Creativity and Coaching | Spiritual Influences in Coaching Part 7

Robert Maldonado  00:33

But it’s also part of our series on spirituality. So creativity and spirituality have always been linked. Recently we were talking about shamanism. If you think about the shamans world, it was all about dance, it was all about painting the body, using sacred objects, it was about dreaming, these trance states, very creative in their rituals, creating rituals that would heal people, that would take people out of their ordinary states of mind into higher consciousness. So spirituality and creativity have always been linked for human beings. It’s only in recent times that it’s fragmented into these specializations, that we only think of creative people as artists, or artists as the ones that are creative. But in reality everyone is creative. And if you notice, that’s when we’re really happy as human beings. It’s playful, it’s open, it’s non-judgement. And it’s not actually just producing the product of art. But it’s the art making that makes us happy.

Debra Maldonado  02:04

It’s interesting, a lot of my coaches that graduated our school talk about coaching is actually creative, too. Because there’s a process where you kind of learn the system, and you learn the scripts, and you learn the techniques, but then when you really get into it, when you’re with another person, that experience is actually very intuitive, very creative, almost like an improvisation. So you’re really basically tapping into that intuitive, creative self when you’re doing it. And when you’re receiving it, as well. It’s like opening up to a different part of your mind, I would say to your non-rational, non-linear creative play way of working, and that’s why I love Jungian work, because it is very creative, highly creative, instead of this linear, rational, structured way to approach the mind and approach life, taking steps, making goals, all those things. So let’s talk about how art has been influenced by spirituality. I mean, back in the early days, like you said, the shamans would dance. They came up with songs, even the Upanishads or the Vedas were sung.

Robert Maldonado  03:23

Yes, all those traditions were about chanting, recitation, meaning memorizing incredibly lengthy poems and stories, and then acting them out.

Debra Maldonado  03:37

And then Rumi had these swirling dervishes where they would do that ecstatic dance. And so many different, beautiful, indigenous cultures had their different dances for different things they wanted to manifest and even other rituals just in life, the passages of life, they would bring in artsy experiences. They didn’t just sit around and talk about it, they acted it out.

Robert Maldonado  04:03

Yes, sand painting, the sand mandalas, Tibetans make very beautiful designs that represented the self, higher consciousness, pure awareness. There is this deep connection between spiritual enlightenment and the creative process, the artistic process. But let’s define spirituality and creativity. So spirituality —  and this is for our own purposes as a way of contextualizing it. So, it’s a search for meaning, spirituality.

Debra Maldonado  04:49

That’s a simple way to put it.

Robert Maldonado  04:51

We know that the search for meaning is a very human endeavor. We all need meaning in our lives. One of the definitions, I remember when we were studying in clinical psychology was looking at what causes people to commit suicide. One of the main ones was the loss of meaning. They reach critical levels of meaninglessness in their life, and you cannot live without meaning. It is like the bread and butter for us.

Debra Maldonado  05:28

Which is Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. What kept him alive in the camp is that meaning.

Robert Maldonado  05:33

Absolutely. So at the heart of spirituality is this search for the meaning of life, our own life and the meaning of life in general. Number two is cultivating a relationship with mystery. Like you were talking about this rational way of being that approach. We love that approach, of course, we love logic, the logos, the understanding, the reason, but we need that other element. We need to understand that at the end of the day, it’s a mystery. We can never explain it away. We can’t rationalize it. We can’t just devise the formula and say we’re done. It is a living mystery, the presence that persist there.

Debra Maldonado  06:37

And what I like about that idea of the mystery is because sometimes we study religions and certain doctrines, and we think this is the way it is, this is the rule. True spirituality is asking and wrestling with “Is that it?” And falling in love with the mystery, not having to have everything spoon fed to you of what to believe, is true spirituality, where otherwise you’re in a religious— and the religion can have spirituality, but pure spirituality is that mystery and willing to ask or go where you haven’t gone before.

