Beyond Manifestation: How to Create with Non-Dual Philosophy

Episode Transcript

Robert Maldonado 0:00
We’re not externalizing, we’re not projecting our mind and saying the power is out there or the solution is out there somewhere. We’re understanding that it’s up to us to create in our mind the kind of world that we choose.

Debra Maldonado 0:16
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Young on Purpose. I am Debra Maldonado.

Robert Maldonado 0:20
I’m Dr. Rob. Welcome to the program,

Debra Maldonado 0:23
and we are really excited to introduce a new topic going into the summer, and we wanted to talk about non-duality and the spiritual aspect of our work, which is our unique method and our unique approach called Neuromindra, and so Neuro is, of course, neuroscience. Mind is a play on the word mind, M Y N D, and Indra is Indra’s net, which Robbie could just mention that a little, and the mind is the Jungian psychology that we use.

Robert Maldonado 0:59
Yeah, I love the word, it really translates as the luminous mind, and the neuroscience of that, and it is kind of where spirituality meets neuroscience, that we are, we’re true to our calling,

Debra Maldonado 1:18
and then underneath that is the individual experience, so I have a question for the audience, and that is, have you ever do you have a goal in your life right now that you feel that no matter what you do, how hard you push through, what you know intellectually about yourself and your past, and that goal never seems attainable, there’s something in you that you can think positive, you can visualize it, you can do all your inner work of your childhood, but still there’s something that stops you from having the amount of money you want in your life, the relationship you want in your life, mind-body health, or even having a spiritual experience of freedom and lightness in your life. We’re going to talk about why that is, and we’re going to talk about non-dual philosophy, how that, how you can apply that with coupled with the Jungian model, and with the neuroscience that is gives it the scientific basis for it, but before we begin, I do want to remind you, please subscribe to our channel. We’d love to have you come every week, if you are watching us on YouTube. If you are not watching us on YouTube and are listening to us on one of the podcast services, there is a subscribe button. It really helps us a lot to reach more people. If you can click that subscribe button, and we’ll see you every week, so Rob, let’s talk about non-dual philosophy. What is that thrown around a lot? Is it everything’s one, we’re one with everything? What is the non-dual philosophy?

Robert Maldonado 2:55
Yeah, if we look at it historically, many of the world’s finest and deepest mystical traditions are non-dualistic, non-dual. So, what does that mean? Consider Taoism, which is an ancient philosophy from China, the yin and yang, the Tao and that is considered a non-dual philosophy, although it doesn’t mean we don’t talk about duality. A lot of people think, well, you can’t mention duality if it’s non-dual, that’s a misconception. If you notice in Taoism, there is the yin and the yang, and these opposing or complementary forces make up the larger philosophy of non-dual Taoism in Christian mysticism. Meister Eckert in Germany was almost excommunicated from the church because his mystical experiences were non-dualistic. He primarily said something, and I’m oversimplifying his, his philosophy, but my, the ground of my being and God are the same, he said they’re the same thing,

Debra Maldonado 4:25
blasphemy,

Robert Maldonado 4:27
blasphemy, but he made it out alive, I believe.

Debra Maldonado 4:31
What about Samkhya philosophy?

Robert Maldonado 4:34
Yes, so in, in Samkhya, it’s technically it’s considered a dualistic philosophy, almost like the yin and yang, because they consider the Purusha, meaning pure consciousness, and Prakriti, the nature of existence, they consider them two complementary forces,

Debra Maldonado 4:59
but not. One force,

Robert Maldonado 5:01
not one, and therefore technically it’s a dualistic philosophy, but Vedanta, that evolved out of the Upanishads, as well as Samkhya in Vedanta, the the idea is that it is non-dual, that is not to Advaita, especially the school of Advaita that I’m talking about. Advaita means not to, so that although they talk about Maya and Brahman, they’re they’re essentially not two things when Maya, when we look at the manifest universe, we are seeing Brahman. It’s our pure consciousness. It’s simply that

Debra Maldonado 5:48
Buddhism, because there’s.. I’m sorry, did you? Yeah, go ahead. I was just thinking Buddhism.. a lot of people are into Buddhism, and.. and I think there’s some that are non-dual and some practices that are dualistic or materialistic? What do you, or is it all non-dual?

