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Google PodcastsIn honor of Mother’s Day this weekend, we will talk about the subject of the Mother Archetype.
Jung talked about the archetypes in the psyche and how they impact our life. One of the main archetypes that we have to come to terms with in order to free our mind is the Mother Archetype. In this Soul Session, we will talk about how your relationship with your personal mother drives your view of the world and influences your work and love relationships.
Learn the
- Light and Dark Aspects of the Mother Archetype
- Mother Archetype in Leadership
- How to use the Creative Mind to change your patterns to consciously create your destiny.
Transcript
Debra Maldonado 00:03
Welcome to Creative Mind Living, a podcast for personal growth based on the works of Carl Jung neuroscience and Eastern philosophies. We’re your hosts Debra Berndt Maldonado, and Dr. Rob Maldonado, founders of Creative Mind Coaching.
Robert Maldonado 00:20
Welcome to another edition of soul sessions. Hello. I’m your host, Dr. Robert Maldonado, and I’m here with my wife and partner,
Debra Maldonado 00:33
Debra Berndt Maldonado.
Robert Maldonado 00:35
So today we’re talking about the mother archetype in honor of Mother’s Day, huh? Beautiful day, beautiful day in such a special time for all families all around the world. We’re going to be talking about something pretty big, which is the mother archetype in the young incense. an archetype.
Debra Maldonado 01:01
And it’s such a big topic we don’t. There’s so much more to it than what we’re going to talk about today. But we’re going to give you the highlights.
Robert Maldonado 01:07
Absolutely. So we broke it down into the biology of motherhood, Mm hmm.
Debra Maldonado 01:16
The physical experience of it.
Robert Maldonado 01:18
The psychology of it, meaning, what do we do with this knowledge and this biology and this archetype that we deal with as human beings, similar socially and emotionally, how we interact with people and what goes on inside of us? Yes, and how it plays into relationships, which I think is really an interesting point.
Debra Maldonado 01:38
Both of work and love relationships.
Robert Maldonado 01:40
Both of them and then finally the spiritual element. Because there are all these different dimensions to it, and us working throughout the years with people and putting them through the individuation process. The mother archetype also Is plays a big role.
Debra Maldonado 02:02
What I noticed in our coaching coaches that go through our coach training is that one of the big and when I work with clients privately, one of the biggest transformations that happen in their life, they a lot of them come for love and relationships. But it’s really relationships with women or as a woman, they, they realize that their mother plays a big role. And so a lot of what happens is they they heal the relationship with their mother that’s been estranged, or they see their mother in a different way. They feel like their mother understands them because they’re changing inside. And then also the mother being mothers, kind of changing the dynamic with their children. So I see this pattern with both being our mothers and then being the mother and so there’s a very powerful force the mother archetype has on us and what it means to be a mother and how do we care for our children and those of us like myself? Who? Mother’s Day is really hard for me? Because I’ve never had kids. So how do we deal with that? That that, you know, the barren the mother who couldn’t have children? How does she deal with the idea of motherhood and all that stuff? So lots of juicy things to talk about.
Robert Maldonado 03:18
Yes. Are we going to do q&a?
Debra Maldonado 03:21
Yes, we’ll do q&a at the end. But I want to give a shout out to one of our birthday girls today. Happy birthday. Hope we’re doing this just for you. So,
Robert Maldonado 03:32
Yeah, before we get rolling, do you want to lead us in a little meditation?
Debra Maldonado 03:38
I thought you were going to do at this time? Do you want me to do it? Okay. So I just want to lead you through just a grounding meditation just to get you centered and listen to this wonderful topic because it may trigger some things in you and I want you to be grounded and able to receive so close your eyes for a minute and just take a few deep breaths and just exhale all the tension in your body. Just close down all the other browsers and just focus here now in this moment and just get a sense of your body, from your toes all the way down to the top, up to the top of your head, every cell of your body and just be grateful for this body that’s here to support you in this life. That houses your soul, your experience. Feel an amazing connection to this beautiful vessel holding your life experience. And deep within your body, there’s a beautiful space in your heart. imagine it being a beautiful light opening up like a beautiful flower. expanding out all the petals and feeling so much love for your body and its support it’s giving you keeping you healthy breathing and allow that love for yourself and your body to flow through every cell, nerve fiber of your being and deep within this beautiful centered space. May you be open to hear something transformational today in our channel. Walk and be free of something that is kept you stuck. So open your eyes and come back to the room. Thank you. And the reason I did that with the body is because I see we’re going to talk about the biology the body is really our mother, it’s its housing, our soul or our experience in life. It’s it’s a, it’s a vessel for us. And so it’s the mother.
Robert Maldonado 06:30
Absolutely. So that’s a good way to put it. So
Debra Maldonado 06:36
So let’s first of all, let’s talk about what it archetype is. So people understand what that is. It’s not a fairy lady in the spiritual goddess world, and she’s gonna come and it’s not a being.
Robert Maldonado 06:50
Right. So, the word goes back to Plato. The Greeks always, almost always, always, we go back to Greek ideas. He had this idea that the universe, the universal mind, if you will, created everything we see from ideas. And those ideas were the template, the the original form of the things we see in the world. For example, the sphere, you notice stars, planets, almost everything takes in space takes that shape of a sphere. So that’s a an archetype of a planet, a star. It operates universally.
Debra Maldonado 07:40
Mm hmm. So it’s a universal concept. That is part of just being conscious consciousness
Robert Maldonado 07:49
Of creation. Yeah. So everything we see, for example, a tree. He would say, well, there must have been an idea of a tree. Mm hmm. Original only in, in the universal mind as thought not as as matter. And then the trees that we see in the world are all patterned on the archetype of the tree.
Debra Maldonado 08:15
Would you would it be safe to say biologically that it’s kind of like the DNA, how it’s recorded and kind of like, it has codes and that each code has a different archetype? Like creates a different archetype? Or maybe that’s how it’s expressed?
Robert Maldonado 08:29
Sure.
Debra Maldonado 08:31
So yeah, so the archetype I always think of it as quite simply a universal pattern is something we all share. A human being is an archetype. A dog is an archetype. A hero is an archetype. We all share this idea, like we all can relate to it. It’s symbolic in a way it will the symbol is different than the archetype there’s the hero, and then it’s symbolized by Wonder Woman or Batman or Superman. Those are symbols of the archetype, but not the actual archetype. So we can’t really see the archetype. We just know it’s an idea because we see the pattern of it. So we see the expression of that archetype. So we can’t really see the mother archetype, all we can see is the symbolic representation of that archetype.