Robert Maldonado  07:23

And be comfortable with it because it’s really uncomfortable from the logical reasoning side. Because if you can’t solve something, it bugs you, it’s disturbing in a sense. But the spiritual element is to cultivate that sense of “we have to be okay with it, we were never going to figure it out logically.” But we can have a direct experience of it.

Debra Maldonado  07:54

And actually, just knowing something logically doesn’t make you really know it on a deep level, it just makes sense. But direct experience with the mystery helps you know it.

Robert Maldonado  08:10

So search for meaning, relationship with mystery. And the third one is about transformation. All spirituality is about transformation. In other words, it’s not just seeking “God, help me” or “The divine, the universe, help, please help me.”

Debra Maldonado  08:32

I’m going to remain the same ego, and you just put me in a different situation, where my ego is more comfortable, like in another relationship or more money. It’s about the spiritual identity of who you are.

Robert Maldonado  08:45

Yes, it’s about finding the courage within ourselves to face the mystery and the challenge of life. And finding that meaning. And that not only requires transformation, but as you approach that mystery, it’s going to transform you.

Debra Maldonado  09:10

It’s just like any hero’s journey. The person starts out as this ordinary person in their ordinary life, and they’re thrust into some situation where they’re forced to face an adverse situation and through that, it transforms them. They gather strength that they didn’t know they had, they find tools that they never knew existed, even talents that they never knew they had. That’s that spiritual transformation that happens. And we all rationally don’t want to take that journey. We all want to have everything just very easy and flowing, but it’s in that wrestling with what is life who am I that leads us to that transformation.

Robert Maldonado  09:55

That’s the definition of spirituality that we’re going by. There are other definitions, of course, it’s not a comprehensive one. But let’s define creativity, what do we mean by creativity. The process of bringing something new into being, that’s a direct quote by Rolo May who was an existential psychologist. So it is this process of bringing something new into being. So all creative work. And again, we’re all creative as human beings. It’s about bringing something unique into the universe. So the universe, like the word that we use, universal, or when we say “universal”, we mean that we all have it, we all share it. But the uniqueness is the opposite of that. And you notice that the universe manages to do that, we all share very similar minds, very similar bodies, very similar cultures, all the experimentations. But yet, we do it in a unique way. Like there is nobody exactly like you or me.

Debra Maldonado  11:30

And there will never be another you.

Robert Maldonado  11:31

Yes, it’s a remarkable thing. And I think animals are the same way. We see animals as one category, but essentially each one is unique. And even within the species, even within family groups. Each individual is unique, like we all. And so already we’re set up to express something unique to us or something that can only come through us. And Jung, of course, reflects that in his concepts of individuality or individuation. So that’s the number one definition. The second one that Jung saw, it is an expression of our authentic self, or our true self. Meaning creativity is the expression of our true self.

Debra Maldonado  12:39

I like it. And it doesn’t have to be creative. I think a lot of people think creative means to be great art, or you need to even be talented. It’s that expression, it’s just coming from my heart and playfulness.

Robert Maldonado  13:03

I think also, what he means is that it’s not just the surface persona, because he considered the persona as a type of mask that we wear, a role that we’re playing. And so the real creative aspect of our individuality comes from our true self, not just from the experience of being a particular person. But that’s where it connects to that spiritual quest. Because in order for the persona, or for us as personas, individuals to find the authentic self, we have to undergo that transformation.

Debra Maldonado  13:56

Yeah, like you said, it’s not the persona. That’s acting. We’re going to talk about ego inflation and the artists. So it’s the third one, do you want me to read it? Two types of knowledge. Rumi says there’s a lower and higher knowledge in creativity.

Robert Maldonado  14:21

Oh, sorry, that was the my error notes, that wasn’t Rumi. This idea of higher and lower knowledge actually goes back to the Upanishads. But it’s the idea that in creativity, in working with creative ideas, with the creative process, we’re working at two levels. One is at that persona level, the individual dealing with lower knowledge. And lower knowledge, it’s not putting it down in any way. It’s simply saying lower knowledge is the stuff that we know about the world, the facts.