Robert Maldonado 6:05
Yeah, it’s the same as as the schools that grew out of out of the Upanishads, that there are many schools and many branches, and therefore you’ll find some branches that are dualistic and others that are non dual, and so there’s there’s also components in Buddhism of non dualism, even in science now. If you look at what some of the quantum mechanics scientists say, they’re essentially kind of pointing to a non-dual reality,

Debra Maldonado 6:44
and isn’t it what you’re saying? I know you’ve talked to me about this all the time. Is that the paradigm in science is starting to shift, because it used to be a materialistic paradigm, and now the biggest forward thinkers in science are now wondering if it is non-dual universe, and so when we think of non-dual, and we say not to, what does that mean, actually? What does it mean? Is that like we should accept, like non-attachment, the good and the bad together? Like, what does that actually mean? And I think from the bigger perspective, how I understand it is that we are one with the infinite, you know, source of everything, and that’s who we are. We haven’t, we’re having a, like, a hallucination that we are separate, but we are, that’s an illusion, and even though it, it’s an experience of that, the ultimate truth is that we are one with everything, so in a practical way, if we are trying to create something in our life, and these apparent obstacles show up, like an economy, or you know, a person getting in the way of us having what we want, like someone sabotaging our promotion, or another woman coming in and stealing our man, we’re saying that we have to accept that we are, that’s a part of us, there’s something inside of us that’s kind of contributing to that external experience, so it’s not to, it’s not that we’re independent reality from the external world. How would you?

Robert Maldonado 8:19
Yeah, I mean, that’s a good premise to start with. So, in the West, we can talk about the hard problem of consciousness, as it’s called today. The hard problem of consciousness goes like this: the easy problem, in contrast to the heart problem, the easy one is that we can look at our brains and understand how it processes color, sound, sensory information. In other words, that’s the easy part, because we can, we can map it out, we can see it on the MRIs or functional MRIs in real time. How the brain processes these types of information. The hard problem is we don’t understand what allows it to do that, which is consciousness, because we can’t visualize consciousness. It’s not an electrochemical transmission that’s going on between neurons, that’s not consciousness, that that is brain processing, and so consciousness appears to be a separate element than what we call the material appearance of existence, what the what we call the manifest universe, or the observable universe. So these two elements then kind of put us in a, in a bind of. Because from the scientific perspective we cannot acknowledge anything that is not material,

Debra Maldonado 10:07
we can’t measure, basically that’s what when someone says it’s scientifically proven, you know, which is actually not even a thing, if someone says it’s something is scientifically proven, then you know it’s not, because a scientist would never say it’s proven, they would say there’s a theory, because there’s always that open, open, you know, there’s no hard and fast, you know, absolutes in science, it’s always a discovery, and we’re always finding out new ways to disprove, and that’s the job of science, is to disprove a theory, but if you say prove, then you’re then just be wary of people that say that. So science measures things that are they can see or accept with the senses, but science hasn’t evolved to develop something that measures something outside of the senses.

Robert Maldonado 10:58
That’s right. And according to ancient wisdom traditions like the Upanishads, the consciousness, pure consciousness, is beyond the mind. In other words, you cannot measure it, and that’s right. In other words, the wall that we’ve hit in Western science is correct consciousness is beyond the mind, and therefore it cannot be measured, and so in western scientific, in the western scientific approach, we are kind of stuck, because if you cannot measure it, then it, you cannot include it in the theory or in your formulation of

Debra Maldonado 11:50
metaphysics, right? If you talk about something that can’t be measured,

Robert Maldonado 11:54
right,

Debra Maldonado 11:55
and so when, when we think about non-dual, the dualistic kind of mind, which is science, is that when you said that we, the brain processes information, and they believe that consciousness comes from the body, that there’s like a body that becomes a life, we, and again, they don’t know what gives us life, right, it’s like biological thing that we emerged of, we started as one cell organisms, and this earth evolved, and we have this body that has a brain that creates brain waves that creates sensory experiences, and then we have a conscious awareness of that through the frontal lobe, and we can self reflect when people say consciousness, a lot of times they’re referring to that piece that what we’re conscious of, like our our individual mind that is separate from everyone else, and then also separate from the world that we’re perceiving the world as it is, is like we’re seeing these material objects out there that are solid, that are real, and that we are an object that’s moving through the world with separate from everything, and so that’s a dualistic, so you’re thinking, so going back to that thing where you’re looking for I need to create something in my life, there’s a lot of, you know, self-help I’ve done it all. Where it’s you are separate from the result, and you have to kind of do activities or think something away or send out a vibration in order to bring something to you, but it means that it’s outside of you, and so that’s the dualistic kind of approach, which is what most Western psychologies and science, and of course, science thinks about us as consciousness, and, and, and I won’t even go that most people don’t even touch the unconscious part of our life, but that is dualistic, and so, how would a non-dual person approach this? I let’s say, I want to go to the next level of income. I want to, you know, get a promotion. I’m building a business, I want to go double my income, but I keep hitting a wall, and I don’t know why, and I keep thinking, well, you know, the economy is kind of slow, people don’t understand what I do, or I’m not good enough, you know, maybe I need more confidence, and those are really good things that kind of are building blocks for a successful person, but they’re not really the answer, and we can spend a lot of time working on that, like behavior, thinking behavior, and action approach, but that’s still a set, you’re separate from that result. So, what would a non-dualistic coach, or as you, if I came to you, what would you say about my.. what’s stopping me?

