The Power of Conflict

Most people are averse to conflict and difficult situations. The ego is happiest when everything is calm and unchallenged. 

When we experience conflict within ourselves or with others, it provides an opportunity and a calling to grow. 

In this episode, we talk about the true reason conflict arises how to deal with it in an empowering way. 

Some conflicts we’ll discuss: 

• Dealing with terrible bosses and rogue team members. 
• Relationships breaking up.
• Altercations with your family.

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. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Creative Mind Coaching and comeback Saturday soul session.

Robert Maldonado 00:28

That’s right. We really enjoy these soul sessions because it gives us a chance to talk about the kind of things that we teach.

Debra Maldonado 00:38

One of the things is the today we’re going to talk about the power of conflict. And a lot of people think I don’t want conflict in my life. I want everything to go smooth. Well, we’re going to have you reframe in your mind what conflict is. And I bet you by the end of this little talk, you’re going to look forward to having conflicts in your life, because they’re going to be actually something that you’re going to be able to use. But before we start, I just wanted to just set the intention that you stay focus for the next 30 minutes. And just close your eyes for a minute and just feel your feet and just ground your energy into your feet and just bring yourself into your body. I know Facebook has a lot of distractions or if you’re listening to this on our podcasts, your, you know, your phone, there’s many things you can do. So just kind of be here with us right now in this moment. And just relax and be open to be inspired. How do you feel better?

Robert Maldonado 01:53

More centered. 

Debra Maldonado 01:54

Good. So let’s talk about I wanted to just start off by talking about the creative mind, and why we call our work Creative Mind Method. Just to give you just a very quick overview of what it is. And that will lead into our topic today, the power of conflict. So creative mind is the mind that is innovative, creative, moving outside of the old patterns. When we’re growing up, we are conditioned to conform. The ego wants us to be safe. And so it comes up with all these strategies, basically creating a personality that’s pleasing to the world. And then it molds us into a very fixed way of being that limits us actually, it helps us survive, but it limits us as we go through life. It helps us get along with the kids at school, obey our parents, be a good good employee and show up for work and all those responsible things.

Robert Maldonado 03:00

Yeah, so we can think of this duality. We have the survival mind, which you just described, which is really the the ego, driving that survival mind. And it’s very useful for survival.

Debra Maldonado 03:17

But the creative mind is the one that pushes us beyond the survival patterns. It’s sort of being aligned with your divine nature, your true nature. Because we’re truly creative beings. I mean, if you look at humanity, what have we changed over the years? I mean, decades and thousands of years, we’ve evolved so powerfully. I mean, we lived in caves. And now we have these structures and these metal things that fly through the air and rockets that go to Mars. I mean, the humans deep within us, we all contain that ability to be creative and innovative, but most of us, they we just kind of go with the flow we go with the herd, and young called that that herd mentality. And Carl Jung, develop the individuation process, which means that you’re actually going to break away from that old conditioning, the old limitations and you’re going to freely create your life by choice. Because if you just stay with what you were given the kind of the strategies their ego developed, unconsciously, you’re going to limit the amount of money you have the type of relationships, you have friendships, health in your body, everything is basically controlled by the ego. And you don’t have a choice. And so it’s like living in a prison. You have a key, you’re inside and you can unlock yourself, but you kind of feel like you don’t know how and the creative mind gives us the ability to imagine the key. Imagine how to open it and imagine what you would create. If you were free to create anything you want.

Robert Maldonado 04:59

That’s a good way to put it. Yeah, it’s almost like we have this resentment against the the survival mechanism because it does limit us. And it is very limiting and restricting. But at the same time, you know, you think about how our parents race that is obey the, you know, pay attention to the teacher obey the rules, don’t break the laws.

Debra Maldonado 05:25

Be a good person.