Debra Maldonado  15:08

Let me ask you this, would lower knowledge be how to use the instrument, how to use the paintbrush, the theory behind the mechanical part of the art itself, how to put words together and all that. And then the higher knowledge would be more the divine influence and infiltration of that. So you can play the same chord, but you can play it with your heart, or you can just play it. You see this in some of the talent shows where singer sings the notes perfectly. They know how to use their instrument, their voice, and they have beautiful tone. But there’s no heart in it. Is that what you’re saying? I have all the mechanics, but I don’t have the higher knowledge. I mean, there’s other ways we talk about higher knowledge and lower knowledge. But this would be lined with creativity.

Robert Maldonado  16:03

Yes, for example, we know in music, there are musicians that are very technically precise. Meaning, their techniques are superb and refined and to the highest standards. But they lack that creative soul.

Debra Maldonado  16:30

Even pop music, you hear the same kind of tune all the time. And it’s interesting, I’ve noticed, and I know that they do this on purpose, the TED talks, if you watch TED Talks, you’ll notice that they all have the same rhythm. And every clock is that same rhythm. And it’s like “How can that be created?” They are brilliant ideas but it’s almost too robotic. I think they’re changing it now. But if you notice that something that’s supposed to be creative as a TED talk, can we tend to make it into that conformity? So I guess it’s a battle for creativity in a way, we take creative ideas, and then we want to conform to it. Make them more more mainstream in a way.

Robert Maldonado  17:25

It’s a struggle between formula and spontaneity. Because you see it in Hollywood, too. When a movie is successful, then all the other studios go out to try to replicate that and make the same formula to see if it works for them. And it usually doesn’t work for them. Because that’s not what it’s about.

Debra Maldonado  17:48

You see things like Seinfeld. The sitcoms are all set up the same way. And there’s a moral of the story at the end. And they said “No, there is no moral”, the opposite. And they would end the episode with no conclusion. It was always like a cliffhanger and then you never knew what happened. And they just did things differently. They did a whole episode in reverse. So breaking the rules would be that kind of higher, and then the lower would be just doing what you conform to. And the creativity is “Let me bring in something that has never been done before.”

Robert Maldonado  18:28

Like they say, art is hard to define, but I know it when I see it. Nobody can really define what it is because it is that higher knowledge, it’s the expression of the higher self. You can’t reduce it to a formula or to something specific and say “Let’s mass produce art.” It has to be something spontaneous, unique, new, but it same time it’s familiar, it’s that crossroad between the archetypal meaning, “I recognize that somehow, it corresponds to something in me” but yet it’s totally new, or a fresh new way of doing the music, doing the sculpture, the painting.

Debra Maldonado  19:20

And then these things where people get on it, like one person steps out and is the first person to do it, like Picasso. He did that abstract art that was never done before. And then all of a sudden, there were many Picassos everywhere. Everyone tried to take that and create a whole new art out of it. Again, the movies had the same, they basically made movies based on stage performances, the old movies, the 50s. And then they were like “It doesn’t have to be a show, everyone dancing all the time.” And then they started to work with different ways of producing movies. And singing, this popular throat singing that Adele brought in. It’s not unique anymore, if everyone’s doing it, it kind of loses it. And so then we need another creative person to come in and stretch it again and do something different.

Robert Maldonado  20:27

So we see that there’s a lot of overlap between the definition of spirituality and creativity. And it goes back to the that route that for human beings, the expression of art through dance, music, storytelling which became literature, theater, acting was rooted in those shamanistic spiritual traditions of transcending the everyday life and connecting with the spiritual.

Debra Maldonado  21:07

And like you said, finding meaning. The story or the ritual had a meaning to it, and why things happen, you know, why isn’t there rain, let’s do a rain dance, because the guys need to know, if there had to be some sort of meaning for us to feel connected to something. It just can’t be “Okay, it didn’t rain, we’re starving”, we had to have the meaning to it.