Robert Maldonado 14:49
Yeah, so in the observable universe we can put it this way, and. The brain in processing information sparks this thing that we call awareness or consciousness, and it observes objects that are in the world, in the universe, but are separate from it, right. That’s the typical understanding of most Western neuroscientists. Is the

Debra Maldonado 15:27
brain creates the illusion that is a , like it creates a world through exactly it gives us like a.. it feels like we’re not really looking at a world in brain science, we’re actually seeing something like a flat, almost like a movie screen that’s flat, and the brain is making a that’s kind of fascinating in itself.

Robert Maldonado 15:51
Yeah, it’s a type of simulation, and this is this is actual neuroscience. They, they, they don’t dispute that it is essentially that we build internal models of the world, but that essentially everything we, we are seeing and hearing and touching, and everything that we’re experiencing through our senses is a mental experience. Now it appears to us, though, from the subjective perspective, it appears that there’s a world out there. A world appears, as someone said, it appears, and it appears to us as it’s separate. It’s out there, that illusion, that’s the illusion, right, that it creates, but it’s very functional, because it allows us then to move in a world that is very meaningful to us. It has color, sound, texture, familiarity, but it’s all an internal model that we’re experiencing, and it’s a mental model. It’s made out of mind stuff, out of mental constructs,

Debra Maldonado 17:01
and it has a dualistic nature, the world, the world we’re looking at, so we can have an experience of duality, which is the happy and sad love, to be love, have a love and loss, to have you know, the thrills and excitement to the, the, you know, like the only reason why we enjoy amusement rides, is because we think we’re going to die, and it has that kind of adrenaline, and all those things that we can enjoy life through. So we’re not saying duality is bad,

Robert Maldonado 17:31
no, it’s very useful. But here’s, here’s the thing about duality, that the subject, meaning the observer and the object, so whatever I want to make, have

Debra Maldonado 17:45
more cash coming into my,

Robert Maldonado 17:46
yeah, cash business customers, anything that we are talking about is the object is external to the subject, that’s duality, right? There’s two: there’s the observer and the object of observation. So that’s the dual. The

Debra Maldonado 18:08
economy is out there, the customers are out there, they’re holding the money. It’s out there. It’s like, hasn’t it’s not a part of me yet. I have to, like, physically, you know, take a credit card and put it in my bank account, and it’s like a very mechanical way to look at it.

Robert Maldonado 18:24
Yeah, in other words, we’re buying into the appearance of things. So, in our model, we talk about an apparent reality that is kind of the transactional reality that we move in, right? It appears that others are separate from us, objects are separate from us, and therefore we act as if, and we go along. It’s like playing a game, being in a simulation, like when you put on the goggles and you see a simulated world, you’re playing the game, and you’re kind of buying into that. There’s these zombies attacking you, and you’re shooting them, or whatever, whatever the game is, right?

Debra Maldonado 19:02
Or even when you’re watching them, well, before that, like, I just want to add that even when you’re watching a movie and you’re really invested in the character, and you’re kind of forget who you are, you kind of identify, and then you think it’s really happening, or even in a dream you feel like they’re zombie chasing you in the dream, or you know, someone in your life hurts your feelings and shames you, or you’re in your, you know, junior high classroom again, but you’re naked, or you’re in your pajamas, and everyone’s laughing at you, and you’re like, what is happening, like, what constructed that world? So it’s the same, it’s a simulation. Yeah, so what’s non-dual then?