Robert Maldonado 09:14
Yes. And, and so you took this idea and incorporated into his psychology. His idea was that we must have these archetypes in our own unconscious mind. And we’re pre programmed, in a sense, we’re born with them. They’re part of our factory settings. We already have them in us. You know, you, in a sense, you can call them instincts also, that they play out instinctually unconsciously.
Debra Maldonado 09:49
So it’s more than just a biological desire. You know, kind of, I have a mother and I have this biological need and I’m going to suckle because it’s in my DNA, but there’s a wider concept of this idea of Mother of why do we stay in touch with our mother after the cycling stock on and why when we’re growing up we have still that bond with the mother it’s there’s something very special about that.
Robert Maldonado 10:12
So in biology we see it play out, like you say, in DNA from one cell organisms all the way to human life and and the higher animals that have very complex social systems. That so that that archetype is continuously playing out and has been playing out throughout all our evolution. So it’s very old. And our modern way of dealing with, let’s say, our mothers and in relationships, and with the earth as well as it is very new mother nature. Yeah, it’s kind of the latest incarnation is us. Moving the planet around or reshuffling The, the structure of the earth in our own image. And some people argue well, is the the new the better? Like is it the peak of evolution? Or is the the older system that has developed over millions of years a better way to, to live in the world?
Debra Maldonado 11:26
And what’s important to know like some universal themes of the mother are that she’s she’s the creator and also the destroyer. She can create she springs life. Well, you know, you’ve heard your mother say, I brought you into this world. Take care. You’ve heard that before. But it but it’s that kind of. If you look at nature, it has a destructive force is not just creating its storms and viruses and you know a lot of different things that happen to destroy fires. We have the fires in Kenya. fornia but aren’t there a natural part of nature, the cycle of nature. And so the mother is in all this good, you know, perfect, you know, this pure love and caring. It’s also the light and dark side of it, which is the destructive force, which it can destroy as much as create because you can’t if you have the power to create, you also have the power to destroy. And I think we have to get out of that duality of I only want the good side, I only want the positive side, we have to accept both the light in the dark. That’s really why I like Young’s work because, you know, I think before we, before I did this, it was Oh, like I was in hypnotherapy, and you know, that kind of like thinking positive type of self help. And it was all about being positive and then pushing away the negative like, don’t be negative, don’t talk negative, don’t be critical to yourself. Only do good and then it came into this like self punishment of I have to act and behave perfectly in order to get mad manifest what I want and and then just understanding what we’re doing with union psychology I don’t think I’ve ever known myself in such a deep way and understand the depths of our power in our, who we are as women and men. So this mother archetype is really a way for us to look beyond just the persona of this persona that I am whether your mother or not, or we all have a mother and what we’re dealing with on that level, but there’s a deeper psychic power that’s that we’re able to access if we understand it correctly.
Robert Maldonado 13:34
Right, which brings us to the second level, the psychology and for us the challenge was how do we incorporate these these deeper concepts because it is a depth psychology into a coaching model, meaning where we’re not pathologizing people’s
Debra Maldonado 13:58
mother issues.
Robert Maldonado 14:00
Yeah, the complexes. In Jungian therapy they talk about
Debra Maldonado 14:03
In analysis they talk about complexes.
Robert Maldonado 14:05
Yeah, the mother complex, the Hero complex, those kind of things. We saw them as we don’t need to pathologize them. If most of us are going through these processes, then it’s it’s normal. We were meant to go through these things.
Debra Maldonado 14:23
Like we all like think about it just in general with the emotions and we all have disgust and anger and fear and anxiety. And why is that so bad? Like, why do we have to put up a face that, like, we always say, how are you doing? I’m fine, I’m great. And inside you, you just want to say, I’m really it really sucks right now or I’m really having a tough time. We’re so afraid to just show how we really feel and there’s this shame of the dark side, you know, or the things that aren’t perfect and you know, with the mother, it’s the same thing. I work with a lot of women that are single mothers and one of the biggest, biggest challenges they have is wanting to be a good mother. You know, I want to be a good mother because my mother didn’t show me attention didn’t show me love. She wasn’t as kind to me she, you know, or she was so perfect and I want to be just like her, or compensating or whatever it is, and they have this kind of this high expectation of what a mother should be. And and then they beat themselves up if they don’t match up, am I being a good mother, they’re always questioning that and measuring themselves comparing to the other mothers. And then for me being single for a long time and then not being able to have kids. I’m a failure because I wasn’t a mother, you know. So comparing myself to my friends who have kids and who you know are, you know, their daughters are all grown up and they’re doing mother daughter stuff and it kind of pings in my heart a little bit sometimes. And it’s okay to feel that, you know, I know a lot of my clients have missed that window to have children and they have that pain expression. This weekend, and it’s like, it’s okay to feel that way. It’s okay to have regret a little bit and saying, Wow, I wish I would have found this work sooner. And you just be gentle with yourself and don’t brush it off and say, Well, everything happens for a reason. And let me justify, it’s about being open to all those emotions that we have gotten around motherhood and around that, that that identity of mother.
Robert Maldonado 16:22
Yeah, do you mind if I back up a little bit? So we put it in context of individuation? Sure, I know, this is not a class, but just to make sure we’re all on the same page. So the way you saw it is, as we’re growing up, we’re developing a concept of ourselves, which he called the persona, our identity. And of course, we look to our parents for the template, right? How do I act? And for most for all of us, I’d say we look to our mother because she’s our primary relationship she teaches us how to how to love right how to how to caring how to care for another person, you know, what I do with is these emotions, these this attachment that I have to hurt this dependency that I have, I have to deal as a child, I have to deal with all those emotions and come to terms with them somehow so I can go out into the world, and that becomes my persona.
Debra Maldonado 17:28
And so we look at our mother and we say, she’s our she’s either our ideal or we say, I don’t know I don’t like the way she is I want to be different than her. So either want to emulate her or reject her.
Robert Maldonado 17:41
That’s why. Yeah, we do that instinctively unconsciously, that the things we we experience as likable, as friendly as open as loving. We incorporate them into our persona but they Things that we say, Oh, she might be punishment, she might be punishing or withhold love, or rejection, or abandonment or any of those things, then we have to push those things into the shadow. We say, I don’t want to be that way. I never want to be that way.