Robert Maldonado  21:33

So let’s talk about to how Jung saw it. Because he was very interested in both creativity and spirituality from the psychological and spiritual perspective. So how would you describe then the artistic process, the creative process from that Jungian perspective?

Debra Maldonado  21:59

Well, if you look at the Red Book, the image is a beautiful art. And then he would also have his patients draw art, draw mandalas and draw their dreams out and the symbols and all that. I think that where Jung and Freud diverged, and Freud was more of the mind is just kind of repressing, and it’s an information storage, where Jung saw this is a live psyche, I think that’s really where he said that’s where the imagination comes from. Einstein was influenced by him. And a lot of creative people, like inventors and stuff, use that imagination and creativity and visualization, all of that is creative. He was helping people find that creativity, find that access. And I think early on most of us are conditioned to be rational creatures, we’re conditioned to make rational decisions, play it safe, do what conforms with everyone else. But then there’s this other part of us that wants to live. And I think that at midlife we feel that urge, some of us feel that artistic urge earlier than others. But it’s that idea to create something new, and that newness is through us. And so that’s what I see his individuation processes about. And then the tools he used were dream interpretation, symbols, working with visualization, active imagination, using drawings. And then now there’s sand play, and there’s a bunch of other physical things that people do, even dance, just different ways to move your body, to get into that creative part of ourselves. So it’s out of that rational, linear, logical mind into the imagination.

Robert Maldonado  24:00

I think he just blew everyone away with this idea that the unconscious was creative. Freud had taught everyone that the unconscious was a repository of repressed and discarded memories and wishes that weren’t acceptable. But Jung said no, there are deeper layers to the unconscious that are actually creative. It’s its own intelligence, its own mind. It has its own will, its own direction. And it is the source and fountain of creativity. If you look at great art, it comes through people, it’s not the individual figuring something out and creating it. They’re compelled to express something deeper from within them. And that deeper layer is the collective unconscious.

Debra Maldonado  24:59

It’s almost like we’re all sitting on the top of the ocean. And the collective unconscious is all the creativity and all the possibilities. And then each of us has a direct access to it. And we can pull things up and bring them to the surface for everyone to see and say “Wow, look what I’ve created here.” And I think it’s on the surface, we’re all trying to remind each other, that we’re all one and that we’re all creative, and that we’re all seeing other aspects of ourselves. So someone who can sing and perform beautiful music is still a part of us that’s not maybe doing that right now. But it’s still a part of us, and we enjoy it. And being the listener is the audience for that person, the voice to be heard. So the art needs to be seen by others, it needs to be witnessed in a way. If you just keep the art to yourself, it doesn’t have its full extent of creative power.

Robert Maldonado  26:00

One of the interesting dynamics, of course, is that those archetypal ideas that we call great art, do come through individuals, and often the individual is completely side swiped by this calling in that they’re being used to bring forth these ideas into the world. And often it hurts them and destroys them. We see this — I wouldn’t say with all artists, we know there’s artists that somehow find a balance in their life. But those unique artists that self-destruct or find it very difficult to live up to the challenge of being this conduit for creative ideas.

Debra Maldonado  27:06

And do you think it’s the art itself that they’re opening themselves up to this creative force? And they don’t have a strong enough ego to hold this powerful, creative information that’s flowing through them? Or do you think it’s the inflated expectation of others for them? I guess it’s both. It’s that kind of inflation of “I am the artist and I am doing all this stuff.” I remember Michelangelo said that he didn’t create the David, God created the David, and he just chipped away the excess, so you can see it. And that’s kind of what we need to do as artists and as creative people in the world — whatever we’re bringing forth is not ours, the ego’s, it’s the divine, and it’s to acknowledge that and not be attached to it. But an artist who hasn’t done individuation doesn’t think that way. And then they’re battling with all this powerful creative dreams and inspiration, and it is almost like madness in a way that can drive them to madness if they don’t know how to work psychologically with all this, this content that’s emerging through them.

