A Contagious Smile Podcast
"A Contagious Smile" is a transformative platform embracing special needs families and domestic violence survivors. We illuminate the journeys of extraordinary individuals who've triumphed over adversity and aspire to ignite your own inner light. Through candid stories, we showcase how they conquered challenges and emerged stronger. Our podcast features insightful interviews with experts, offering resources that empower and uplift. Let us guide you in rediscovering your inner light – because every smile narrates a tale of resilience. It's time to share your story and rekindle your spirit.
A Contagious Smile Podcast
The Cosmic Journey: Dean's Path to Enlightenment, Healing Trauma, and Navigating the Evolution of the Soul
Unlock the secrets to true happiness and spiritual enlightenment with our incredible guest, Dean Graves—a seasoned teacher, mental health counselor, and spiritual guide. In this episode, Dean recounts his transformative journey from a conventional life to a profound awakening in his 50s. Learn about the nature of stress and discover how bridging the gap between expectations and reality can lead you to a state of bliss. Dean also sheds light on enlightenment, viewing it as an ongoing journey rather than a final destination, and emphasizes the crucial role of self-exploration in achieving genuine happiness.
Embark on a cosmic voyage as we explore the evolution of the soul, tracing its path from primordial darkness through various incarnations. Dean discusses the importance of diverse life experiences and their impact on shaping our identity, ego, and beliefs. We delve into the healing process, highlighting the key choice between service to self and service to others, which determines our readiness for higher consciousness and unity. Prepare to understand how these experiences shape our journey towards wisdom and becoming creator beings.
Navigate the complexities of consciousness with practical insights into self-healing and mental health. Dean shares his expertise on free will, the Earth's current transitional phase, and the vibrational changes affecting our collective consciousness. Learn the transformative power of meditation and gain practical tips for starting your own practice. Whether you are seeking to heal trauma or find direction in life, this episode offers valuable information and guidance. Don't miss this enlightening conversation with Dean Graves that promises to illuminate your path to inner peace and spiritual growth.
I'm sorry, okay.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon and welcome back to another episode of a contagious smile, where every smile tells a story. Forgive me, guys, because if y'all listened to the last podcast, you know I was going in for surgery. So, as my daughter, faith says, I sound like I swallowed a frog, so bear with me on that one. Today we have Dean Graves. He is a distinguished teacher, mental health counselor, spiritual guide. He's worked on this field for over two decades. He has profound expertise in the field and he has a deep spiritual understanding for helping with holistic approach to helping heal and personal growth. I am so excited to have him here with us today and he has to put up with my voice. Thank you so much, dean, for being here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Victoria, for asking me. I am delighted to be here.
Speaker 2:Can you share with everybody how you first became interested in mediation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had an awakening approximately my 50th year. Prior to that, I had a very conventional life, with family oriented towards a business career, and an awakening is an often misunderstood experience that people have. Very simply, an awakening is nothing more than that moment in your life when you realize that all of the stuff that you've been doing is not providing you with happiness or adequate happiness, and it is from that point that we are tasked with looking around and learning other alternatives to the behavior and the ambitions that we have previously been focused on, and when that occurs with an ounce of diligence, we begin to have awarenesses about ourselves and about our surroundings, and we begin to realize that the only thing that we can change is ourselves, and so, consequently, that begins the journey of self-exploration.
Speaker 2:So do you believe that stress plays a big factor in all this as well?
Speaker 1:Stress is our teacher. It is our most significant teacher, but stress is something that is often misunderstood. Also, I'm big on definitions and clarifying.
Speaker 1:Stress most of what has been identified as stress are the byproducts of stress the physical effects, the mental, emotional effects all of those are byproducts of stress itself. But stress is a specific thing, and stress is the difference between our expectations how we think things should be and how things really are, which simply means that if we were able to simply experience life as it is, rather than through the lens of our expectations, we would no longer experience stress. And if you understand that bliss is a condition of being, it is just um, you're just so happy all the time. You're just obnoxious. People can't stand you because you're so happy. Happy.
Speaker 1:But stress I mean bliss is the absence of stress, and that is a process to achieve that level. And as we begin to surrender our perceptions of self that are all erroneous, we begin to fill the void that is left after we surrender that perception of self. Is happiness, and so the measure of how we're doing with our healing is happiness. The happier we are and the happier we are getting is a measure of our progress on healing and moving towards that condition of bliss and moving towards that condition of bliss.