Debra Maldonado 18:20
Well, also to the mother tends to discipline with praise, and then shame. So we learn that we, you know, that kind of pattern in the world is that if I do a good job, I’m going to be praised. But if I screw up, I’m going to be shamed. And we have that praise and shame pattern and it’s she’s doing it because instinctively that’s how she was raised, how she was disciplined, how a mother does have a good intention. She wants you to be a good child and a good human being and why you care, but the way she was taught discipline and how to rear you from her parents might not have been as super healthy either. And so we have this pattern from generation to generation. passed down of that that pattern of acceptance and non acceptance are good or bad.
Robert Maldonado 19:06
Yes. And so the individual then creates this persona and the shadow by default, anything that doesn’t fit into their self identity, they push into the shadow. So when they come to us as as a coach, now, the task to help them individuated In other words, to help them deal with a shadow and incorporate it to become whole, in a sense, like Jung would say is that now they have to face all those elements that they pushed away. Because most people what they’re doing is they’re projecting those things they pushed away onto their physical mother. So they think my mother screwed me up.
Debra Maldonado 19:55
Yeah, my mother, she’s the evil woman or she’s the best, most perfect woman And I don’t live up to her expectations. I mean, there’s that too.
Robert Maldonado 20:03
Yeah, it’s that split between the good and the bad, the the persona and the shadow. And so part of individuation, a big part of it is, can we come to terms with those two parts of who we are in society as a persona, the personality and and what we pushed away into the shadow into the unconscious? Now we have to integrate them. And, and this is the difficult part because projection is easy to say, Well, she’s the one that screwed me. Yeah.
Debra Maldonado 20:35
You know, by projection is easy.
Robert Maldonado 20:37
Yeah, it’s easy. You blame the other person. So you’re off the hook. But what we tell people is no, you have to take responsibility for it. Right? You have to see that it’s in your mind. Yeah, those things might have happened or they did happen. But it’s your interpretation of that element that’s in the unconscious. And now you have to come To terms within. And that’s, that’s why he says, it requires great more courage to integrate the shadow. Because now you have to accept that all those bad things you were seeing in your mother, or blaming your mother for. They’re really part of you.
Debra Maldonado 21:17
And we have to accept this. Not that we’re a bad person. This isn’t an identity. But here’s, I think the misconception of self identity in general is that we think that we’re, our behavior dictates who we are. We think if I do this, I’m a good person. If I do this, I’m a bad person. And we we define ourselves by our behavior, and we’re our emotions are what we accomplish. And that’s not who we are. That’s the persona. That’s just the ego. So he’s trying to like prop itself up and, you know, look good and to everyone else. And an early in life. That’s how their mother gate you know, kind of came from that assumption. as well that we are who we how we act. So if you do good at school and you behave, you’re going to, you know, succeed in life. And so I’m going to teach you how to do that. And then, you know, unconsciously the mother’s telling us, we, you’re a bad girl, you’re a bad girl, you need to be a good girl, you’re bad boy, you need to be you’re, that’s bad. And then you you kind of use that kind of tie your behavior, so connected to your essence, and how we act and we screw up and we we are, you know, hurt people’s feelings. That doesn’t define us. That doesn’t define us. It doesn’t say, since I hurt Mary’s feelings, that I must be a bad person. But that’s how we were raised. And that’s kind of that mother archetype. It said, If I cause harm, I must be evil in some way. And we have to know that, again, that duality is that we aren’t what we do. And then we could start looking at the dark side of them or the mother and we can say, Oh, I haven’t tendency to be a little selfish or have a tendency to be a little short, or have a tendency to lose my temper. And that’s just part of being human versus I got to fix that, because that’s the bad part of me. Yeah.
Robert Maldonado 23:13
I know, we’ve spoken about kind of this, this trend since the 80s. Women have been entering the workforce in mass. And I don’t think the psychology has caught up with what, what that entails. Because you have now a lot of their mothers were stay at home moms, the domesticated mother, woman who served or was subservient to the man. Or at least that’s the way it appeared. Right. And obviously, there were divisions of labor and no, it was cooperation.
Debra Maldonado 23:56
He was having cocktails at lunch. Like, if you ever saw Revolutionary Road. He’s like having sex with the Secretary and the woman’s working and taking care of the kids.
Robert Maldonado 24:06
That’s right. But it was, in a sense, it was cooperation to raise the kids. But a lot of independent women grew up with the idea of rejecting that and saying, No, I’m going to be a professional woman. I’m going to be independent. I have my own money. I have my own lifestyle. The Psychology of that is really interesting, and the way it plays out.
Debra Maldonado 24:29
Well, you know, when I was younger, I was thinking about this this morning, we were talking about the mother archetype. I was thinking about when I was in church, I was raised Catholic. I was in church, I was like seven years old. And ever since I was little, I always wanted to be a celebrity and a movie star, like I loved, you know, TV and like singing in front of my mirror and I’m going to be a famous singer until someone told me I couldn’t sing. But I always want to have this kind of adventurous spirit. And I remember looking at my mother at church and going Oh, she’s so sweet. She’s like family and stuff, but Her life is so boring. She’s not gonna have to be famous like me. And I remember having that thought. But then when I got older and got to dating age, all I thought about was being just like my mom. It’s almost like I shut that freedom out. But it was still a part of me it was still that seed was there that I kind of saw. Maybe I don’t want the family life and I didn’t realize it until after we met you and I met I thought my all my issues were with my dad. But after we met I realized oh my god, I was so afraid of being trapped and being losing my power. And you know, we talked about this is that the it’s love and power is is the the idea of what we see in in the traditional marriage or the old fashioned marriage was the father had the power. The mother gave us the love.
Robert Maldonado 25:46
Yeah, Jung says that the love and power are the shadow of each other. So there’s kind of a tendency to towards power than love goes into the shadow doesn’t mean it’s not there it exists but it’s repressed in a sense.