Robert Maldonado  28:25

There’s a great movie Amadeus. Most people have seen Amadeus, which is a story of Mozart. And you see there the dynamics of the persona shadow playing out in the creative process. You have this kid who’s Amadeus, starts very early on, and he’s genius at music, very inspired from the get go. So his persona, of course, starts getting built up. But they didn’t understand this mechanism of persona shadow back then. And his persona got so big. If you believe your other persona as that artist, then you’re buying into “This is me creating this incredible music, I am the genius.” And of course there is something to that, it is you that is expressing that. But without doing Shadow Work, meaning without understanding that there’s a price to pay for that, it keeps building up and building up and building up, this incredibly powerful shadow that’s going to crush everything you’ve created at the persona level.

Debra Maldonado  29:43

And that’s why we see so many brilliant artists die of overdoses and have tragedies in their life. Michael Jackson, what happened to him, he had abuse in his childhood from his father. He was a childhood star but never came to terms with all of that, and it’s so tragic. What happened to him is he tried to change his persona, and then all that fame and all that money, but he wasn’t grounded in reality that could help him. It’s just really tragic. I think that a lot of artists go to drugs or some kind of a mechanism to deal with all this content that’s coming forth through them, most of us that don’t have that streamline of consciousness, a lot of us can keep it at bay, because we have a very strong ego, but other people that are just more open to that creative process, they need to do their shadow work to build up the ego. So the conscious mind can relate to this unconscious. We can’t just let go of the conscious mind and just go into the unconscious because it can lead— there’s no structure. Even actors sometimes believe that they’re the famous person or they play a role, they have to extract themselves from the role afterwards, the method acting, where they actually become that person, that character, there’s a process for them to let go of it. But most of us are not trained in a process, so we believe in the character and then create a person and then you have all this expectation on you of fame that could give you this false sense of superiority when it’s just inflation of ego.

Robert Maldonado  31:44

That’s what Jung meant by ego inflation is that when you believe you are this creative genius as persona or you’re identifying with a persona, then the ego is inflated, meaning it becomes this grandiose sense of yourself that is going to create a very powerful, opposite shadow, meaning all that that genius is not goes into the shadow element. And the shadow acts as a balancing point. So as the ego inflates and gets overblown, the shadow acts like a thorn that’s going to pop that balloon, it’s going to pop the inflated ego. And it’s not going to be pretty, of course, because it’s going to wreck everything that the genius has created through their personality there.

Debra Maldonado  32:45

It’s the tragedy of being a creative person, untamed, or untrained with how to access this creativity, you need to understand how to utilize and channel that energy versus just go in there and be creative and then not know what to do next and the times when you’re not. And then maybe we could talk about those moments where someone has that creative flow, and then it shuts down. And they have that writer’s block or creative block. When I was a hypnotherapist I worked with a lot of artists who had creative block, and they would work with me on getting in their mind and helping them be more creative. There’s a lot of what I’ve discovered is the shadow with those people that had blocked creativity, there was a fear of people rejecting them or not approving of their work. When you’re in your ego, of course, you’re going to be afraid of what people think because you’re taking credit for the work. But if you don’t take credit or blame, then you can truly be yourself. A performer is the best performer when they don’t care what people think, they’re just in a zone and they act. I always know if I’m writing to have an agenda of what I want to say versus just opening up and just letting myself write.

Robert Maldonado  34:08

Absolutely. The conflict between persona and shadow in these cases would be solved as Jung would say because it’s a spiritual question. Here we see again the relationship between creativity and spirituality. If they understood that creativity is a spiritual journey that I’m on, it would protect them from that ego inflation. They would essentially see it as it’s not me, the individual, I’m not the one that is creating this art. It is coming through me. I’m expressing it. And indeed, we see some artists that were able to manage that process in their own way. They hadn’t read Jung, but they understood intuitively, that it’s not me, it’s not the ego that is creating this. It’s this divinity. Like Michelangelo said. It’s the divine, I’m giving credit to the divine, to the collective unconscious, as Jung would say.