Speaker 2:Well, I know that so many people are very intrigued about, like life after death, and I know that this is a topic that you speak about as well, based on your experiences and I'll tell you why in a second but what do you think happens when you pass?
Speaker 1:Well, we, you and I right now are an analog projection of our metaphysical self. We exist in both the metaphysical world and the physical world simultaneously, but what we are experiencing now is a projection of our metaphysical self. Our metaphysical, our metaphysical self is a consciousness pattern, it is our enduring self, it is what will be maintained before we are incarnate, after we are incarnate, and that is what our journey through evolution is, rather than any perceptions of the physical. And so, consequently, excuse me, I'm sorry, oh you're fine, yeah, your, your frog must be contagious.
Speaker 1:So, um, before we are born, we, we exist within a range of consciousness.
Speaker 2:It is a very low range of consciousness it is the first range of consciousness.
Speaker 1:It is a very low range of consciousness. It is the first range of consciousness where we have enough awareness in order to begin assuming responsibility for our own progress through the evolution, the enlightenment process. Enlightenment and consciousness evolution is synonymous, it's the same thing. So people have a misperception of enlightenment primarily because of the achievements that the Buddha experienced, and they view it as a destination. It's not a destination, it's the path itself, and so, consequently, our objective is to explore ourselves, thereby fulfilling our purpose in life and our purpose for creation itself. When we begin this range of consciousness, we begin in what is described as primordial darkness, which simply means that we don't know anything, we don't have any experience. We're starting from a literal starting line, and we begin to have and that is the foundation for our consciousness pattern, and we begin to incarnate into the physical world, because the physical world allows a degree of intensity that is not available in the metaphysical world, and we begin a multitude of life, lifetimes the average human has incarnated over 3 000 times and some as many as 8 000. We, if you envision that we're all on a sports team, and a sports team, by its very nature, practices all week we look at game films. The coach yells at us and doesn't yell at us and cheers us on, and we get ready for the game, and then Friday night is the game, and then we play the game. We are in the game right now. We're playing the game and trying to remember what it is we decided we were going to do in this incarnation to play better and to progress further down the evolutionary path progress further down the evolutionary path.
Speaker 1:What we retain upon death is what we have learned about the curriculum of this range of consciousness. Primarily, what we are tasked with during this range of consciousness is to become aware, which is what I was alluding to after the awakening. But we literally will become awareness before we are ready to graduate to the next range of consciousness, and in order to do that we have to have a variety of experiences. So we incarnate in every possibility. Some lifetimes we are the perpetrator, some lifetimes we're the victim, sometimes we're male, sometimes we're female, sometimes we're one of the other races, and whatever combination of the physical characteristics and emotional characteristics that are available in this environment of earth. We will experiment with that, we will go to that and view life through that lens, and so when we die, uh, which is a natural part of the process it just means that our the coach took us out of the game and we go back to the locker room and do our practice and get ready for the next event.
Speaker 1:When we have learned the curriculum of this range of consciousness, then we will advance to the next range of consciousness and we will do similar things, but it's a significantly higher range of consciousness, and so we will become awareness. In order to qualify to graduate to the next range of consciousness, the next range of consciousness, we will do very similar things, but without the uh, the, the void of information, and and forgetting past life, past lives and so forth, in order to explore love. Our task to graduate from that range of consciousness is to significantly surrender our perception of self form, what is called a social memory complex, which simply means that we have melded our perception of our autonomous self into a group, and we will group with people that have achieved the similar range of consciousness that we have, and we will become love, the next range of consciousness. We do the same thing with wisdom. After we achieve becoming wisdom, then we will graduate to the lowest range of creator being status and we will explore unity. Unity and we become the. The whole process is surrendering our perception of autonomy, surrendering our perception of self, and moving into a broader perspective of unity with all the other aspects of creation, and so what we do when we die at this range of consciousness is simply merge back with our consciousness pattern. We incorporate what we have retained from this experience into our consciousness pattern. We modify our consciousness pattern and prepare to move forward. Now there are all sorts of variables that we can choose or not choose to participate in.