Debra Maldonado 26:06
So when we think about work relationships and the power and your you see your mother being the stay at home mom doesn’t have her own bank account doesn’t have can’t make any financial decisions without the Father. And then you become the corporate woman you’re saying I’m never letting that happen to me and even if you’re not even conscious of it, you may be take the power role, because you want to be in control and you Push Love Away and not in a while you push romantic love away, but you also push your emotions away and so, you may as a boss, either take the role of the heart, you know, not let anyone kind of manipulate you or feel like people are manipulating you like a child. You see your you see your employees or your team. As as children. You take on that whatever the mother archetype role, and then they also if you have a female boss, you’re pretty injecting your mother onto her. So this game is playing out. Even though you’re grown up, it’s that same dynamic or whatever your judgments are in, everyone’s different. This isn’t a cookie cutter, every woman who has stayed at home mom acts this way, we all have a unique perception of what we liked what we didn’t like the qualities and traits. But then we end up projecting that onto our female bosses. And there’s a lot I work with a lot of women that are very, you know, successful and they’re their bosses are women. And there’s always this tug with the power struggle with them. And it’s because that female is projecting her mother’s stuff, or, you know, her whole family dynamic onto her team. And there’s certain people that will will trigger you more so you may feel targeted at by your boss more than anyone else because you have a quality that that boss is connecting to something in her childhood. And so you can’t prevent that and but you have to wonder, Well, why is this happening to me If we fit together like puzzle pieces just like with love, there’s something in your boss that’s triggering something in you. So I always say that you figure out what your pieces and when you figure out your shadow either that boss fades away or your dynamic with each other will shift but you’re entangled with each other spot with your shadows and that this whole idea of the roles of mother and because if you think about it, your bosses really has power over keeping it survival or destroying us you can fire you so it’s that kind of creation destruction she can create. You know, you getting a promotion or she could give you a you know, kick you out.
Robert Maldonado 28:42
Yes. So I’m more interested in the relationships for some reason.
Debra Maldonado 28:46
Oh really? Okay, let’s talk about that.
Robert Maldonado 28:49
Well, because you we see this phenomena that let’s say a woman has power, financial power independence, you know, she’s she’s pretty much free. rejected the submissive mother role. Then, when she meets a man that makes less than her. Maybe she might not have a problem with it, but the guy might have a problem with it.
Debra Maldonado 29:18
And she becomes his mother, in a way? Could be?
Robert Maldonado 29:22
Yes, you have all those dynamics playing like you were saying this is just an example. But everyone is unique and different. But, but those dynamics have to play out the struggle between love and power plays out in the couple in the relationship.
Debra Maldonado 29:40
And many times power equals money and authorities. And so
Robert Maldonado 29:46
Independence.
Debra Maldonado 29:46
Yeah. And so you see a lot of women that, you know, famous women that have really successful, they struggle with relationships because the man makes less or, you know, he’s not famous.
Robert Maldonado 29:59
We’ve seen it in our own industry. In our coaching industry there. There are females that are very houses and their husbands take the kind of the subservient role in the business anyway.
Debra Maldonado 30:12
Yeah. And they, then they end up resenting the husband or like it or way the husband can resent the wife and feel they are not in power. And so, yeah, and, and so also with dating, I think a lot of women that are professional and successful or some level of success, they’re looking for their power match. Right. And, but they I think, for women there, I think it’s really that power match they’re looking for, versus the love match. They’re the kind of leave the love part separately. I mean, they get infatuated and all those things, but it’s almost like love becomes secondary to when they approach it. And this is not everyone, but a lot of women. I see they’re telling me about the matches, they see Oh, he has this degree or He’s, you know, interested in this topic and he seems to be successful. And, you know, he’s well established or Oh my god, he still lives with his mother. I don’t know if I can date this person. And it’s like the if they don’t have power, it’s like, erased almost. Yeah. It’s all about their kind of really, it’s not the guy, but they’re projecting this idea that it’s almost like a conflict. I want someone who’s powerful and successful, because the same women will say if a guy is more successful than them, they feel like oh, that he wouldn’t want me. And they measure almost like their their value and worth over their sense of power, versus their ability to love.
Robert Maldonado 31:44
Yeah. So given this new dynamic that changed the game between men and women. There’s there’s a big need to understand the psyche at this level, because otherwise it’s almost impossible. For people to match up successfully, because all this projection is going on and all this unconscious rejection, you know, if the woman rejects the mother role, right the stay at home mother role. She’s gonna throw out love essentially. And even though consciously she might say, I’m ready to create a relationship, the unconscious is going to prevent her from creating because she’s going to project the loss of power. Well the reason she rejected the mother role was because the mother didn’t have any power.
Debra Maldonado 32:40
And here’s the kicker whenever I looked at my mother, I love my mother and I, she’s such a loving person. And but I always had this perception that my dad controlled everything. And until later when I grew up, I realized how much my dad really loved her and adored her and like he would call her when their wedding song would come on. He would be at work and go Hey, turn on this channel. I mean, he was so romantic. He didn’t show any of that to us. And so I was thinking he’s just this tyrant. And he’s saying make dinner and how come you know foods out on the table? And I’m like, I don’t want to be like that. And then, and what I really realized is how much power she did have over him like she, he, he, like, put her on a pedestal. And but as kids, you don’t see it. So it really is you think you know, your parents, you think you’re like, I know them. This is what I experience and you make all these judgments about your mother and your father. And you think you’re right. And then you talk to your siblings, and they’re like, that’s not what I saw at all. I remember one of my clients, she said, she went to a funeral of her mother. And she said, You know, they had four of them. And she said, two of her siblings, were talking about this great woman. And she said her and her other sibling were looking going, Who is this woman they’re talking about? And so we have to again, remember that what we’re really putting in our minds in ourselves. He isn’t who our mother was, or our father was. But it’s our perception of who they were. And as we get older, this is the trickier part is as we get older, we say, Oh, I have a great relationship with my mother. Now when I was younger I didn’t and I was in my, you know, teenage age and rebellion. And now I have this great relationship. Well, the template was formed before your eight, almost five emotional template. So it’s, it doesn’t mean so you consciously outgrew them. But unconsciously, those patterns are still there. And you’re carrying them through relationships and through all relationships with your team, with your bosses with your relationships. And so the mother is interesting, it’s she’s the giver of life. And you know what I love what young says is that your relationship with your mother is how you perceive it is how you perceive your relationship with the world. So if you saw your mother is nurturing and loving, and trusting, and kind, you will tend to trust the world. You trust things in The world. And if she made you feel worthy and good, you will tend to expect that of the world. But if you see your mother as that relationship being judgmental, and critical, you are going to see the world as judgmental and critical and unsafe. And so think about how you see the world how safe you feel to step out into the world, communicate with others, relate to men. And you’ll know that that’s the seed was planted very, very young of how you perceived not how your mother was, but how you perceive that relationship.