Debra Maldonado  35:25

And I think it is really important to remember that you have to have a strong sense of consciousness of yourself before you can enter the unconscious, the deeper collective unconscious and all that creativity, or you can even lose yourself in there. Then you’ll take credit for everything that you get. This happens in all industries, even as someone who is in the corporate world, that is the CEO or founder, Elon Musk, or what’s his name, the guy who shoots the Tesla. But if they believe that they’re that person that’s a superstar, it will bite them if they don’t deal with the shadow.

Robert Maldonado  36:15

On a larger scale, we see it in the collective consciousness, in the collective culture. Because we’re so lopsided towards the rational side, trying to figure everything out and solve everything rationally, while building up that shadow, building up the opposing energy of creativity. And it has to do with the acknowledging and giving the divine its due. When we don’t do that, we accumulate that shadow and strengthen the shadow element. If you think about the Aztecs, what they would do is they would have ritual sacrifices, not as many people believe, as some kind of dark magic or anything like that. It was that they understood this principle. If you don’t acknowledge the divine by somehow connecting with it, giving back to it, acknowledging that everything is arising from that divine source, then you build up the shadow, and it’s going to take its revenge on you. And it’s going to demand its due at an opportunistic time, meaning on its own playing ground and in its own chaotic way.

Debra Maldonado  37:54

It’s kind of like the ring where the ring had all the power. And when the person would identify with it, they get mesmerized with the power and how destructive it was. So artists can use the collective unconscious to create their art, how do we, if we’re not an artist, how can we use art to individuate. The use of art in Jung — he drew mandalas, he drew pictures of his dreams. I used to love to write. But one thing I love is — I always had a good imagination to create stories — and so what I loved about what came out in me when I stepped into individuation was I realized how much I love writing visualizations and writing that kind of short story and using that imaginations, writing a little mini film. Writing those for me was a way to access creativity. Active imagination is a way that Jung would say you just let your creative mind use other part of your mind, the non-rational mind interacts with these symbols that are rising. And dance and music, like we talked about before, is a way that we can learn to interact with the unconscious. If we try to go toward it in a logical way, it’s just not going to give us what we need. You have to be creative, to be with the creative aspect of ourselves.

Robert Maldonado  39:36

Very much. So yes, that’s a great question — if it is not us, if it’s not the individual, then who is the one that is expressing this. So the concept of the self — and Jung has a little bit of difference between the Eastern philosophy of the self, or the higher self, but in general he’s talking about the same principle that the true self is the essence of us. So this is the way the Upanishads explain it. If you think about your mind, your individual mind, it’s a type of filter that collects information about your personal experiences, and it stores your personal memories, your individual way of doing things. So that’s our individuality here. But what allows it to do that, in the Upanishads it says, is a pure consciousness, a pure awareness, that allows it to do that. In other words, the individual mind is arising within that pure consciousness and is a part of that pure consciousness. And that is the true self in us. And it is the source of everything that we’re experiencing. From that perspective, the error is that we believe we are the individual mind with its ego. And that ego then gets into trouble when it believes that this creative power is coming from the individual ego mind.

Debra Maldonado  41:28

It’s almost like the rational to think that if you haven’t had a personal experience of something that’s in your informational processing bucket that your mind creates, then where else did this creativity come from? Then, if it came from a deeper part of yourself, or deeper spiritual essence, then that isn’t your persona, you’re getting that information, your ego is just collecting and remembering and learning how to speak. Maybe if you’re a teacher, like you said, a coach or a mentor, they’re sharing through the instrument of the body and the memory of what they’ve collected from their deeper self, but the wisdom is always coming from the same source. If they say “This is my wisdom, I created this wisdom”, then they’re off the rails. They can deliver the wisdom, but it’s not theirs. They’re the messenger of the wisdom. Does that make sense? And then everyone has a different way to label it and express it in different cultures — the yin and yang, the persona shadow, the masculine and feminine, or Shakti Shiva. There are many words and ways to express it but it’s all one truth ultimately, at the base of everything is one truth.