Speaker 1:One of the things that is so significant about this range of consciousness is we are designed to form a hierophant, or an identity or an ego. It's all the same thing. There's no distinction between hierophant, identity and ego, and that becomes our perception of self, and we are all motivated to get more of what we like. Of course, when we begin, we don't know what we like, but we strive to get more of what we like. What we do like reinforces the beliefs that we have incorporated into this identity. Uh, until we determine that it's not working, and that's that point of awakening I'm not awake, or I am awake and I'm not getting more of what I like. So what is it that I really like? And so we go through a reductive process of becoming aware of two-step process.
Speaker 1:One is healing the emotional baggage that we have collected as a result of our experiences to date and we become aware of the beliefs that we have incorporated into our false identity. And the false identity is nothing more than a collection of beliefs, that's all it is. It's things that we've gotten by osmosis, from family, friends and whatever experiences and some smaller degree are those beliefs that we have incorporated willingly, that we've intentionally incorporated into our identity. But this is a false self, it is a hierophant, and as we have experiences with awareness, then we begin to heal that emotional baggage that we have collected, which liberates our energy. As our energy is liberated, that is the gas, that is the fuel for our awareness, our awareness escalates and we begin to surrender that perception of self. That is that collection of beliefs.
Speaker 1:One of the most strategic things that we have to do in order to qualify for the next range of consciousness is to make a choice, and that it's simply called the choice.
Speaker 1:And the choice is whether we are going to continue to enhance this hierophant and by that token we are choosing the service to self path, or we're motivated to surrender that and follow the path of greater unity, which is the service to others path, and it is solely our choice.
Speaker 1:There's no judgment good or bad about that.
Speaker 1:There's no judgment good or bad about that. Those choosing the service to self path are choosing the path that is deemed to be indirect in our return to unity with the creator, because we will go as far as we can until we hit a brick wall, and we literally can't go any farther in that point, maybe billions of years down the road. But you can't be in unity and separate at the same time. So you've got to make the choice. Am I going to surrender this perception of self that I have enhanced to an nth degree and go back to where I dropped out of school and followed the service to others path, or am I going to continue to just bump my head against the brick wall? Those that are following the service to others path is the direct path back to the unity and that's what I was describing at the beginning of our conversation that we continually surrender more and more of our perception of autonomy, which allows us to integrate that perception of self into a larger, larger organism until eventually we reunite with the creator.
Speaker 2:I love your explanation because I love this, and so I'm hanging on your words and it's amazing. Let me ask you who or what do you believe created earth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, actually there are a multitude of universes. Every universe is designed with a combination of different aspects. There are five inherent characteristics of the creator Awareness, love, wisdom, unity and stillness. And there are 27 other distortions of those inherent characteristics. And every universe is designed with a combination of different inherent characteristics and or distortions which varies the experiences available to the creator and so um. Our particular units. Universe is a called a nine star system. Every star is home to an archetype of the creator, and our particular universe is designed with the five inherent characteristics and four distortions. And that's where we get the nine stars in system, and every expansion of creation within our universe is a combination. It's a further enhancement of those nine star systems in order to further explore and diversify the experiences that we have available to us. In addition to the five inherent characteristics, all of creation experiences free will, which is a distortion. It was the first distortion.
Speaker 1:Philosophers have argued for centuries, if not more, about what free will do we have free will? Do we not have free will? But the choice to turn right, the choice to turn left or to do anything is predicated on our perception of separation. If we did not perceive ourselves as separate from the creator, then we would not have free perceive at this range of consciousness is having a lot of free will, and free will functions as an intoxicant, just like whiskey. The more intoxicated that we are with free will, the more we perceive ourselves as separate from the creator. So our range of consciousness is very intoxicated with free will and that is really what we are giving up. What we are surrendering as we evolve is that perception of separation until we ultimately are able to surrender the whole thing and realize that we are the one infinite creator experiencing ourselves.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you, Dean, considering the current state of our planet, what do you think is the future for Earth?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a big question. I don't think you're going to go home?
Speaker 1:I don't think you go home. The earth is experiencing a very unique opportunity at this point we have been in. What I've been alluding to is the range of consciousness that we experience is called the third density, and it is a density because we, we are very heavy, we're very dense, our vibration is low and vibration is determined by our really our heaviness. When you have molecules that are crammed together, they can't vibrate, they can't move around, and so, consequently, it is considered to be a very dense substance, dense material. The same is true with us we are still very dense, even for a third density experience. We are very dense, we're very heavy.
Speaker 1:A third density experience has a defined time period, which is approximately 76,000 years, and it's divided into three parts and we have, as participants in that particular experience, the opportunity to achieve our curriculum goals and graduate at any of those three points. Our third density experience and just as an added Earth, is considered to be a second chance planet. In other words, everyone here has failed to graduate from at least one other third density experience, so we're kind of a reform school. Third density experience. So we're kind of a reform school. A large part of the population has actually failed to graduate five times from a third density experience, which is neither good nor bad. You can do it as many times as you need to to learn the curriculum. So we are our third density density. Most recent third density experience ended in february of 2016 and we are in a holdover period.
Speaker 1:The planet itself, gaia, has moved on to fourth density. It has its own consciousness. It has moved on to fourth density.
Speaker 1:The majority of the children that have been born since roughly the mid will continue on with a third density experience, starting from scratch in a brand new third density experience, and those graduating will go to a fourth-density planet and they will simultaneously exist, still calling the planet Earth, but they soon will no longer integrate, they will no longer be aware of each other and, since this is all conceptual, that's difficult for us to understand, but we're in that process of splitting right now. So, depending on your readiness to graduate, if you're not ready to graduate, then you will continue on with the third density experience and experience much of the same difficulties that earth has historically experienced. While they're trying to figure out what, what the deal is and what's going on, the other larger part of the population is going to begin to experience fourth density and if you want to, um an idea of what fourth density is like, listen to, uh, john lennon's imagine I love that song and that very, very characteristic of a fourth density experience.
Speaker 1:So we are. We are experiencing great intensity right now. Um, the, the warming of the planet is a natural feature of the planet. We are compounding it by virtue of our abuses of our resources and what are deemed to be fossil fuels, which are not fossil fuels. It's just part of the Earth. Things of that nature are accelerating the warming of the planet, but the planet's going to warm anyway and it's anticipated to. Depending on how we treat it, it's going to increase between two and eight degrees Celsius, which is historically within the guidelines for the Earth experience.
Speaker 1:Experience so dramatic changes in the planet itself. Uh, the bellicosity that we're experiencing within the population is as uh, to a large degree, the result of the irritation that the lower consciousness, third density beings, are experiencing with the changes in the vibration of the planet. And so, uh and that's intentional to intensify people's need to make that choice of that decision. Am I going to polarize, service to self or service to others? That will, to a large degree, subside as the planet continues to split, because the higher vibration is very irritating to lower vibration, just as lower vibration is irritating to higher vibration. And so, as the the population continues towards a, a split, then that irritation will subside because they're no longer interacting. So the planet of Earth will continue and there will be completely separate Earths that share the same geographic location of Earth, but they will be completely independent of each other in their experiences of creation dean, how do you personally navigate and overcome challenges within your own life?
Speaker 1:these principles well, I've done a lot of work on myself. I do still experience stress, but for the most part it's not self-imposed stress. It's not because of particular beliefs that I have retained and I still have a very strong identity that won't go away for a long time yet. Completely, my uh, my stresses are a lot of frustration with getting people to understand the true nature of their being and to to focus on the more significant aspects of life rather than the transient, immediate gratification things.
Speaker 2:You're also a mental health counselor. What are some common misconceptions that you often have to address in your practice?
Speaker 1:When I work with a patient, traditional therapy is of the opinion that healing is through awareness of the individual's stories. And if you understand that, remember the old days in the library. You'd go into the library and you'd look in the card catalog and then, once you got the card catalog and the location of the book, then you go to get go to the book to find out what you needed to know. But you had to go to the card catalog and the location of the book. Then you go to get go to the book to find out what you needed to know.
Speaker 2:But you had to go to the card catalog first yes, I miss those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the story is the card catalog, the book is the emotions that we have used to interpret our experiences, and so my practice differs from a traditional therapist from the standpoint is I go directly to the emotion.