Robert Maldonado 19:40
Yes, so the apparent reality is the dualistic appearance of the world, right. In non-duality, the object appears in the subject, in other words, the. Object, we consider to be an appearance that is arising, existing, appearing inside the sphere of consciousness, not external to it. In other words, there’s no observer and object separation; they’re made out of the same stuff, same awareness, you know. If I’m observing this glass of water sitting on the desk, it’s arising in my awareness, and then if I look at who’s the observer, it appears that this body is my observer, or is acting as the observer, and instead of thinking the object is separate from me, from this body and the brain and the sensor, the senses I perceive it to be equal, both my body, my brain, my senses, and the glass,

Debra Maldonado 21:04
right, everything, everything

Robert Maldonado 21:05
is appearing within a field, one field of consciousness, and that field cannot be split. There’s no splitting, there’s no edges to it, there’s no pre and post, it’s always existed and always is. And then this body and the glass appear within it. So now, what that means, it’s kind of the what people mean,

Debra Maldonado 21:34
Dr. Rob,

Robert Maldonado 21:35
what people mean as by oneness, that everything is oneness. Well, that’s that’s technically what we’re saying, or what somebody’s saying when they say everything is one, that there is no separation between the object and the subject. Now, what this implies is that there’s an observer that is able to observe both me, my body as the subject as well as the object at once.

Debra Maldonado 22:10
Oh, that’s really interesting. Yeah,

Robert Maldonado 22:14
so it’s almost like, like, there’s a bigger awareness independent of my brain, and it, this is what the Upanishads point to, that the, the true awareness, the true consciousness, pure consciousness is beyond the mind, it’s beyond your human mind, the senses are part of the mind, of course, and so the brain is creating or creates these senses that is able to detect the glass, the colors, the sound, etc. but that awareness, pure consciousness, is able to observe it’s the brain and the mind doing that work of perception, but it’s separate from it’s independent,

Debra Maldonado 23:05
so let me get.. let’s go down to brass tacks, right? If we are going to.. it’s that’s a huge concept, and I remember when you first told me that cup is yours, I’m like, what am I going to do with that, right? So it’s a good concept, it’s understanding, it’s a new paradigm to think now. Let’s go down to a very practical problem. This person wants to double their income, so how does non-dualistic philosophy help them get there faster without compared to dualistic philosophy, so in dualistic philosophy I would say, oh, the bunny’s separate from me, I gotta work hard, I gotta find the right strategy, I gotta get the right coach to who can give me the right answers, so I can get the things I want, I have to change my thinking, I have to put a vision board up, and I have to work on my childhood stuff, so I can, you know, fix whatever it is, and then hopefully I can, you know, be a more confident and go out there and deserve that money and all those things.

Robert Maldonado 24:11
Yeah,

Debra Maldonado 24:11
non-dual philosophy would be change everything, because now we’re assuming that the result that we want is in our control, that we can try to work hard, we could try to get the right strategy, but we don’t know if it’s going to work or not, and there’s still this kind of uncertainty, and this thing that what I want, my desire is separate from me, so the subject is separate from the object, and so what if we assume that that money that we want it, and we have the ability, it’s already in us, like the capacity to have that experience. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah,

Robert Maldonado 24:50
because it let’s say money in this scenario is the object, it’s the object. So, where does the. Subject arise in the subject, meaning in your mind. What that implies, then, is that the appearance of money, the way it appears to you, and the meaning it has for you is totally up to your mind, the way you’re conceiving of it, the way you’re perceiving it, what you’re making of it, so that we know this to be true. I mean, we can kind of do a mental experiment if you give somebody $100 and another person the same, or another $100 For one person, it might be very little, right? If the person is a millionaire or billionaire, $100 is nothing to them. It’s like, what is that, like a tip or something? To another person who might be homeless or hungry, $100 worth

Debra Maldonado 26:04
of food, right?

Robert Maldonado 26:06
Yes, and so we see that these objects that we call our world are very subjective, in other words, they’re they’re only meaningful, and they represent particular things from the subjective perspective of the individual that it depends on the context, on the situation, on the person, the meaning is not inherent in the object, it’s inherent in the mental structure, so when you

Debra Maldonado 26:42
independent meaning, like in the Buddhist, they say things out there don’t have an independent arising, they’re all arising from inside of you, the mind,

Robert Maldonado 26:51
they’re all connected to this, this consciousness, so what it, what it means is, say I’m coaching an entrepreneur on how to increase their profit or their business strategy. The work is about changing the internal structure of the meaning they’re experiencing, instead of just simply taking action to get objects that appear to be external to them, the work is let’s work with the internal mindset, understanding that they are not dual, that whatever has arisen in their mind, whether it be a sense of lack, a sense of wealth, a sense of back and forth, you know, there’s ups and downs in business, that kind of stuff. The question would be, what is it? What is your mind making of this situation? What meaning is it ascribing to these apparently external objects that are really internal, the the the object is appearing, arising in the subject in the mind of the individual entrepreneur.