Robert Maldonado  42:43

And that was Jung’s purpose. He wanted to develop a psychology that accounted for these deeper principles, there’s no point in ignoring them. If we say they’re simply superstitions, part of our ancient past, and they have no place in our modern world, we’re throwing away the best part of our human experience just to be rational and to appear to be civilized and all this. It is the raw source of mystery, the definition of spirituality is that we need to include it in our modern world, there is still this mystery that we’ll never solve logically, but that we have to come to terms with.

Debra Maldonado  43:35

That’s why I love Jung’s work. It takes a while to grapple with it, it’s hard at first because it’s creative. It makes us question things and learn things. Even Eastern philosophy. Sometimes it’s like “What? I’m not the ego, and there’s no I, and how does that work?” And so it’s not that instant “That makes a lot of sense.” Like “Everything happens for a reason.” Oh, I believe that. The easy stuff to learn is more in line with our rational self. But the creative spirituality is really those things that we feel like we don’t get right away. We have to contemplate, we have to understand, and then we get that knowing on a deep level, and then it’s really powerful. Instead of just repeating something that you heard in Bible or another text that sounds good or posting a nice little quote on Facebook, thinking “I’m wise!” But if you don’t really wrestle with it, and sometimes when I’ll post Jung I’ll notice that people have challenge what he’s saying and it’s good, because that’s really what we want. We want to have someone who says “That doesn’t make sense.” That’s Carl Jung. If you read Jung, he sometimes doesn’t make any sense until he does. And then you look at it from that perspective. But we’re all divine. I always say we have spiritual amnesia, we just forget that that’s who we are. But we also don’t want to throw away the ego, we don’t want to dismiss our human mind, our rational mind, because it gives us an opportunity to have an individual experience of the Divine, only as us in this life in this moment. So we want to have both, we want to remember who we are in the whole system, don’t get lost in the ego, and then just don’t want to escape to the divine, we want to have that integration of human spirit expression.

Robert Maldonado  45:36

I just wanted to reiterate the definitions. Remember, the definition of spirituality is the search for meaning. It’s the relationship with a mystery. And it’s about transformation. And then the definition of creativity is the process of bringing something new into being, it is the expression of the authentic, true self. And it is this higher knowledge. Higher knowledge is always leading us towards that true self.

Debra Maldonado  46:14

Beautiful. Well, this was a great topic today. So those of you who haven’t done anything creative lately, it’s time to bring something new into being in your life. What’s something new you can bring into your life into being? And then really look for sense of meaning in your life. I think it’s really important that if you feel lost, if you feel confused, or you don’t know what the meaning is, you’re on the right track, because there’s a part of you that’s desiring for that meaning. So it’s good to have that instead of not even thinking about life, not even asking those questions. I mean, I know some people that go through life, and they are on auto motion, they go to their job, didn’t even question why they have meaning until something happens, like a friend dies, a parent dies, they get sick, or lose a job. And all of a sudden, it’s like “What is my life about?” So we want to search for it before those things happen. And that’s what makes life worth living — the good and bad, having the ego, having to deal with this personality, the conditioning of our mind, but also knowing that there’s this creative part of us that can bring new things in. So you already had [inaudible], you just forgot, time to wake up. Jung’s work is really powerful, so we highly recommend it. All right, thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next week, we’re starting a new series. We’ve been doing a lot of work with the collective unconscious and spirituality. And before that, we did talk about the archetypes. And so now we’re going to talk in the next series about mindset. What’s going on on the conscious level? How do we deal with this consciousness that we have, that consciousness and the big consciousness, conscious awareness, conscious experience that we have. A little bit of psychology, the ego, the persona, the mind, the cognition, how we perceive things, it’s going to be a great series. So we hope to see you next week for another fabulous episode of Soul Sessions with Creative Minds.

Robert Maldonado  48:38

Thanks for watching.

Debra Maldonado  48:38

Have a fabulous rest of your day.