaching models and then some people using it in another model that's not really young, just using the term. So we want to just before we jump, dive into shadow work and what it means for your purpose. I'd love for you, Rob, to give a little quick, brief overview of what shadow work is, what's the shadow, and. And why we need to work with our shadow in five seconds or less.
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C
Right? Right. Yeah. So if we think about our personality, what we call personality, Jung conceived of this personality as, as a mask, very much like an actor playing a role. So you can think of your personality as the role that you were handed by your parents and your teachers and society. And they told you this is the role you're going to be playing. And then you play it out, right? You act it out on the stage of life. Jung says there's nothing wrong with that. We need to do that in order to fit into society and play our role. But he says there's a shadow, meaning the things that we've repressed, forgotten, did not fit that role, but that are part of our, our soul and the expression of our, that deep longing that we have to be ourselves. All that is in the shadow, he says, meaning it's in the unconscious. So shadow is not bad. It has kind of a, a negative connotation, but it's, it simply means it's unseen, it's in the unconscious, it's in the darkness for us. So the task of Individuation is to bring that to the light and to be able to embrace it and accept it integrated, as he says. And that. That's really what the. The shadow work is. Now, what we're talking about today is how does that help us find our purpose and live our purpose?
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B
Well, when we think about our conditioning early in life, we are shaped by everything around us. And we're not really making free choices. We're making assumptions and being shaped and molded. And then we create this Persona, and we think we're making conscious decisions. We choose a career, maybe we choose a partner. We get married. We decide to have kids or not have kids. Like, we make all these life decisions, and it's all just in service of this Persona to people to like us, for people to be accepted into the group and to be successful in whatever level of success we have, like, you know, kind of fit in with society. And, you know, the soul in us has a different agenda. The soul has this expansive vision of what's possible in our lives, but we can't access it because we've been clouded. It's almost like it covers over us like a. Like blinders. We can't really see. We have, like, dark glasses on, and we only see our patterns. We can't really see those possibilities. So the reason we can't see the possibilities is because we really don't want to look at them. The ego's created a beautiful process called repression and rejection of these other parts of ourselves that we need to express our full potential, that the ego says, yeah, we don't need those things. Those are bad. Those are wrong, even if they're brilliant and wonderful. So things that are too light or too dark for that Persona that we developed, but we know something's off, because usually around midlife, you know, we'd say, like, over 35, we start to feel this restlessness, this questioning, and I should be happy. I attained all these things, but I'm not happy. I'm not really fulfilled. It's like I thought it was. If I get that next promotion, everything is going to be better. If I buy the bigger house or I go on that vacation. And we still feel this pressure inside of us, this nudge that says there's more. And the only way we can really hear that voice clearly is we have to face our shadow first. Because a shadow contains all that creative fire that we need to really live out our biggest dreams.
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C
I love that.
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A
Yeah.
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C
So the first principle is that not everything in the shadow is negative, which is often, like, if you go on the Internet often, you. You'll see that, that or that, that idea, right? That the shadow has negative content in it.
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B
The dark side, right?
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C
Yeah, that it's the dark side. There is something to that, of course, especially when you're dealing with shady characters. But for most of us, it's simply the things that did not help us integrate into our family, our culture, our society. So there's a lot of great, powerful stuff in the shadow that we can use for our purpose. So if we think about calling, right, often we. We think about what is your calling in life as an aspect of purpose. If we're only living from that surface level and we're acting out of the mask, like Jung says, a role that we're playing, then we're, we're. We're play acting at our purpose, at our, Our true profession and our job and our skills. Because we're, we're still in the actor role. We're an actor playing a role. And that actor is playing the role of somebody who is acting out their purpose or living their purpose. That's not a real purpose. That's why people often have that imposter syndrome they talk about, right? Because they feel like there's something wrong here. I seem to be doing the right things, but I don't feel it inside me. I don't feel it at the soul level. So what's in the shadow is often the deeper calling, the true calling of what we're meant to be doing in this life. And we can only find that if we integrate the shadow.