Debra Maldonado 28:12
So let’s go a little deeper then, because there’s a lot of people that teach mindset, like money is the root of all evil. Let’s make money my friend, and you know, I believe I could make it, and you have the vision, and you start to think positive about it, and you understand this philosophy that it’s in me, so I can create it, but here’s where the Jungian aspect comes in, because Carl Jung, he said we’re not just conscious, I have a conscious mind, we have these unconscious and collective unconscious, so we have to examine not only our thoughts and our current understanding on an intellectual level of what assumptions am I making, but we have to go deeper into the emotional burdens and the that were handed down to us from our parents and from our family, the way we were taught conditioning, yeah, but more than just conditioning, that we could see, like we can know that, oh yeah, I had a grew up in a very poor household, and you can look back and say, yeah, my mother was always clipping coupons, so I’m always clipping coupons, that’s simple to look back and see, like from the outside, but what we’re seeing, what we do is, which is much different, is that we go deeper into the shadow aspects of being wealthy, also the complexes around money, and so it’s more than just believing you can have it, that’s one big part, but other part is what is, what are the. how did I get here to how did I get to the point where I didn’t believe it, you know, so what is going on unconsciously that is working, and one of the terms from Eastern philosophy that is very aligned with conditioning is karma, and so basically we we learn and grow. Early on, and we have this, and karma is the conditioned self that we create this identity around our, you know, our experience, but we’re also inheriting from our past ancestors things passed down through family, through generations, and then also deeper that our early ancestors about survival and about abundance and all those things, so it’s, it’s not as simple as just, hey, let’s just think positive, and I believe that the money’s inside of me, and you could probably get there for a little bit, but you really have to think about what is, what is the unconscious, the psychology that is beneath that,

Robert Maldonado 30:41
yeah, so from the non-dual perspective, that’s part of the mind or psyche, right? In the Jungian sense, psyche contains both a conscious component as well as the unconscious, as Jung called it, both personal and collective, that part of the psyche the conscious mind cannot see. In other words, it’s the psyche is kind of split there because you have a the ego part, which is awareness or conscious, conscious of the world, but the unconscious is much more broader, and it’s a vast field of of mind or psyche that is that the individual is unaware of, and so that the assumptions they’re making about money, about what they they can create in their life through their work, and their business is limited in some sense. Everyone is limited, right? No, nobody has infinite wealth. We see that human beings have proportional wealth, like some people, some people have a lot less,

Debra Maldonado 32:02
and in Vedanta, one of our favorite authors, Swami Tiagananda, he talks about this concept of the finite self, which is this limited conditioned karma inducing self that is the dualistic part of the, you know, this limited identity that we have as the subject of our life, and that finite self has there’s a reason why it’s finite, because it, it’s based on survival, it’s based on that, How do I survive, how do I, you know, fit in with everyone. How do I.. how do I.. you know, you’re born into a family, you have to kind of get along with people, and you have to come up with strategies, so all that cause and effect causes that conditioning, which is your karma. And then your results in your life are a reflection of that. So, regardless of the economies or how brilliant you look, and how you’ve left your family, and now you’re in another state, and you’re starting a new life. You’re still unconsciously locked in to that finite self, and every time we think that the world is out, the problems outside of us, we are operating from that finite self, because the finite self believes it’s finite and believes that there’s what’s out there is real and that they don’t have, you don’t have power over it, so that’s a dualistic way of looking at the world.

Robert Maldonado 33:34
Yeah, and from the Vedantic perspective, the only reason karma, in other words, the only reason we become conditioned to limitation is because we believe we’re the ego. As soon as you understand that the ego is not really who you are and dissolves or disappears, or you understand it at least to be a function that it’s not your identity, you stop identifying with it, then all that conditioning falls away, because there’s nothing, there’s no one to be conditioned in that regards, but