Robert Maldonado 35:35
Yeah, well, that’s a good segue segue into the next part, which is the spiritual element, the mother archetype. So back to individuation, as we get people to confront this part of their unconscious mind, their personal unconscious, their shadow, as Jung would call it. They’re able to integrate and understand why they’ve been pushing away love Hmm. Or why they’ve been getting the results in in romantic situations and in work. Because of that experience and that interpretation that they had in their unconscious mind.
Debra Maldonado 36:13
Well, one more thing too is that a lot of our coaches, they start and they go, they’re coaching clients and they become the mother to the client in a way they take on that mother role, surrogately without not establishing that but then with the client will tend to look to the kid especially she’s female. If it’s a male coach, they’ll look they’ll see the father role. And so a lot of our coaches when they go to sell coaching packages, you know, or I’ve seen this in all the coaching and you see they’re so nervous about asking for the money or giving all our secrets. Now, but I’m just saying that they, but it’s really a great opportunity that if you are our coach or you want to be a coach, you need to come to terms of the mother archetype. You need to understand, so you can be a better coach to your clients, you can see their projections, you can be the good and not get caught up in your own mother stuff with them, you know, like over giving and making sure smoothing things over all the time and then sacrificing your own boundaries and all those things that we learn from our mothers, you know, but like you said, it’s like instinctually, we learn how to behave and what’s right and wrong and take on their, their patterns in a way.
Robert Maldonado 37:29
Right? And the only way to get to the spiritual element of the mother archetype is once you integrate your personal mother and essence or your relationship with her, in other words, your personal shadow, once you understand that, it is part of your own psychology, your own mind that you’re working with. Not the external mother, not the things that happened in the past. This is where Jung says I’m not what happened to me. I decide who I am, who I want to be. But you can only do that once you integrate these two elements, the persona and the shadow. Then you enter into the what he called the symbolic life. And in symbolic life, then you start to see the world as your mother.
Debra Maldonado 38:18
Yeah. as a as a, almost like a life giver. You’re it’s a nourishing, warm, welcoming. It’s like a womb in a way. It’s this this it gives you everything you need. And so imagine going in your life and stepping out in whatever you want to do find love. Find you know the right career. Be more successful. Imagine the world is friendly to your plants, that Wallace wattles The world is friendly, it’s nurturing. It’s giving it’s it’s and it’s, it’s abundant. You know, that’s the mother and and that would be a beautiful energy to bring That’s like the ultimate. Once you integrate the shadow, you start to see the world in a different way. You see yourself in a different way and then that reflects out into the world.
Robert Maldonado 39:09
Yeah, the spiritual level. The world, the physical universe is the mother energy, the feminine energy, the created manifested universe. And the Spirit is the Father. And as human beings were right in the center, we’re both spirit and matter. Our bodies are made out of matter and we interact with the world in this physical way. But our spirit is tied to that consciousness, that pure consciousness that everything arises from.
Debra Maldonado 39:50
So the father the masculine is the active force. That kind of gives us life. It propels us forward, it drives our will and then the feminine is the receptive, the nurturing, the creativity, the the abundant, the matter kind of coming to life. Yes. Yeah. And so if you don’t want to replant, it loses its life. So we need to how do we nourish our soul with spiritual knowledge, so that we can be you know, nourish the matter, that’s who we are, and be creative in our life. And a lot of people feel guilty, you know, the mother thing is don’t take too much and don’t take on too much or be a burden to other people. Like that’s a big mother thing. It’s our right to grow as much as we can, you know, to to be as abundant as we can. As long as it’s for more life. It’s not from an ego sense. I mean, a lot of people, you know, there’s there’s rich people that take money and they’re hoarding it and they’re using it for power. But truly a true abundance is that you make the world a better place that you’re, you’re bringing that abundance and by you being abundant, you’re sharing that making everyone around you happy and fulfilled and.
Robert Maldonado 41:06
Yes, because ultimately those those two energies of spirit and matter are one. There’s no distinction.
Debra Maldonado 41:14
But when they’re they can be out of balance.
Robert Maldonado 41:16
Yeah, absolutely. Just like when we’re out of balance when we haven’t integrated our shadow or or our unconscious mind, we’re split against ourselves. We’re thinking everything is split, there’s good and bad and and there’s the out there and me in here. And instead of seeing it as harmonious, like, spirit and matter, I’m meant to cooperate. And in that cooperation, we come about this human mind that we have is, you know, it’s an incredible opportunity for us to to really develop our spirituality. But a lot of people try to jump from
Debra Maldonado 42:01
the biological to the spiritual without doing this without doing the the psychological work, they haven’t done the Shadow Work and so then they go and try to balance masculine feminine, but the feminine is still reflecting their personal history and their past prejudices and assumptions that are off base from truth. And they’re acting from the wrong. Not wrong but the incorrect perception.
Robert Maldonado 42:27
Yeah, that’s spiritual bypassing. We’ve seen a lot of that.
Debra Maldonado 42:32
And it’s not a big problem. All it requires a little bit of personal work, personal development, I guess that’s why it’s called personal because you have to work on your personal history. And to quite simply talk about the process. It’s really, that we’re meant to have more in life. We’re meant to grow. That’s our natural state. Spiritual Spirit wants to grow and expand and be more of it. More life. And so we go in life and we have these desires for more. But our ego takes over and makes those desires for more about our worthiness or if we’re good enough, and then we can have those things that we desire. And then on the way to that desire, there’s going to be conflicts. And so those conflicts are showing our internal conflict with ourselves over having that desire that would if I take too much, or what if I lose myself to this person, this relationship and all that stuff. So when we have a conflict or things aren’t showing up, that’s the work it’s really just working with. What is inside of us that’s triggering this conflict. My boss has given me trouble. There’s something here. It’s actually it’s a it’s a step. It’s almost like a muscle builder to grow, go to the next level. It’s like when you see steps, there’s like flatness and then there’s the flat part of the upper Part of the step and then the next level, it’s like you have to hit that wall in order to go up. And so that wall is actually it’s not a block, it’s actually a step steps to take us there. And what happens is in spiritual bypassing is that people hit walls and then they’re looking for another path, and they hit wall, I’m going to look for another path, and they end up being put in a, in a box that they can’t get out of. And they just make a different story about where they are and how it’s meant to be and how their true love isn’t going to come for another two years. And that’s okay, because that’s divine and timing and all that stuff. And then we end up losing that the wall or the conflicts are really there, as as as stairways and as a ladders to our more awareness and more life. And so it’s just really psychologically approaching it as an opportunity versus approaching it as as something to get rid of or avoid.