Robert Maldonado 05:26

Yeah, and those things of course, are good. They make sense, only to a certain point, because once we get to adulthood, and we start maturing, those expectations of just following the herd, the external rules become then that prison of limitation of just the survival mind and just conforming and individuation is really about rebelling against that but in a creative way, not any belly. Yeah, exactly. Not just throwing everything away because we want to be free. But we want to be free in a true sense, not just pushing away the rules, meaning we just want to be free of the rules. No, we want to be free in our creative mind, meaning that we’re able then to create from a conscious place.

Debra Maldonado 06:28

So really, we can we know the rules now. And we can choose to consciously choose, you know what I’m going to play by the rules. I don’t want to cause any disruption right now. I’m going to just go to my family house and deal with their dysfunctions and their whatever happens in the family, and I’m just gonna play by the rules, but I’m consciously doing it versus I’m doing it because I’m afraid of something. And so that brings us to why conflict and why conflict is so powerful because I believe, and I’m sure you do, too, which is that this idea that there’s a part of us that doesn’t want to conform that our divine self, our true personality, the creative part of our self that wants to break free that wants to learn the rules. Now it wants to do something fantastic. And everything that we have in our modern societies, because people decided to think outside the box and to be creative. And so I remember a couple that’s like a year or two ago, you and I went to this seminar on a screenwriter, and one of the things he was teaching is like how to construct a story. And I never thought of this before until he brought it up, but it was really interesting. He said, conflict creates change. And I thought, wow, that is so powerful, because if you watch any movie, if there’s no conflict in it, it’s boring. And if you watch those Netflix series, those kind of like, novellas. They’re constantly there’s always a conflict between the characters, and then it pushes the character along. And if we didn’t have them, we would just be bored, I think. And so the conflict is actually our divine self waking us up. It’s an opportunity to wake us up.

Robert Maldonado 08:24

Well, I would say it has the potential to wake us up.

Debra Maldonado 08:27

Yes. Or to freak us out.

Robert Maldonado 08:30

Yeah, because conflict. I mean, we see that it’s the source for the individual. It’s the source of depression, anxiety, addiction, if they don’t know what to do with it. It becomes then this internal conflict that is projected outward. So Jung says the internal conflict becomes an external conflict. We inevitably end up in situations that reflect our internal conflict with ourselves. So, in one way, everybody out there kind of arguing and fighting, they’re fighting with themselves, or part of themselves at least. And they’re seeing it as external conflicts as a way of identifying it and saying, they’re the bad ones, right? It’s that shadow projection onto the other. But it’s really an internal process that you have to undergo. It doesn’t mean you you don’t fight for your rights or for social justice and all that. But you want to do it from that conscious place, not from the projection.

Debra Maldonado 09:43

Well, if you do it from a place of deficit, where you’re feeling that you’re fighting this big thing that’s bigger than you or this movement that’s bigger than you or something that is out of your control. You’ll be fighting with fear. It’ll be more fearful and desperate. But if you’re fighting with power, and you’re seeing, oh, that, you know, I can understand that ignorance or whatever you’re you’re battling against, you can say, you know, I’ve been, you know, kind of connect with your own ignorance and say, Oh, I can see, you know how that person can be that way not to get them off the hook. But then you don’t. They’re not this big, scary person anymore. They’re just another human being who’s misinterpreting what’s going on. And so, you said, we were talking about this earlier, you said that we’re always evolving, you know, as a culture as a human being, as a society. And so these old systems are always being challenged. And so within ourselves, our own little personal survival strategy needs to be challenged, or else we will just will go live the rest of our life without conflict. You know, do everything everyone tells us to do get the right job. Get the right partner have kids You know, and retire that might be good enough for you. But then you may say, wow, I wanted to do something big with my life I wanted what was my purpose? You know, and I think that if we conflict gives us an opportunity to be become self aware so we can really know what our life is really about and who we really are. Now, one of the stories I wanted to share was, I remember, for years, I moved to Colorado when I was 29. And I said, I’m going to change my life. I’m going to go and start something different. I worked in marketing, entertainment industry. Then I moved to Colorado and I said, I’m going to start over, I’m going to, you know, train in something else. And so I started doing, you know, I felt like I wanted to help others. So I was writing and I was doing massage. I went to massage school, and then I was like, now I don’t want to do that. I went back to the corporate world. And so a couple times I I kept trying new things, but then went back to that security and safety. And then at one point, I remember the last corporate job I had. I was sitting at my desk and I was, you know, ready to just kind of give everything like that other dream up. That just wasn’t for me. It’s just too hard. And I sat there and I looked at my computer and I had this pretty desk and a nice salary and everything was calm and quiet. And I just logged into my computer and I said, You know, I really, I think I could just do this forever. I don’t think I need to do anything I wanted to do.