Debra Maldonado 34:13
also, once you make it conscious, now you have a choice, when you don’t know what’s stopping you, you’re making, you think you’re making changes in your life, and it’s like trying to pull that boulder up the hill system as pulling the boulder up the hill and having it roll back down, and so back to the perspective then of let’s say someone wants to make more money, let’s just stay with that, because it’s common, everyone wants to make, you know, a better living, I’m not saying the millionaire, but just kind of, you know, have their bills paid, go on that vacation, have all those things. The problem is that you can’t use the spiritual knowledge of non-dualism in for the ego, and the ego is always wanting the money for itself to. Feel survival, to feel you know better, to get some approval, and all those things, and so the aspect we again talk about our podcast is called Young on Purpose. It’s because purpose is beyond the individual self. There’s there’s a spiritual element to this work, to having a life that you have the things you love, but it can’t be from that survival, because you’re always going to be clinging to it. You’re always going to be worried. I mean, look at these billionaires in the world that are, and not all of them, because there’s some really great ones, but some of them are just like trying to hungry for power, and and it’s never enough, and it’s like they never give back to anyone else, and it’s like, is that freedom? Is that freedom? That’s they’re not living from their purpose, and I can’t imagine them being happy. Like, after a while, like, how many yachts can you own, right? And so we have to look at it from that perspective, is that we don’t want to approach money that way, we want to approach it from a spiritual perspective, but we have to examine why we don’t feel, you know, that we can create it, and we have to go deeper. So one of the ways that, again, I think having a purpose for it, for your desire, is one. We talk about non-attachment, which I think we can get into in other episodes, but I think the most important thing I’d like to say today is that the approach isn’t just, oh, I don’t like what I’m seeing, and then on a big, big picture level, say, oh, well, I know I’m one with everything, so the million dollars is already within me, so I can create it, and I just have to believe that what we want to do and push away the bills and all the other stuff you’re dealing with, then then one day I’ll just can relax, because I have a pile of money to worry about. We have to look at what is what is our approach to what’s showing up right now, and so it’s if it’s a bill that came in unexpected, if it’s a bank account that looks really lower than we expected, a deal that you expected to come through didn’t go through. That’s where we can see the unconscious mind. We start to use the obstacles that are showing up to understand what is happening, so we see the obstacles as that we’re creating them, actually, so that we can see something, so we can free ourselves, versus, oh, I’m getting these obstacles, I have to remove my blocks, which was popular, a lot of people say I gotta remove my blocks, but you don’t want to remove them, you want to examine them, you want to integrate them, you want to, you want to confront them, so that you can be free, because you created the blocks and to take that responsibility that this experience, what is arising in my life right now. Why am I creating this experience for some reason? And as I believe that it’s because the divine in us wants to have all the things that we want in life, wants to have joy and all those things, and it’s throwing up like, hey, this is what you can’t see these situations, so that we can examine them and free ourselves. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see them if we didn’t have that.

Debra Maldonado 38:10
And notice that usually we’re more triggered when we go for a goal than when we’re just complacent with our life, and we just, you know, are living the same life, and we’re on autopilot, but when we have that, what desire awakening within us that wants to create something, that’s when it seems like all the barriers show up, and most people misinterpret that as something they’re doing something wrong. How many times have we heard that?

Robert Maldonado 38:36
Yes, so if I can try to simplify it from the ego perspective, let’s say from our limited perspective of the individual, right, not not even considering the unconscious mind, just the awareness that I am an individual and I am living in this world, and objects appear to be separate for me. Therefore, I need to work for them and go out and get them, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that point of view. If we ask, well, how do we motivate ourselves when we’re in that state, in that dualistic state, right? Me and me against the world, or me working in the world, we motivate ourselves typically by setting external goals, so that the external goal then becomes I want to start my business, I want to make some profit, nothing wrong with that, I start to work, and we know people can become successful financially through, through that model, through external motivation. Their goal is to accumulate money or success, perhaps, or just prestige. Those things are a way that the ego most. Motivates itself to enact action, which is karma. Here, here’s the problem with that model, or say, where conditioning comes in, that when we are motivated by external circumstances, or what appears to us as external circumstances, if we win, we’re conditioned to increase that activity, so that now we are our nervous system is kind of primed to repeat those actions that I took to create that wealth or that success. If I, on the other hand, if I am punished by losing by not succeeding, I’m conditioned in the opposite direction of I’m not going to do that anymore, I’m going to try something else. Yeah,

Debra Maldonado 40:55
well, I think about like how people are conditioned to stay in the corporate world, like you get that paycheck every two weeks, it then you buy nice things, and you live in a pretty house, and you have a brand new car, and you can go on vacations, and and you’re rewarded for this work, and then so you keep doing it, because you think, well, that’s that, that’s where money comes from, it comes from outside of me,

Robert Maldonado 41:17
that’s right, and so if we translate that into karma, the conditioning in karma, it doesn’t really mean good or bad, like a lot of people say that’s good karma or bad karma. Karma is not neither good nor bad, it’s simply conditioning, meaning it’s simply reflecting your experience in action, whatever actions you took, and whatever results you got, that’s your karma, meaning that’s how you’re conditioned. It’s like a, an imprint of the environment that you acted upon, and it, and the results that you got from that.