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B
Well, not only our true calling, but our. The way the behaviors and the ideas and the perceptions of ourselves that we don't want to look at or don't want to be. I say that we spends most of our life trying to be not someone else, but not when we not want to be, versus knowing who we really are. And so it's like if you need to be, maybe you need. Assertiveness is something you'll need to live your purpose or to feel a power and to feel an agency in your life to say no and keep boundaries. Maybe all of those things that you, you know, that. That demanding, maybe strict person that you don't want to let out because it's not going to please everyone. Mainly a lot of times the people that are closest to you, you end up just not using those mechanisms and other people carry them out and those people irritate you. You're like, why are that person so bossy? And if you had a little bossiness, maybe you could be the boss. So it's. It really is powerful to think about that. It's energy in reserve. That when we face it, it's not like, oh, I got to dig through my childhood and find all the flaws and traumas that happen to me. It's like, no, I got to dig and find the gold. What. What did I have to push away in order to survive that I couldn't tap into then, but now as an adult, I can tap into?
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C
Beautiful. The second principle is that purpose emerges from the tension between light and shadow. So here's what happens. As we are playing our role and as we start to mature and get into those peak productive years of our midland.
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Potential.
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Yeah, Peak potential years. Right. Then we start to get hints that there's something pushing back against us. Like, there's a. There's a shadow. There's an obstacle that is confronting us. A complex, a challenge that seems insurmountable to us. For some reason, most of us think that means I'm. I'm supposed to stop. Life is pushing back. My mind is resisting. That means my intuition is telling me to stop, to not go for my dreams, to give up all these things that people assume their mind is telling them or life is telling them. And this is the contrary. Jung says that is the signal that the unconscious is ready to come to the surface. That's shadow work. Instead of thinking as these obstacles, these challenges as blocks or things that are obstructing your path, look at them as opportunities that are going to reveal your true purpose in life. So all this time you've been acting, even playing the role of the mask. Now you're ready to live in a.
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B
Genuine role of the soul?
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Yes. To really live your purpose in the daylight of life.
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B
I love that. You know, a great question. I remember when I was first starting out my. As an entrepreneur, they said, what is the one thing you're not willing to give up for success? And I thought of you. I said, well, I don't want to be so successful that Rob leaves me because he thinks I'm materialistic or, you know, like, he's gonna. He's so spiritual. And he thinks, oh, man, she's really sold herself out, you know, to sell out or whatever.
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C
And.
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And I remember thinking that, wow, that's what the ego will use, but it will find ways to kind of point to that, like that. That I want this, but I don't want that. And so when you're saying the tension of the opposites, ask yourself that question. Is something you want what is one thing you want to give up and you don't? It's not that you have to, but what's the first thing that comes to your mind? You know, the unconscious is. Has that is thinking. That already is that fear of, I want to. I finally found love and I don't want to give that up for money and success. And it's like that, that the ego loves to play these little games with your mind that you're going to like, blow this relationship now. And so it finds ways to pull us back and get us back into that conformity instead of really expressing ourselves. So luckily I had good coaches and Rob did not leave me. And we were. Everything was happy. We lived happily ever after. But. But yeah, it can be really interesting what the fears that come up when we think about stretching outside of where we live. What will my family think? What will my kids think? What will my parents think? You know, what are my friends? What are they going to think about me? And that's a lot of pressure socially that we have to stay the same person and not evolve into our purpose.
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C
It is. Shadow work is not easy. That's what we tell our, our students and clients because it's going to require intense inner work. But it's going to lead to something amazing which is the ownership of your own life, your higher purpose, which is the really the aim of life. Everything is designed to, for us to, to reach this goal, self realization. And that can only happen if we take that inner journey of individuation. As Young says, this point, though, there's. There's a tension between the dark and the light, between the Persona and the shadow. And the resolution of that complex between the Persona and the shadow leads us to our purpose. So I encourage you to think, think about your obstacles in life, your challenges as having. Containing the seeds of your highest purpose. Instead of cursing them, instead of pushing them away, trying to avoid them, you stay with it, you move towards them, you open them up and you find your purpose.
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B
You know what I find, Bob, is that when I have a, like a, like a kind of a conflict in the outer world about something, like I'm struggling with breaking through something that I'm trying to create. And we're in our resolution of trying to, you know, figure out something, always from another perspective of my life happens like that kind of triggers me. And then I see that it's actually where I think, oh my God, I have to deal with this now and then. But I now I know that it's like, ooh, this has something in there. When you dig in there and you see what it's pulling from you, you start to see it was the answer to the problem. You know, we try to think the answer's out there somewhere. We got to find it out there. Some strategy or some, you know, pop advice. That quote that's going to break, break my, my, my mind and break it open. But it's really that kind of the, the, the conflicts in our life are reflecting that conflict within ourselves. And that's really what shadow work is about. It's about resolving the tension of the opposites.
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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.
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And rooted in who you really are.
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At Creative Mind, 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.
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Depth, structure and purpose.
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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.
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C
The third principle is a Shadow work is only the beginning of individuation. A lot of people think and they talk about shadow work as if it's the end of it, that you, once you do shadow work, you'll be done. But it's, it is the initiation stage, the entry point into a much larger process that Jung called individuation, which is the process of becoming yourself, your true self, the genuine self within you, the complete self within you, which is a very different experience than playing that role of the Persona.
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B
I think people resist it because we are so attached to our Persona, even though we may like have critical thoughts of ourselves on the conscious level and we want to be better, but in a way we just have comfort in the known. And when you do shadow work, it kind of disrupts everything that we thought was true and we start questioning everything. And there's a little discombobulation that happens where the ego's kind of like moves away from being. Like we talked about the captain of the ship and it has to take the seat on the right and the true self can now lead the life. But it's kind of disconcerting in a way. You go through it because all these things you thought were true. And that you absolutely were so firm in and rigid about it opens up another question. And you kind of. There's almost like a guilt in a way that comes up for why didn't I know this before? Or there's like a grief of the old life. And for me it was like, why couldn't I figure this out sooner? I'm glad I figured it out, but I could have learned this 10 years ago. That would have changed everything. So there's a lot of like, unsettledness after when you go through the shadow. But then what Jung says is that after shadow work, you work with a trigger. He says there's a piece that you achieve that's not easily disturbed. So instead of like pushing away these little triggers all the time, it's like, oh, you. You've kind of like have this solidity to you, this kind of groundedness that as these kind of conflicts come up again, you have more like strength and courage to face them because you've now you understand a little bit more about what you're dealing with.
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C
So imagine you're an actor playing a role. And all of a sudden you wake up and realize, I'm simply playing a role. I'm simply been an actor wearing a mask and I haven't really lived a genuine life. And you take it off. You take off a mask and you stop there. That's not the aim of individuation. That's shadow work. Taking off the mask is shadow work and realizing, oh, there's more to me. Now you have to build something. In other words, now you have to construct something that comes through your genuine self. That's the real work of individuation is that as you realize you're not beholden to that role that was given to you by society. Now the question becomes, what kind of life do I want to create for myself? And it has to be genuine and it has to be true. And that is your higher purpose right there. That becomes your work in life. And there's nothing like it. It's not similar to finding a job that you like or getting paid for, you know, doing what you love. It's very different. It's. There's a deep satisfaction in knowing that you're on your individuation path that is completely yours, that what you're creating is meant to be created only by you.
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B
So shadow work is more than just symptom relief. And let me like, deal with some upset emotions that are coming up and understand them intellectually and journal about them. And then I'm okay, and now I feel better and okay, maybe I need to be more this or that. And a lot of Persona swapping. I see I'm going to be more aggressive now, and then I'm going to integrate that. But it's really more than that. You're. You're bringing all parts of yourself and then making a choice that's outside of the two opposites. It's almost like it could be a blend of your Persona and shadow meeting and like, just like two opposites coming together and creating a third, this beautiful, new, true you, authentic you that lives with free will. That is choosing your life versus the conditioned reactions that we've had.
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C
So Jung says the privilege of a lifetime, the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. That's. That's the privilege that we have, right? And that is finding our purpose, living our purpose, or living into our purpose and individuating, taking off the mask, being genuine with ourselves, and then using our life energy, a life force to contribute to the collective, to the whole. That's when we really contribute to the world. Instead of just playing our roles, we're.
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B
Trying to fix ourselves in our own little life, in our, you know, self development. It's not self improvement, it's self realization. And after shadow work, you get to enter a larger part of your psyche, which is Jung called this collective unconscious. And that is like wisdom and humanity's wisdom and a lot of archetypal energy, that it's very, very limited. If you don't do shadow work and you're operating from this little Persona, you have to. You can access these amazing powers that you have within you already, and then you just see them out in the world, but you don't integrate them for yourself. And so, like, again, you say shadow work is just the first step. And so a lot of people say, oh, I've done shadow work. And it's like, but that's all they've done. And then they stop. And then maybe they did it, you know, to fix something in their life or change something. But you need to keep going. You need to now create something, or you're just rearranging the furniture. As I say, I love this too, this quote by Jung. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. And what I used to do, and I know a lot of people I hear that have done our work, and they fell into this trap, too, of that spiritual bypassing where I don't want to look at my dark stuff. I don't want to look at my path. I don't want to look at what's dark. I want to just be aligned with the lights and the beauty in the world. But then we end up projecting it still like it's not. We don't really truly embody it. We think it's out there somewhere. And so this work not only helps us face that what we think is, our ego thinks is dark, we get to access the light within and we truly can embody the spiritual power that we desire to have. And it's kind of a false, Almost like a false sense of power when we're bypassing and we're not really embodying it ourselves.
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C
I think I did a lot of spiritual bypassing in my days.
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B
Did you? So did I. I was telling. I think I told you I was like a spiritual. I was cosplaying a spiritual. Girl, when I met you, I was like, oh, yeah, my tarot cards and I had my crystals and I had my self Wayne Dyer books. And I thought I was so wise. And not to say those things aren't great. And it's better than not exploring anything because I think we all have that discovery phase where we just take on everything and we want to learn everything and we love the cool, magical stuff. But when I started doing the individuation process, it was like such a deeper, more direct experience of my spirituality than I ever had before. So if you are thinking about like, you like the spiritual work, this is really the real, the real steel, like you're really going to feel it inside of you. And I think the most powerful part of this idea of spiritual growth is through dreams and like, just seeing the reality that we live in. So it's. Yeah, after shadow work, there's so much more to explore about yourself and. And live life more symbolically versus getting so serious and very. From the sense of I and that kind of small, little fragile little ego trying to make it in the world. We bring the power of the universe with us wherever we go.
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C
So just to recap, the shadow is the hidden reservoir of potential. It's not. It's not the dark.
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It's not sledge.
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C
Yeah. Secondly, the purpose or purpose emerges from the tension between light and shadow that those things we call our obstacles, our triggers, our challenges, they're really there to teach us and guide us and often contain the very essence of our purpose in this life. And then thirdly, shadow work is not the end. It is the beginning, the entry point, the initiation into what Jung called individuation.
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B
Yeah. And it affects your brain, the neuroscience, you know, your, your brain starts to change and how you perceive the world, change, changes and it's almost like the, the perception mechanisms in our senses open up more and we start to see synchronicities and yeah, it's a magical time. So I hope you explore shadow work. If you want to find out more, you can always come to our website, see what we have. We have some courses and private coaching if you're interested and also if you want to be a Jungian coach and help people go on the individuation journey and get your own experience directly going through the process, let us know and we'll see you next week on Jung on Purpose.
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C
Thanks for listening. We really appreciate your time. Take care.
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A
Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast cast before you leave and join us each week.
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We'll see you soon.