Robert Maldonado 12:30

Famous last words. 

Debra Maldonado 12:31

And it was like the universe went, hold the phone. Like, wait a minute, Debra, this is not you. This is your conforming. And immediately I swear to God, it was within 24 hours, my boss came to me and said, oh, we’re changing your position. And you’re gonna have two bosses now and we’re rearranging everything. We’re taking your stuff away, and everything started to change. And I thought, oh my god, and it would lead to like about three months of me just being so unhappy with my job all of a sudden that I started, you know, picking up my old hypnotherapy brochure that I got it the year before. And I said, I think I need to do this. And then when I drove in that morning, I got laid off. I said, Oh, I heard this rumor of layoffs. I’m like, I wonder if I’m going to be laid off. And I said, if I am, I’m going to go to hypnotherapy school and finally change. But I needed to basically get disrupted to make that change. They had to basically kick me out of my comfort zone. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. But you would think, oh, you know, my friends were like, how did you go through that and you were so calm. And it’s just that it’s that force within us that if we’re not aligned with what we should be doing, it creates this disturbance in the Force. And it says, hey, you know, you could shake us up in a way. And so for some of us who like, Oprah says, sometimes it comes in a whisper and then it comes in a loud yell. So I got the message. And every time I work with people now it’s like, comfort is overrated.

Robert Maldonado 14:09

Yes. So even if we lived it on an island by ourselves, we would come into conflict with ourselves. Because that’s our nature. We’re always evolving. so that’s what I meant by, we’re always kind of coming into that conflict with our own self. Because if you think about your adaptation, so you’re growing up, you’re adapting to your culture, your environment, meaning you’re being socialized by your environment, by your culture, by your family, your teachers. That adaptation is working for you, but you’re going to be growing and you’re going to be having your own ideas. Your own ways of seeing things. And that comes into conflict with your conditioning, with your adaptation with your socialization. So now you’re in conflict with yourself. And you’re thinking that it’s out there, that you’re in conflict with a school that you’re in conflict with work, that you’re in conflict with a boss or with society. But it’s really that internal conflict that you’re growing your own skin, in essence, and a lot of people don’t understand is they think that it is outside them. And so they become depressed if they feel well, what can I do about the world? It’s too big. I’m not going to be able to change the world. It’s always going to be this oppressive force on me, that won’t allow me to express myself.

Debra Maldonado 15:53

So, do you think on some level I created the disruption from my consciousness, like kind of created the evil boss.

Robert Maldonado 16:02

Yeah, it sets up a situation that reflects your internal mind. The way consciousness works is that whatever you believe to be true, is what you experience. It becomes your reality. And so for the ordinary person that doesn’t have this higher understanding, it’s very difficult for them to accept that they’re creating these situations because to them, it appears that well, it’s my boss that’s making me angry, it’s not me. And so they believe their senses because they’re operating on that materialistic paradigm of the external world is the absolute reality. And the Upanishads say it’s the opposite. Your mind, your awareness is the absolute reality. The appearance of things is an apparent reality. It’s more like a projection, a creation of your mind. And that understanding begins to free your mind. In other words, you can deal with a situation, whatever is appearing into your life, whatever conflict you’re seeing, you can deal with it because you’re understanding it in the right context that it is essentially an appearance. A dreamlike experience, like a almost like you’re a writer, writing scripts and handing out the scripts to people.

Debra Maldonado 17:33

I was just going to say that. Yeah.

Robert Maldonado 17:34

And saying, you’re going to play the mean boss, and I’m going to play the victim in this role. But you’ve forgotten that you are the writer and you’re caught up in the story. That’s the ordinary person, they get caught up in their external circumstances, and they feel powerless to change those circumstances.

Debra Maldonado 17:55

And don’t they get into like a defensive mode like that when you get a conflict, like the ego will automatically put the defenses up and make that other person wrong, and then, like I said, self preservation?

Robert Maldonado 18:07

Yeah, the ego because it’s designed to help you survive, it sees that it, let’s say, if it assumes that is the reality you’re going to have to deal with for the rest of your life, then it creates very powerful defense mechanisms to help you survive in that particular situation. But it’s forgetting, of course, the higher knowledge that you’re the creator of that situation. And so now it’s entrenched in that defense mechanism of, I have to fight the world in order to survive, and it just creates that loop, that constant loop.

Debra Maldonado 18:47

And so I love this idea. It really forces you to confront this controlling element that you have of your ego. So the battle is really like you said within that there’s this controlling element of the ego wanting to keep you safe. And it forces you to confront that inner conflict. It’s what is the saying about my mind? Why did I hand the scripts out to this person? And we don’t want to get into like blaming ourselves where we’re, oh, I’m such a terrible person, I created this terrible conflict with this other person I love. But you want to say there’s an opportunity here and have more openness to that conflict?

Robert Maldonado 19:28

Yeah, so if we think about creativity, which is the creative mind, it is in essence, like, controlled chaos, because we’re moving into the unknown. Once you move past your ego, and what your ego persona create, now you’re moving into unknown territory. So using that principle, that you will experience what you believe to be their meaning, the power of consciousness, the power of imagination is now at your disposal, you can create what you can imagine, you can literally create what you can imagine yourself to be not so much what’s out there. Because if you imagine you’re so, let’s say, if you just externalized and you say, I want to create a mansion or a house and or a relationship or relationships out there, you’re still, you’re not imagining yourself being in those things. You’re kind of externalizing, you’re saying, those things will then make me happy. And so you’re creating a situation of deficit in essence.

Debra Maldonado 20:41

Then a conflict?

Robert Maldonado 20:42

Yeah, you’re saying those external things, when those things show up, I will be happy.

Debra Maldonado 20:47

You know, that’s actually interesting that you said that because it’s like setting up. You’re setting up the conflict for yourself already. Because it’s a missunderstanding of reality. And you’re saying like, for example, relationship, I want a relationship and then when it comes in, then I’ll be happy. So we set up already that when the relationship doesn’t come in, the opposite is I’m not going to be happy. So we’re creating conflict in our life of feeling lonely, feeling people aren’t responding because we’re coming from the assumption that that other person can make me happy. And if we don’t realize that we keep saying, I’m doing it wrong, or I’m not saying the right things, or I’m not interesting enough, and they’re not showing up. We’re fighting ourselves. It’s like we have to believe we have to stop believing that that person or any person can make us more worthy or feel better about ourselves. And the lack of that person coming in is actually an opportunity. Because it’s easy to love yourself when everyone’s fawning all over you and telling you, you’re great. We’ve all had those experiences. But real mastery is when it’s in an absence where you have to depend on yourself. Be your own internal authority to give yourself that.

Robert Maldonado 22:05

Yes. And so creativity again, going back to that, moving into chaos. The reason it is chaos is because when you dare to create beyond your conditioned mind, you’re moving into the unknown. You don’t know what’s out there, you’re saying, Well, if all I’ve been seeing up to this point has been my own assumptions given to me by my past experiences, how can I create something new, something that I’ve never experienced, and I don’t expect to experience it at the ego level. You don’t expect it because it’s not part of your past experience. Now you’re using your imagination and you’re saying, What if it’s possible?

Debra Maldonado 22:54

What’s the creative way to respond to this?

Robert Maldonado 22:57

Right? How can I? Who would I be if I create those things? Really, that’s the main question you have to answer is who would I have to be to create those things? Yeah, not that those things are going to give me the answer. Because the things, remember that the things are simply appearance. The things are the creation, not the Creator. And most people are moving in or trying to move into those spaces, thinking that the things will create me. The money will create me. The relationships will make me happy. The job will give me confidence. It’s the other way around. You have to ask, who will I have to be or or who am I in that space where I am creating those things? I am experiencing those things.

Debra Maldonado 23:53

Instead of what do I have to do to get those things? If that’s more materialistic, it’s like you’re physically going out and moving the material world where we’re saying, who do I need to be? You know, that it’s your consciousness that you’re bringing into the situation. So conflict is an opportunity to really see your consciousness, see what’s in your unconscious, and what misalignment or misunderstanding you have about yourself, that is in the way of you getting what you want. And we and those people that caused the conflicts or appear to cause conflicts in our life, or our best friend, I mean, thank God that company laid me off or I wouldn’t be sitting here today. I may be still there in that cubicle, wondering when I’m going to start my life. So it really is a lot of times when these things happen, we feel we can’t feel like a victim. We have to say I am in full control of my life. I’m control. I handed the scripts out to these people.

Robert Maldonado 24:57

Well, isn’t that the the crux of it, that if we can’t accept responsibility, we can’t change it. Because you’re saying, it’s somebody else’s fault. It’s out there. But if you’re willing to accept full responsibility and meaning 100% because I work with people, and they say, well, I’m willing to accept my part. Yeah, but not the other part. But the other part is your part. It is you as well.

Debra Maldonado 25:26

Because you wouldn’t see them or have experience of them. The only experinse you have of them is in your own mind. Anyway, all you’re seeing is your interpretation of that person, their actions, their beingness is in you. They can’t put a thought in your mind about them. You create it. You accepted that thought about them.

Robert Maldonado 25:44

That’s it. That’s it. So Jung says something like this. “The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” So what he means is that the circumstances of your life will define you if you don’t define yourself. And most people will not define themselves because they don’t want to accept the responsibility. They say, I’ll let the circumstances define me. You know, when I get the house, when I get the relationship, when I get the right job, that will define me as happy. But if you let the world define you, it’s going to give you a very limited role to play in life. And that will be a role because you’re letting the circumstances define you. But if you’re willing to take full responsibility and say, nope, thank you, thank you very much. I can define myself. I can use my own imagination, my own ideas to define myself.

Debra Maldonado 26:53

So when someone accuses you of something or says you’re this way or calls you names, or whatever you can say, well, that’s not my opinion of me and to not need that other person to agree with you is power. But most of us, we need someone to reinforce us and say, you’re not. You’re good. You’re nice. See, we talked it out. And I think a lot of times when we have conflict with someone, what we think will resolve the conflict is them agreeing with us, right? That you understand me and you agree that I was right. And I think that sets you up for, well, look at our Facebook everywhere.

Robert Maldonado 27:35

Well, let’s say the optimal way to use conflict then is if you understand those principles, that you’re creating it. The ultimate way to use the conflict is to understand that that’s where your work is. Whoever is opposing you is showing you what shadow you need to be clear on. You know, what are you still not clear on? And what are you projecting out there?

Debra Maldonado 28:06

They’re really helping you.

Robert Maldonado 28:07

They’re helping you. They’re showing you exactly where you stop yourself. Not where they’re stopping you, where you’re stopping yourself whether it be angry, unresolved, sense of loss. You know what people call lack of self esteem or confidence. It’s going to show up as an external situation. If you’re willing to accept, oh, it’s showing me exactly where I hold myself back then it’s not a big problem. You can work on it. You can consciously cultivate that confidence. Because you’re accepting responsibility. You’re not saying, well, it’s out there. I would have to change the whole world. You know, there’s a beautiful metaphor in Buddhism. They say, “It would be like trying to cover the earth with leather so that you don’t hurt your feet.” You know, and you’re waiting for the the world to be completely comfortable and safe for you to walk out there, where all you have to do is put leather on your feet. And wherever you go, you’re you’re okay. That’s accepting full responsibility that you’re taking on the initiative for your own mental health and wellness, and not depending on those external circumstances to be safe and protected,

Debra Maldonado 29:38

Beautiful. Yeah, it’s amazing. So what we want to do though, is we want to use the, we want to have, I mean, it’s good to have an ego that kind of keeps us together and a consistency so when we wake up, we’re not thinking, who am I today? I’m, you know, the Princess of Sheba or something, you know, we’re always kind of having a consistent identity. The next part is we need to have controlled chaos, which means that we have to act in chaos but not where we’re, it’s too far off but have a little creativity.

Robert Maldonado 30:17

Well, yeah, it’s the control, but it’s chaos. And so it’s the balance, right, of the two, that everything in life you notice is a little bit out of control. Right? It’s not controlled fully. In other words, you see plants, and they’re designed to grow, and they’re giving it their best shot to grow as much as possible. But they’re not controlled in the sense that they have to grow exactly like every other plant or in a particular pattern. They’re free to find their own way.

Debra Maldonado 30:56

And that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to all be human beings. And then also have our own unique expression, and it really is if we don’t, it’s like the divine gave us gifts and a unique thing to bring into the world and share it and be in the world. We’re all very all unique like the snowflakes so none of none of us are alike. Stuff like that. And it’s our duty it’s our sacred duty to make the most of our life and to make the most of ourselves. So the way to do that is first to recognize that it’s coming from your own mind. This conflict is internal, not external. It’s coming from you. Not that that other person isn’t irritating and all those things, but you brought that situation in on purpose for some reason. So you have to understand what is it showing me?

Robert Maldonado 31:50

I mean, at the ultimate level it is you who are creating everything, but let’s say we work on stages because you first kind of have to deal with the kind of the resistance in your own mind of accepting full responsibility. And we know our mind resistant, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s designed to resist because it’s that creating stability, like you said for ourselves, but at the same time having to grow and evolve. So like, you know, you want the consistency and the stability, but you also want to be able to grow. 

Debra Maldonado 32:31

It creates that tension. 

Robert Maldonado 32:32

Yeah, that’s right. And so we’re not going to be able to just to jump from 

Debra Maldonado 32:38

Everything’s me! 

Robert Maldonado 32:39

Right, to that point automatically.

Debra Maldonado 32:41

Start with the little things. So then the second step, we use that control. And then the third step is examine as your true self. So when you’re examining this conflict, you’re not seeing it from the point of view of the ego, which is going to defend what’s going to make the other person wrong and it’s going to, you’re going to try to prove you’re right. Or try to fix that conflict out there to feel safe. So notice the tendency when there’s a conflict for you to get back to normal to resolve the conflict, because it’s uncomfortable. And what we want to do is we want to look at it from that our true self, our true personality and saying, ooh, this is interesting. You know, one of our teachers and Buddhists in the Buddhist center we went to in Denver, he said, one time someone asked him how he was doing and he was rubbing his hands together, saying, I’m so lucky, I have so many problems. And it was because he liked problems because it helped him fine tune his mind and reach higher levels of consciousness. And then in Kabbalah, they say that every obstacle that comes to you is it like a beam of light, covered in like dirt and mud and it looks very unattractive. But if you kind of work with it, you get that light. And so if you knew these conflicts will give you more light, more awareness and more consciousness. We’re creating ability, then you would welcome more. But we tend to, the ego wants to avoid conflict. So we want, it’s not that we want to go out and create conflict all the time. But we want to live out of choice where we’re not afraid of conflict because we know that there’s going to be pushback when we’re starting something new,. There’s going to be failures. There’s going to be upsets. There’s going to be people that are upset. And that’s a challenge. And I know for me, as a coach and growing and having people to take care of and clients, it was always that, oh, if we have too many people, it will be too many people to manage. And I was always trying to avoid conflict. But then now if someone was unhappy or someone didn’t get some product that they ordered, I was now it’s like, oh, okay, we could work with this. We can learn. It doesn’t have to be this. I’m a bad person and I did something wrong or they’re not pleased with me that I can really just give out of my heart and then know and trust that everything’s going to work out for the best, and I always put my best out there. So I think it’s really powerful for anyone to be able to face conflict in a different way. Yeah, and that’s the real true meaning of you create your life with your thoughts. But when you have the right understanding, because otherwise you’re trying to create with your thoughts, but you’re still operating from the idea that it’s you against the world. That the external will validate you. That’s not the, let’s say the philosophy out of which that discipline evolved of creating with your thoughts. It evolved out of the philosophy that everything is consciousness, you are the the creative power in life. And when you understand that, then that principle becomes true. Your thoughts will create your life. Your thoughts will directly create your life. But if you’re in afraid of conflict, the thoughts will tell you take a little baby step. Don’t do, you know, or do put it off for next year. It’s not the right time. Don’t put your dreams on hold, you know it’s a pandemic right now. Just you know, make sure you’re surviving instead of this conflict. This is an opportunity for me to redefine myself and who I am and create what I I want to create in my life, who I’m going to become, who I am becoming.

Robert Maldonado 36:33

That’s right. Yeah, people often when we do seminars, when we talk about these things, they often jump to those, well, am I creating these terrible natural disasters? 

Debra Maldonado 36:45

Or did I create the pandemic?

Robert Maldonado 36:46

Yeah, the those are neutral things really. They’re part of nature. They’re part of the way the universe exists. The Universal Mind we can save, actually, let’s say adapt that consciousness paradigm. And so if they’re neutral, that means that we’re free to interpret them the way we want to interpret them. Yes, you can say, well, they’re terrible things and they’re holding me back. And that will become your experience.

Debra Maldonado 37:19

Your reality. Yeah.

Robert Maldonado 37:20

But if you say, well, it’s an opportunity for me to really reflect on the meaning of my life, what is important, you know, what should I give priority to? And it’s forcing me to meditate to look inward, then it becomes a very useful process. What ever happens, whatever showing up in your life, whatever arises in our consciousness, is showing us a great lesson. It’s giving us a great opportunity to experience the deeper parts of the psyche.

Debra Maldonado 37:53

Yeah. It’s like when we have a conflict, it’s a fork in the road. We’re faced to either go back, go down the old road, the old way we used to react, or we can create. So you’re the reacting or creating. And so the conflict creates that kind of choice point. And that’s what they were talking about in screenwriting, the hero has a choice point. Do I go back home and be with my wife and kids, or do I go and fight them? Or, you know, or do I go for the, you know, this person I love, or do I stay with the safe person that I always was with and so there’s always those choice points. And when we are consciously creating our life, we make those choices to go against the grain mostly and that is going to be the less, the more conflict is going to be on the way and you’re inviting more in because it kind of fights and stretches you to create and get strength and to become the person that has the things you desire. These obstacles are there for you, not against you. It’s such a beautiful process, like the hero’s journey.

Robert Maldonado 39:08

Yeah, I really like the script metaphor because it’s no accident that human beings developed theater. Movies are so popular or novels because that’s the way our mind thinks. It’s a narrative. We’re creating a story about our life. And that’s the way we find meaning that we were playing the hero in our journey in our own life. Right, we’re like the center of our own story. And we are giving the characters in our life meaning by saying, oh, this person treated me this way, that they must be a good friend. And this person treated me this way. They must be my worst enemy. And we’re creating that kind of dual system of the narrative, very much like in the stories that we see write out, or play out in movies and plays, because that’s the way our mind works.

Debra Maldonado 40:15

Now, also to just to put a pin in this conversation is I see a lot of people. They are very attached to being in the flow. I’m in the flow. I’m in the flow. And I think people misunderstand what being in the flow means, being in the flow doesn’t mean that the outer world goes according to your plan. Being in the flow is an internal experience. It’s not an external experience. It’s you being aligned with your higher self, in the evidence of conflicts and the evidence of, you know, tragedies of choices of tough times. To be in the flow means that I can go through and I could center myself, no matter what happens to me, the eye or the hurricane, that the world can be spinning around. And I think what people miss, you know, people often say I want to be in the flow, things are flowing like this is happening, and that’s happening and everything’s starting to move, and then everything gets shut down. It means that you’re attached to that external being in the places, again, where you want it to be, versus the external has no power over you. That’s being in the flow. So I just wanted to add that being in the flow doesn’t mean there’s no conflict, or no setbacks or obstacles in the way.

Robert Maldonado 41:39

Yeah. 

Debra Maldonado 41:41

Attached to having no obstacles. It’s this misunderstanding of higher knowledge.

Robert Maldonado 41:47

Yeah. I mean, if you think of the creative arts, which is kind of typifies the creative flow, most of the time, but really the creative flow in everything we’re doing, because if you understand that if we are the authors of our life, we’re the creators of our life, that means we are the the artists of our lives. We’re the ones that are giving it color, meaning, form, and expression. And we either do that unconsciously, meaning by conditioning by past experience, or we do it in a conscious way, which it does require accepting responsibility and creating it from our imagination, which is scary for a lot of people because then they don’t have anyone to blame. If I don’t have my parents to blame, if I don’t have society to blame, that means I’m responsible for everything that is going on in my life.

Debra Maldonado 42:55

That’s like what you talked about becoming an adult. That you’re the leader of your life. 

Robert Maldonado 43:03

And that, let’s say, in our development, we don’t want to accept that responsibility. We want to stay in that infantile stage of the mother should take care of me. The world should take care of me. Society should take care of me, right? You see, the people that have that attitude of the world owes me something and if it doesn’t give it to me, that means it’s bad, and I’m gonna throw my life away.

Debra Maldonado 43:34

Right. And this leads to depression, serious suicides and stuff like that, really serious because people are looking for the world to define them.

Robert Maldonado 43:45

Yes. And so accepting full responsibility is a big challenge. But it leads to real freedom. It’s the only real freedom that we have full responsibility 100% No ifs, buts, no fine print.

Debra Maldonado 44:03

But. But we hear that a lot. So the four steps to facing conflict is: One. No, it’s coming from your mind. Two. You have to step into that controlled chaos where you have the consistency of who you are, but also be free to play a little bit in that chaotic change, like try different ways to deal with a conflict, even ask yourself, what do I typically do? Let me try something different. Let me just try something different. It kind of shakes you up. It may not, you know, it’s not really about what you’re doing. It’s about giving yourself that waking up and making a different choice. Even if you do that. And even if it’s wrong, you made a different choice and that you should celebrate that you acted outside of your conditioning. The third one is that you’re examining your the conflict as your true self, not the ego, so you’re coming from that, not from that defensive, right in there wrong. More of how I created this is interesting something in my deeper unconscious is trying to show me something. Something deeper within me is trying to show me somewhere I’m off base. And it’s this is going is a great teacher right now. So the conflict that people that cause conflict, the events are great teachers for us. And we come from that place. And what we’re doing is we’re shifting that center of control that we had in the beginning of our life from the ego, to our true personality to the creative mind. Okay, take care everyone. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend, and go out there and stir up some stuff.

Robert Maldonado 45:41

Stay well

Debra Maldonado 45:42

And bless the people who caused the conflict.