Robert Maldonado 44:57
Yeah, that’s true. And the answer are always right there and the things that appear to be challenging you to be like some people say that these things are blocking me. They’re not really blocking you, they’re giving you an opportunity to work through them. They’re showing up, they’re arising in your consciousness to teach you the lesson that you need to learn. And so it’s about being very present to where you’re at what has come up for you what you’ve created. And, and then you see that everything is perfect. There’s really nothing to change. All you have to do is open your mind and approach these things with that perspective, that they’re there to teach you to guide you.
Debra Maldonado 45:43
And one last thing before we go to questions is to really say, like, stop mothering yourself in a critical voice, you know, like you should have done it better. And I think you know, you screwed that one up, to be gentle with yourself and not so hard. And also, for me, I noticed that I was always often very careful, like I was afraid of conflict. As a mother, the mother archetype played out in me on a personal level is that wanting to make sure everyone was happy. And that and it turns into very controlling kind of patterns. So we ended up controlling the relationships, we have the dating experience, the work experience, I noticed that I didn’t take as many risks as I should have. Because I mean, I did done I kind of go from loose risk to that. But anytime I was stuck, I would feel that constriction of that mothering of the business like my business is my child. And I I don’t want to like it Don’t be harmed or I want to protect it and you know, that kind of just and so when we talk about the mother being in the creative and the destructive, that we can actually have that tendency in us to be destructive when we’re we’re holding on too tight. We do this with relationships, we’re trying to control the other person or nagging the other person, we kind of take the fun out of things. Or we beat ourselves up and we take the fun out of life. And that’s that destructive force. So the mother, she kind of wants has a good intention. But if the ego takes over, it just kind of becomes very destructive.
Robert Maldonado 47:23
Yes. And in thinking about our biological mothers, when we take this perspective, we see that they were doing the best they could. So most of us, we love our mothers. And almost all of us have a little resentment perhaps, in the way we grew up in something that happened in you know, the personal dynamics of dealing with this person. That Jung says we’re projecting the doctype onto them. we’re projecting is huge. Mother archetype unto one person, and that’s a lot of responsibility that we’re placing on them.
Debra Maldonado 48:06
Yes, actually, that’s a really good point I read that that we, we put an impossible level of expectation on our mothers that you’re supposed to be good. You’re never supposed to leave me are always supposed to love me. And we project that on to and then imagine how that happens in relationships.
Robert Maldonado 48:24
Right? But it’s but that projection is bound to cause a little resentment again, because the expectation is unrealistic. You know, they’re human beings. They’re doing the best they can. They in turn, were raised by some an imperfect human being as well.
Debra Maldonado 48:41
And in a different generation. I mean, think two generations back. The role of women is much different than it is now. I mean, most women even 50 years ago, you could either be a nurse, you could be a schoolteacher, or what was our housewife? I think those are the only three options you had. It really wasn’t a lot of Oh, you can be a bass business executive.
Robert Maldonado 49:03
Yeah. And so, uh, you know, the approach helps us understand our biological mothers and and drop all that resentment or expectation of perfectness, like you said, and understand them as human beings. And then we can really love them and understand all they did for us. They brought us into the world, they cared for us, they clothed those they protected us when we were most vulnerable. So they did us an incredible favor.
Debra Maldonado 49:35
If we’re alive today. We have to thank her mother’s for that.
Robert Maldonado 49:38
That’s right. That’s right.
Debra Maldonado 49:39
And it’s also to if it’s not a biological mother, if it’s you were adopted, all that stuff comes at best, even complex, more complicated and stepmothers. And you have more
Robert Maldonado 49:48
than anybody that took care of us because, you know, it
Debra Maldonado 49:51
was their nanny too, right? Yeah,
Robert Maldonado 49:52
I was thinking about this. I had so many mothers I had my mother of course and then my two grandmother’s and then all my ads They were all care caring for me. They were all mothers essentially. And, and, and family friends and, you know, it just goes on and on. And so yeah, it’s not just the biological mother, but in it again, it’s that larger archetype that we’re dealing with the world that sustains us, protects us.
Debra Maldonado 50:24
And to accept the light and dark sides of both. And know that we have light and dark sides in ourselves. And the only they’re not good or bad. They’re just different elements and the ego, human ego makes the judgments and assumptions around that. And it’s all subjective. I mean, for some people being direct and short, is better I’d rather have someone tell me exactly how they feel. Then someone lie to me and say you’re so great and talk behind my back. So it’s like what is better to be sweet and mischievious or, and then you see this with your mother too. You can see that her being sweet to people and then talking behind to you going, Oh, Mary next door is just a terrible person, why are you so nice to them you’re learning how to be and that kind of do I trust when people are nice. So there’s a lot that we absorb from our mothers and that early life she’s really has such an influence on us. But we also want to thank her. And also remember that what we’re seeing is a perception and our own judgement of what we perceive happened. And it’s always very different and unique for every person.
Robert Maldonado 51:32
That’s one of the things I’ve observed people that take this process seriously and go through the individuation process with us. At the heart of it is off and the relationship with a mother. And it changes. It changes they could proceed along the path.
Debra Maldonado 51:48
For both men and women.
Robert Maldonado 51:50
For both men and women. And the relationship with a mother then becomes something more meaningful and more intimate. Anybody connected.
Debra Maldonado 52:00
And it is the most spiritual thing we can do. And a lot of people think they connect with the Spirit. And they think that’s going to lead me to the promised land. But it’s the soul of the mother that we really have to come to terms with. Because that’s the matter that’s the physical world. And that’s our experience in the world. And that’s all we have to be conscious of. We can’t see the invisible we can’t feel the invisible so we have that the mother is a vessel for our life. So the world is that vessel, the the body is our vessel. And the mother was a container for us growing up in the house and all that. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. We’re gonna go to questions now. Okay, just saw loving message from my mom reminding me to eat well and take care of myself, but it’s such a mother. I love the duality of the depths of our emotions. They all have a place.
Robert Maldonado 52:56
Absolutely.
Debra Maldonado 52:58
That hits me in the field. I have felt the pain to around not having children even though I never really wanted them all that badly. Yeah, it’s kind of like a society thing that we feel this expectation. And then a lot of people will ask like, why didn’t you have kids? Or even a woman? Why don’t you want children? If it’s stolen? Why would she want children like it’s the best thing in the world? I asked my friend that once. I was like, why don’t you want kids? Like I thought it was like the oddest thing that not wanting children. And now I could see that, yeah, there’s, you know, there’s positive and negative and having children and not and making those choices.
Robert Maldonado 53:36
I would say also that you don’t have to have kids to be a mother. Like I was saying, my mom passed away, but one of my aunts she’s like, my mother now. Yeah. And she never had kids. But to me, she’s a mother image. Yeah.
Debra Maldonado 53:59
You talk about the mother archetype. But you recently talked about the mother persona, what’s the difference? Well, the mother persona is really the mother archetype is a broader term, which is the, the, where the mother persona came from. So imagine the mother archetype being the role of the mother, and then a woman’s role, the she could either take the mother role and express her personal mother stuff in love, where she can take the role of the professional, or she could take the role of the lover, which is like, I’m just wanting to be sexual. And so it’s all based actually on that mother relationship. So how because the mother, there’s many types of mothers, right? So there’s many types of women. And Tony Wolf saw that back in 100 years ago that women basically had four avenues. And I know women are much more complex than that, but it’s really kind of a great way to think about it. You either become the wife, and then your children become a priority and the husband’s like, Yeah, but the kids you know are the priority, or you become the lover with a man is the priority. And you’re just like falling you fall in love all the time and everything’s about the man and typically either the other woman or someone who’s always obsessed with an unavailable man, but also doesn’t want to be tied down to that mother role. And then there’s the professional who she is basically her she doesn’t need a man cuz she has a career, you know, so it’s the rejection of the man. And then the, the the mystic is kind of the woman who’s more like a nine a lot of women say, Oh, I’m in the mystic because I’m spiritual. And no, it’s not that it’s the persona of the mystic, which means she takes on the role of that God is my partner. You know, like a Pema Chodron would be the mystic persona, someone who is not married anymore, you know, she doesn’t care about the romantic relationship. So these are all based on the love persona and relationship. So it’s a fine, finer point, more on the persona level. But the mother archetype does play a role in informing all those four. And if you haven’t taken the lead persona tests you should and see what persona type you are and talk to one of our mentors about it. I don’t know if you we don’t know duality as a child and how do we how do we certain unwanted traits go into the unconscious? How and when is it that decided.
Robert Maldonado 56:13
Oh, we know duality from very early on.
Debra Maldonado 56:17
Hot and cold when we were born 70 degrees from 90 degrees.
Robert Maldonado 56:21
Yeah, and there’s research with very young children and they understand right and wrong very early on. And so it begins around two and a half. We start to understand good, bad, and our our mind instinctually works that way.
Debra Maldonado 56:40
In the book, a child called Dave Pelzer was extremely abused by his alcoholic mother understand as an adult, he’s now responsible for his life. But what about when he was a child and his mother did the most horrendous things who is responsible for that? And how could he not be affected? His mother passed away but I believe they never made peace.
Robert Maldonado 57:00
Yeah, we’re we’re definitely impacted by our early history. Yeah, we’re not saying, you know, none of that matters. We know it matters he ate, but it matters in in a different way that we can use it for our spiritual growth instead of in the in the typical, let’s say, ego based way of who’s to blame for my failure who’s to blame for my depression who’s to blame for my anxiety, and we point to our parents or the mother and that the and all situations. Now that’s a unique case. So obviously, individuation would not be as easy as for most of us, but not impossible. If the person is willing to do the internal work of realizing the nature of the mind that we are spirit. We are essentially already enlightened, everything has been given to us. There’s nothing to gain from the external world. Eventually, they would reach a point where they could let go of that past history of abuse.
Debra Maldonado 58:13
Well, let me put it this way. You all know who Oprah Winfrey is, she was sexually abused. She was sleeping on a porch. She was abandoned for a while by her mother, and then you know all that she had a terrible childhood. Now what she did was she created something, she she created something else. And now if we create something to avoid that, but she came to terms with all that, but those things can’t stop us. If we always have a choice. We can say this terrible thing happened to me, and therefore I am incapable. I’m broken. And so I can have a healthy relationship. I can have a normal life. Or we could say, you know what, all these things that happen to me, I’m going to use them to even be a better person and do what I can’t do. Look at those people that have you know, Little Man, he just passed away. He was a born with like out any legs and he had like little hands, he became a motivational speaker. He didn’t let it stop him. And so I think it’s not about pushing it away. But it’s like we all had, you know, some people had it worse than others. But really what the freedom we do have is that we can create how we perceive what happened to us and how we perceive ourselves. And we can either play the victim or we can say, I’m going to, because of that, I’m going to even be better. I’m going to overcome my adversities. And if you read a lot of people that are heroes and people that you admire in your life, they’ve all had, a lot of them had really tough lives. And that didn’t stop them. So it’s always a choice whether, you know, what’s happening now in the world, you know, things that are happening now, are you going to let that stop you? Are you going to let that how can I use this to be more powerful? How can I use this terrible marriage I was in and break up to, in spite of that, I’m going to still open my heart to love. And and those are the things that how we approach it.
Robert Maldonado 60:10
Absolutely.
Debra Maldonado 60:12
My mother’s always cheerful, independent, positive and friendly. Why is she in early cold, distant, controlling and manipulative? So you’re trying? Yeah, so you’re looking at your mother’s shadow. So. So it’s not that she’s that but she’s that those are the things she fears being. So so a mother who’s always cheerful and independent and positive and friendly. And that’s her persona. That’s not who she is. Remember, it’s her persona, how she acts. That means that she probably bites her tongue. Because she can’t be not cheerful. She can’t be distance, so she has to have some kind of defense around that. And she’s not really integrating all this other parts and so We we look at these things as Oh, that’s all positive to be cheerful. Is it positive to be cheerful? Like I said to be nice, but talking about someone behind their back or, and, and you know, manipulative is something that the ego does all the time. We all have to admit to ourselves. It has a terrible word. But if you really examine manipulative, it’s trying to influence someone else, right? For your own safety, it’s to manipulate someone else. That’s the whole idea of the ego. It’s like always trying to manipulate How do I get people to like me? How do I put on a good face? How do I fit in with everyone? And so in an extreme way, it’s someone who’s very controlling and manipulative and has a secondary gain. But if you think about it, we all do. We all have an ego that does that. So yeah, so there’s a lot of like looking at the shadow. It’s, it’s really what we’re looking at is these traits are neutral. They’re not negative or positive. That’s the integration.
Robert Maldonado 61:58
Yeah, we just add them. Think about what triggers you about your mother. Hmm. That’s pointing to your personal work to your shadow work. And so it’s very useful when people trigger us, especially our parents because they’re pointing directly what we need to work on. So think about the emotion and open it up.
Debra Maldonado 62:26
And I also mentioned the love persona calls. That’s one per person. So if you already had one, it’s only one per person. We have always a waiting list for people. So just if you’ve had one already, pass, take a pass. Okay, let’s see this person posted a couple times. She never speaks and takes responsibility. Yes.
Robert Maldonado 62:50
Right. So ask yourself what what does that pull from me? What is my let’s say my judgment about that. You know, what does it mean that a person does not take responsibility? What is so bad about that, and you keep digging, you kind of go, you’re going to try to get to the root emotion of that, that thought that you’re having about her.
Debra Maldonado 63:16
Yeah, but really, truly, to do the Shadow Work, you have to work with a coach. So we encourage you, we have coaches on staff if you’re interested in doing this kind of work. And we also have our life coach training that starting next month, that is a deep dive into all this stuff. So if you’re interested, ask us about it. We’ll send you the information. And on that note, we have intro to young in depth psychology classes. We’re going to remove that by the end of day tomorrow. So make sure you watch those videos in the units. If you’re interested in learning more about young in psychology, they’re going away tomorrow. If you do want the replays, you have to register for them. So we’ll send you a link. Make sure you access them because they’re going away, because we’re making room for new stuff. So anyway, it’s been a great talk today Happy Mother’s Day for those who are mothers, those who had mothers. And and, you know, my heart goes to those of you who are mother childless like me that there’s plenty of people in the world that you can be the mother role for. And for me, it’s always been what I do as a coach, I feel like I’m fulfilling that, that need and desire to care for others and, and it’s been fulfilled through that so and then I have children all around the world. And they’re all grown up. I don’t have to change diapers, which is good. And I don’t have to, I can travel wherever I want. I’m having to take care of that.
Robert Maldonado 64:45
Yeah, so we wish you Happy Mother’s Day. Yeah.
Debra Maldonado 64:50
And wish your mother happy Mother’s Day. If she’s not here. Know that she’s still here in some level and just remember the law.
Robert Maldonado 65:01
It’s a very special time on the planet. And like in our individual life, the things that come up that challenges are there to teach us the things that are happening on the planet right now. They can, they can be transformative, they can be our teachers, but we have to approach them in that way instead of just trying to solve them. And going back to business as usual. Ask yourself, what am I learning about this? You know, one of the things that I’ve been learning is what’s really important in my life, you know, it’s what’s, what am I doing here? How am I using this time on earth? And it clarifies that, that concept for me that the real important things are expressive. love, compassion, finding that balance in between work and personal relationships, and not wasting it and being anxious or worrying. But doing the things that I know I need to do to protect ourselves and, and our communities. But at the same time finding that spiritual ground of it all.
Debra Maldonado 66:28
Yeah, and actually, there was an interesting comment that I missed. When I watched Joker. Remember that movie joker? Very intense. It’s a total shadow total mother archetype. Movie very deep. In the scene, he found out the truth about her mother and his mother and the time he completely turned dark. Why would Oprah Winfrey choose to rise up but Joker choose to structure maybe it’s because Oprah had life coaches or mentors? Well, that’s it like the whole idea of Joker was that he wasn’t nurtured by the world. He was beat up all this Time, and it was like he didn’t have like, he tried to be good. And then he and when he, he didn’t have any like role model to help him, you know, to nurture him at all. So he went to destruction and and so in a way we have to the destruction is a wake up call sometimes for the other parts of the world to that we do need to nurture the world and people in the world and we can’t dismiss people and you know, there’s a lot of division with politics these days. And who thinks the corona is a hoax or not, and we should wear a mask and it’s like, we need to love the world, like a mother would love with unconditional love. It starts to love each other on on and maybe there’s someone out there that, you know, you see on Facebook and they’re struggling and you just say, you know, hang in there, that you might have changed their life, you’d be the mother to them. And we’ve all had mothers and we can all be and play that role and then nurturing, caring one. And we’re here to take care of each other and not tear each other apart. And I think we need to bring that back into this world a little more. That’s how we’re going to survive as human in the human races. And I do believe the women of this world are going to be the forces to balance everything out. And they’re, they’re going to bring a different energy and the more we rise to leadership and take on roles, or roles in our power back, and not just discount them and say, well, the men have all the power. have both of us not hate the men, but integrate, how can we be feminine and masculine? How can we not resent the power and how can we understand and nurture the world and have that balance? big topic? Yeah, if you haven’t seen the Joker, there’s some graphic scenes, but it’s really intense about the lack of nurturing and like how it can be destructive and we all have the choice and Oprah had a choice. She had love other nurtures in her life like she had some Love in her life. And people around her that grandmother, I think her grandmother was very dear to her.
Robert Maldonado 69:06
Yeah. And the Joker is also an archetypeof the trickster. We should do a call on the trickster. Although we’re ready for that. We have to be very, very careful.
Debra Maldonado 69:19
Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Maldonado 69:21
Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for hanging out with us. We hope you have a great weekend. Stay safe.
Debra Maldonado 69:28
And for the weekend, just do if you’re not a mother, be a mother to someone reach out to a friend. Say how can I just listen and to be supportive for them? If you are a mother, reach out to your kids, even if you’re having trouble with them. How can you How can you listen to them more? How can you be more nurturing to them? And your mother too? How can you be nurturing to her and and love her more and allow yourself to be nurtured, which is a big thing for us women with? We feel like if we’re nurtured, we lose our power. And so, anyway, I’d love to if you’re listening to the replay, we’ll you know, still be looking at the comments. We’d love to hear what your experiences. I know there’s a lot we laid on today we tend to lay on a lot. But we were here and the mentors are here to support you if you have questions and happiness, Mother’s Day. See you next time. Take care. Bye bye