Speaker 1:We don't need this, we don't need the story, because people if you ask people, you know what is the condition in your life that you would like to change, and they'll tell you they know. I mean very seldom do I find somebody that you know ponders that extensively before they can come up with an answer and through a reductive process, almost invariably and when I say almost invariably, it's only because they haven't come to the awareness yet. What is the major problem that people deal with is a feeling of inadequacy, of not worthiness, of being too small or however you want to couch it, it's all the same thing. And so once we can eliminate those emotions that are holding that belief in place, then their healing greatly accelerates, and I don't work with a patient for a long time. If I work with them more than two or three times, then I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and so therapists refer their patients to me and I get rid of those inhibiting emotions, usually traumas.
Speaker 1:And then I send them back to the therapist and the therapist invariably tell me you know I can't get them to open up, they're not going to. You know they're not telling me what I need to know. After I work with them, then the therapist invariably say I can't get them to shut up, they just want to tell me everything. So you know their job is made dramatically easier because they're helping them put the pieces of the puzzle together why this, why that, and so on and so forth. And so you know that's primarily what I focus on. I focus primarily on people that have identifiable traumas and, you know, allow them to heal those traumas. Traumas heal almost immediately with the processes that I use and people are usually just in amazement. They look at me like what did you do to me? I didn't do anything, you did it, I just guided you to that point.
Speaker 1:Awareness is both the discovery tool of what needs to be healed and is the healing tool yourself. And if you understand that, for example, if you walk out your front door one morning and you go into work and you see your car has a flat tire, well, you've discovered the problem. You're just, you're not going to walk away from the car and never use the car again. You're going to fix the problem. You're either going to change the tire yourself you're going to call somebody to do it but you're going to fix the problem. You're either going to change the tire yourself you're going to call somebody to do it, but you're going to fix the problem. The same is true when we become aware of the emotional baggage that we have collected and or the beliefs that are holding that baggage in place.
Speaker 2:Dean, let me ask you. I have the privilege and honor of working with so many amazing people. I just hate that they've been through the trauma for us to meet. How would you start working with someone who has gotten out of a violent situation and they we would call an intense experience, but not a trauma?
Speaker 1:Okay, when we perceive that an experience lasts 30 minutes or an hour or some period of time, every thought within that perceived experience is, in and of itself, a complete experience, and we are obligated to make a decision about that thought before we can go on to the next thought, go through a lengthy assessment process that we perceive is instantaneous, but we are not really in time, so we can take as long as we need to in order to make the adjudicate. That thought and the decision that we have to make is whether this thought feels good, and I like it, or it doesn't feel good and I don't like it.
Speaker 1:That is a complete emotion. That's all there is to an emotion. All the other things that we have labeled as emotions are conditions of being. It's how we are. It's the condition of being that we're using that lens that we're using to interpret the experience.
Speaker 1:When we experience a trauma, something that distinguishes a trauma that one thought is so intense and so challenges our perception of self, our security or whatever that we are unable to make that decision of whether it feels good or it doesn't feel good and people that experience that are diagnosed with being in shock, for example, someone who has been through a tornado and it's the morning after the tornado and they're just kind of la la land, they can't, you know, talk, they can't really deal. In order to heal that condition of shock, you have to bring their awareness back into their body. The same is true when we are healing traumas, that one particular thought. You have to isolate that thought and the people again, they know they will tell you just immediately what that thought is, the peak moment of their experience and the perceived experience. And using directing the patient's awareness, you bring awareness to that thought, to that moment in time, and allow them to guide them into making that adjudication of whether it felt good or it didn't feel good. That immediately alleviates that whole experience, perception of being traumatic.
Speaker 1:And I have. I've done this thousands of times and I have never found anyone that has had more than four moments, four thoughts within a perceived experience that they were unable at the time to make that judgment. And so when you clear those one, two, three or four instances within that perceived experience, then the whole experience is cleared of the emotions and of the perception of it as being traumatic. It is no longer a trauma for them, it simply becomes an intense experience. Certainly there was a lot of learning in that, but the traumatic aspect of it disappears. And I've worked with people that have had traumas. I've worked with several Vietnam vets that had these traumas from the Vietnam War 40, 40, 50 years and they've come up with all sorts of mechanisms in order to deal with it, to suppress it and so forth, but it clears just as if it hadn't happened yesterday now, many listeners may be new to the whole experience of spiritual awakening.
Speaker 2:What can you tell them could be some signs or things that they could look for if they want to take this path towards spiritual growth?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm a meditation teacher most direct and beneficial mechanism that we have available in order to heal and to progress along the evolutionary path. It allows us when, when we meditate, I tell my students we exist in both the metaphysical world, in the physical world. In the physical world, in the physical world, that's the village. And the village is where all problems exist, in our metaphysical self presence, that is the guru's cave. And so when we learn to meditate, then we allow ourselves to go to the guru's cave, get out of the village where all the problems exist, and that completely transforms our perception of what the problems are.
Speaker 1:And the experience is very similar when you go on vacation. You go on vacation and it takes you two or three days to get out of that workaday mode and then you enjoy your vacation. And you come back from vacation and the same problems existed after your vacation as they did before. But what has changed is you have changed, and so, consequently, the insurmountable problems become surmountable because you have changed the lens through which you're viewing those, those problems.
Speaker 1:And meditation allows us to do the same thing, us to modify our hierophant, our identity, in order to be more successful in tricking the world into giving us more of what we like. When we learn to invert that awareness, then we become of the only thing that we can change, which is within ourselves, and so we begin that process of healing. We begin that process of healing and as we get better at the excuse me, better at that then we learn to take that perspective of being in the guru's cave with us when we go back to the village, and that is called mindfulness. We maintain that perception not of aloofness, just of the perception of the um, the not being part of the village. We're in the village but we're not part of the village, and so we allow ourselves to maintain that perception of separation from the problems of the village.
Speaker 2:What are some practical tips or exercises that our listeners can implement right away to start experiencing these benefits?
Speaker 1:okay. Well, um, most people have difficulty beginning a meditation process only because they're so chaotic and their energy is actually greatly depleted because of the emotional baggage that they're in, the erroneous beliefs about their perception of self that they have created. And so there are exercises I have been included, um, some very dramatic exercises, the same exercises that I use in therapy, two of which can be self-applied, one of which needs a partner, but you can process each other with it. I have a book that is on the market now. It's called the Identity Model, and the Identity Model explains in much more detail than what we can cover in a podcast of how to invert that awareness, to employ these self-healing techniques, to heal that emotional baggage and to propel themselves towards becoming aware of and surrendering the false beliefs. I have another book, an elementary book, enlightenment, plain and Simple, which is available on Amazon, and it is a more basic understanding of the process. So, depending on where people are, I've tried to to stagger the books so that they can begin wherever they are and receive immediate benefit from it.
Speaker 2:You also have another book coming out at the end of the summer. Can you tell us about it?
Speaker 1:It's called the Enigma of Consciousness, a spiritual exploration of man's, of humanity's relationship to creation, and that to date, is pretty much my compendium book and it explains the whole structure of creation, how creation began, what the purpose of creation is, the purpose of our individual selves. We have what is called an archetypical mind, which is a blueprint for how we process thought, and it is. It's a very detailed book and it will take you pretty much as deep as you want to go and allowing you to um, go beyond what most people have any concept of is possible, uh, for their individual progression within this range of consciousness, and it'll be on bookshelves august 30th.
Speaker 2:You can contact your local bookstore to pre-order it I am going to make sure, if you will email me all of your links. I want to make sure we get everything out there on the show notes so everybody could find you. I would love to have you come back again because I don't even think we touched the surface of everything. I want to like dive in and hear from you we haven't, we haven't, but that that's good.
Speaker 1:You got to start somewhere.
Speaker 2:You have to start somewhere but I would love to have you come back on again if you would consider doing so oh yeah, I would love to I'd love to I.
Speaker 1:I love talking about this because you know it's information that catches people's ear, and an awful lot of people out there are to that point where they realize that they're not happy and they've got to do something, but they don't know what to do, and so the more I can provide them with this information and give them direction, that is, that is my function, my, my mission.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to thank you so much for tolerating the frog and being here today, and I will get everybody his show notes in there with every way, each way to find him, and I will beg him to come back on very soon. So, dean, thank you very much for being here with us today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, virginia, victoria, I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