Debra Maldonado 41:54
So that’s the finite being, being conditioned, because it believes that there’s external forces, and it needs it, desire something outside of itself, that there’s something to be afraid of, or something to desire outside of itself.

Robert Maldonado 42:10
What the non-dual philosophy does, it liberates us from that trap that we’re free to act in the apparent environment, because we understand that what I’m perceiving is essentially my own mind, my own experience, my own understanding, my own assumptions about what the nature and the meaning of the world are. If I understand that through non-dual philosophy, non-dual understanding, or realization. What it gives me, then, is the freedom to take action without being conditioned by the results. Whatever results arise from my action, I understand to be completely up to me what I make of them, I’m not so conditioning

Debra Maldonado 43:03
comes when you’re attached, right? When you get, well, you’re attraction, you’re motivated, right? Yeah, when you’re motivated, like I get lifted up or I’m pushed down by the external world, and so we get attached, and that’s where, like, why non-attachment is such a big spiritual practice, because that’s what we’re doing. So,

Robert Maldonado 43:25
the question arises, and how do I motivate myself in non-dualism if I’m not using the goals to motivate myself? So, yeah, it’s

Debra Maldonado 43:36
almost like we make it bad to want money or bad to want a relationship. It’s like you shouldn’t be attached, and that’s not the point.

Robert Maldonado 43:44
That’s not the point. The question is, what do I use to motivate myself? In other words, to take action in the world if I’m not going for the goodies or the result of the action. The answer is purpose, higher purpose, in other words, why do I want to take these actions? Why do I want to start this business? Why do I want to be successful if I don’t have a strong why internally, not externally? You know, if I say, “Well, I’m doing it for the money, you’re already hooked, essentially. You’re pointing to some external reward, what you want to do is find an inner purpose that’s strong enough to motivate you to take action, regardless of what results you get. That’s not the motivator for you, so that’s why people are able to stick to their purpose, their vision without results for many years, but they persist, and they’re in the end they often succeed

Debra Maldonado 44:51
really easily, and I know, like, we work with a lot of coaches, we’ve trained coaches, and and I’ve been in the coaching industry. For many years, and I’ve been around a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think in the beginning we have to have to be really disciplined with our mind. It’s the most important thing, more than any marketing strategy, because your ego will, by default, will just find any way to get you to pull back, you know, it’ll find any way to get you back to that default, so it’ll make up assumptions about everything that’s happening. You shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not ready. You don’t have what it takes. No one wants what you have to offer. No one’s going to pay you that money. You know, and no one can afford it. The economy’s bad, you know, all this stuff, and it quickly discourages you, and or you get a have a bad feedback, or you, you know, some, we all know when you start a business, things happen, you know, and if you, you let those little things stop you, your, your purpose isn’t big enough, because when the little things stop you, it means your ego is really driving that goal, your ego is wanting to look good, wanting to impress people, wanting to feel like you’re helping the world, but it’s all ego, and when you’re coming from that purpose, it’s like you, your ego has to step aside, and it’s, it doesn’t matter if someone says no, you just believe that you have, you’re meant to do this, you’re meant to create something or help people in a certain way, or create this widget, or whatever, that’s going to make the world a better place, and you believe in that, versus letting your ego make it all about you, and so you make it about, like, your active service, your active, your sacred duty in the world, like, why you came here, and that will get you through any obstacle, any like setback, because it’s its setbacks are really part of it. It’s like, and like I said, if you see this setbacks as a reflection of your own mind, not something external that you can’t overcome, then you can really change things. So, let’s take this goal again. You want to build more income. You’re starting a business, you’re hitting obstacles. The materialistic, dualistic way to approach it is, it might be the economy. Let me adjust my prices, let me think of a different strategy. Let’s change the strategy around, so we can deal with this situation, and I see this a lot right now, everyone’s dropping their prices really low and having these super cheap, cheap programs because they believe that the problem’s out there, that there’s an economy out there that’s driving this, and this and the industry is driving this, but you can do that, and then you just have to change your strategy again when you see the world change, and it never feels like you’re really in control, and there’s always this element of fear and protection, and then you’re working really hard to change everything all the time. Where a dualistic, a non-dualistic approach would be, hmm, what is this saying about me? Like, what is this setback about? What is my attitude toward the economy? Let me look at that, and do I.. and if you believe that the economy is dictating your business, then then then you’re seeing everything in a dualistic way, because now you’re saying that there’s something outside of you that’s stopping you from being successful, and so the non-dual way is to look inside and see, well, what’s happening, what’s what’s this triggering me, what assumptions am I making, and I find that when we work on that level, we get so much more than just solving that little business problem or that setback, we get more consciousness, more awareness, more understanding of our true nature, and we’re able to create even more with our life.

Robert Maldonado 48:45
Yes, because it not only gives us a different way of working, a different way of motivating ourselves through higher purpose, but it liberates us from the conditioning effect. So, from the Eastern perspective, we can say the karma burns off whatever conditioning we had of our past around money, around success, around business, it goes away. There’s no nothing to attach itself to. There’s no ego there, and so we’re free to use our creative mind to give the situation whatever meaning we choose, that’s the creative mind that it chooses to do with the situation instead of seeing it in a, in the kind of the typical way, right, that if there’s a downturn in the economy, it’s bad, we can say, well, there must be new opportunities arising here. How can we solve the problems that that appear to be arising now? Because it’s, it’s our mind that we’re seeing, so it’s not – we’re not externalizing, we’re not projecting our mind and saying the power is out there or the solution. Position is out there somewhere. We’re understanding that it’s up to us to create in our mind the kind of world that we choose, so it’s every time we create a power,

Debra Maldonado 50:13
yeah, and every time we go to the next level, they’re always hit that threshold that we have to cross again. And I remember, I remember we’re in LA, and I was thinking, I was like, what’s the strategy, what can we do, you know? And you were just like, what are you talking about? Like, start with yourself, like I was looking for, I was strategizing versus internalizing, and getting to know what is happening here, what, like, just that right strategy or that right formula is going to give me the results, but the formula is the way you receive results, it doesn’t give anything to you, it, you can have a great formula, a great marketing plan, and a great funnel, and all those things that people have, but you, your mind is the one that dictates how effective it is not the funnel itself, it’s it, everything arises from that. The creative ideas to redirect your business, if it comes from inside, it’s not a reaction to what appears externally, it’s an inspiration that comes from some other place. And Rob, you and I know we’ve been in business for how many 14 years together now, and hit many roadblocks. We’ve, as people that know us for a long time, see, we are evolution, and every time there’s been some kind of setback or a slowdown, or things aren’t working the way it used to, we always come up with a creative idea that takes us even bigger, and we could either shut down or feel fearful, or we can be very creative and not let anything stop us. And that’s really the secret, is to understand that you’re inside of you. You have all the information and the power, and of course, you need a coach to help you, a non-dual depth coach, a Jungian coach to help you bring it out of you, and help you access it, but it really is that everything is inside of you, and that regardless of economy, regardless of where you live, and how many single people are there, and you’re going to meet the right person, all of it is inside you. It’s not chance, it’s not how attractive you are, it’s not how great your personality is, or why you know your marriage is because of your other person in the marriage is failing. It’s you have to look inside and see what is happening inside of me. Why am I creating this experience? And it’s really, really hard to accept that responsibility, and we’re not saying to blame yourself. I think that has to be very, very clear, because you can’t blame yourself for something you’re not conscious of, you don’t know why you keep doing this, and that’s the question, like why does this keep happening to me, not that I’m fated to be this way, but we’re fated to have this result, but where is my misunderstanding of my true nature in the way of me having the things I want?

Robert Maldonado 52:59
Yes, it’s a powerful shift in consciousness when we adopt that non-dualistic perspective. It gives us a sense of power, because it restores the power to the true source, which is your consciousness. That’s the most powerful thing in the universe.

Debra Maldonado 53:18
So, I love this topic. I definitely think we’re going to do, definitely do more episodes on this. Please let us know what you think when you, if you’re on our email list, make sure you reply and say yes or no. Ask us questions. If you’re watching us on YouTube, make a comment, share what your, what comes up for you. Really, would appreciate just feedback and hearing what, what more you want to learn about this idea, and the Neurominger method, which is neuroscience, Eastern spirituality, and also the Jungian foundational work that is in a coaching model, not analysis, not therapy, Jungian coaching, which is all about moving forward and understanding ourselves, so that we can create a wonderful life, even if it is an illusion, make it a beautiful experience, right? Why not? So we’ll see you next week on Young on Purpose.

Robert Maldonado 54:12
See you soon.

Unknown Speaker 54:12
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai