In this episode of Spirits and Stories with Donald Dunn, we bring you a powerful storytelling podcast experience centered on real life stories, inspiring interviews, and the unfolding human experience. We sit down with Dean Graves—author, mental health counselor, and guide in conscious living—to explore a profound personal journey of awakening, healing, and self-discovery.

With over two decades of experience, Dean shares how true fulfillment begins when we look beyond society’s definitions of success. Through deep conversations, he unpacks how identity, ego, and conditioning shape who we believe we are—and how that disconnect often leads to stress, dissatisfaction, and emotional weight. This episode dives into overcoming adversity at the inner level, revealing how emotional healing and mindfulness can unlock clarity, peace, and purpose.

Dean explains the transformative role of meditation as a gateway to self-awareness, offering listeners practical insight into how resilience is built from within. His message is simple and powerful: awakening isn’t a destination—it’s a lifelong path. These resilience stories and life lessons remind us that growth comes from exploring who we truly are beneath the noise.

If you’re drawn to podcasts about transformation, inner strength, and meaningful change, this episode delivers a moving exploration of what it means to live consciously and authentically.

Takeaways:

1. Self-awareness begins when we look beyond societal conditioning and trauma.
2. Emotional healing is essential for clarity, happiness, and resilience.
3. Meditation is a vital tool for inner transformation and peace.
4. Life purpose is rooted in self-exploration and authentic joy.
5. Enlightenment is a continuous journey, not a final destination.
6. Understanding stress builds emotional resilience and clarity.

Links Referenced in This Episode:

deangraves.com

deangravespodcast.com

enlightenmentplainsimple.com

identitymodel.com

childrenofalessergod.com

enigmaofconsciousness.com

Today's guest is someone who has spent more than 20 years helping people understand themselves on a deeper level.

Dean Graves is an author, podcaster, mental health counselor, and spiritual guide whose work blends psychology, philosophy and mindfulness into a powerful approach to healing and self awareness.

Through his books, workshops, and worldwide seminars, Dean has helped countless people quiet the noise of everyday life, reconnect with their inner strength, and discover a clearer sense of purpose.

His teachings focus on self empowerment and conscious living, inviting people to explore who they truly are beneath the stress, trauma and conditioning of the world.

Dean believes we are entering a new era of human awakening, and he's made it his mission to help others unlike unlock their potential and experience life with more clarity, peace, and intention.

Please welcome to the show, Dean Graves.

How's it going, Dean?

It's going great.

Thank you, Don.

Thank you.

Thank you for that great introduction.

I hope I can live up to that.

I'm sure you'll have no issues.

So why don't we get a little bit of background information?

Where, where did you kind of grow up and, and what brought you into this industry in the wonderful world of authoring and podcasting and helping others?

Well, I. I'm a native of Memphis, Tennessee and I still live in Memphis, Tennessee.

I've traveled extensively through, primarily throughout North America.

But I usual background explanation is I had pretty much a, what would be considered a normal life up until about my 50th year and achieved relative success by conventional standards.

But I had about my 50th year what I describe as an awakening.

And an awakening is a significantly misunderstood concept.

All an awakening is is that point in your life where you have the realization that all the stuff, whatever it may have been that you've been doing may be deemed to be successful, but it's not really making you happier.

That's an awakening that is nothing more than turning the.

The light switch on up until that time.

And that time can.

It can happen when you're a teenager.

It can happen when you're 90 years old.

It will happen when it happens, or it may not happen in this particular lifetime, but inevitably, at some point in your existence, it will happen.

And from that point, what we have deemed to be important up to that awakening loses value.

And it doesn't immediately go away, but it goes away, usually incrementally, as your awareness escalates.

We are.

We exist.

When I say we, all of the earthly population exists within a range of consciousness.

You and I share that same range of consciousness.

We are tasked with learning a particular curriculum for this range of consciousness in, in our schooling and in preparation for moving on to more advanced ranges of consciousness, one of the characteristics that is that we are designed to experience with every incarnation, with every lifetime, we create identity.

And you can call that identity an ego, you can call it a hierophant, if you want to be technical, but it's a false perception of self.

And it is comprised of nothing more than beliefs, beliefs that we've gotten from our parents, from our siblings, from our friends, from groups that we belong to.

And this identity is constantly being modified.

Every time that we have an experience, we modify this identity in order to try to make it more effective.

The reason that we form this identity is to get more of what we like.

We're all humans.

We're all motivated to get more of what we like.

What we like may vary.

What you like may be completely different from what I like, but that notwithstanding, we want more of what we like.

Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I'm going to go out and get more of what I don't like today.

The intent is to get more of what you like.

When we, up until that awakening point, what we're really doing is trying to trick the world in giving us more of what we like by creating this identity, this false perception of self.

And we include in that everything all of our beliefs.

If I, if I join certain groups, if I dress a certain way, if I live in a certain neighborhood, if I have a particular profession that I have learned and are in our functioning in, if I go to certain schools, if I have certain friends, so on forth, all of that goes into that identity.

Because we believe that this, if we do these things, we will get more of what we like.

We get a lot of what we don't like.

While we are functioning from this, through this lens of an identity, and that is purposeful, we experience a lot of what we don't like.

So we will know what we do like when we encounter it.

You have to know.

We learn by analogy.

We learn by comparison and contrast.

So we have to experience a lot of what we don't like, so we'll know what we do like when we encounter it.

If you've decided that chocolate ice cream is your favorite flavor of ice cream, but there are 150 flavors of ice cream in the ice cream store, but when you go into the store, you're going to go stand in front of that chocolate bin until you get your chocolate ice cream.

But in order to make that determination, you have to taste a large number of those other 149 other flavors in order to narrow down.

That chocolate undoubtedly is your favorite.

Yes, it is.

Well, and that's what we're doing by having experiences.

We have experiences for the sole purpose of learning.

We mistakenly perceive that we can learn about other people, places, and things.

The reality is that we can only learn about ourselves in relation to.

To people, places, and things.

If we did not have people, places, and things to interact with, we couldn't learn because we wouldn't have no dimension, no perspective of self.

Yeah.

That is everyone's purpose in life.

No one has a separate purpose or a unique purpose.

Our purpose is to explore ourselves.

Our mission in life is unique.

Each of us has a separate mission based upon what we like.

And we are tasked with finding out what it is that we like to do that.

And by doing that and liking that, we become proficient at it.

And as we become proficient at, provides us with the type of experiences that we need in order to fulfill our purpose in life, which, again, is to explore ourselves.

Along the way, we experience a lot of stress.

Stress is nothing more than anything that we don't like from the very minor, and it is a spectrum from the very minor.

You may like cream in your coffee in the morning, but you're out of cream that day, so you have to drink coffee black.

And very minor stress, but still it's on that spectrum.

Right end of the spectrum are things that we deem to be traumatic.

A trauma differs for individuals.

You can have my.

Use the example.

You may have two guys in a foxhole, and they're in experiencing the same firefight for the same period of time.

One of them walks away from that with a traumatic experience.

The other one is just fine, no traumatic experience whatsoever.

The distinction is the condition that they are in at the time that they have that experience.

And a trauma is nothing more than an experience that so challenges the authenticity of our identity, our perception of self that we are unable to adjudicate at the time that we had that experience.

Whether we like the experience or don't like the experience.

If we are unable to make that decision, then we are in what is deemed to be a condition of shock, which simply means our awareness has left our body for that moment, for that short period of time.

And it leaves a gap in our flow of experience.

And it's usually only one thought, one moment within a perceived experience that is so challenging to the authenticity of our perception of self.

But we interpret that whole perceived experience, that whole firefighter, to be one experience.

But actually, it's comprised of dozens of thoughts.

And we have to adjudicate every single thought that comprises that experience by that decision of either I like it because it feels good, or I don't like it because it doesn't feel good.

That in and of itself is a complete emotion.

And it's the only emotion that there is all the other hundreds or thousands of names that we've come up with for emotions are not emotions.

They are conditions of being.

Being that we are in at the time that we are processing a string of experiences.

So if I'm in a low condition of grief, for example, that is a condition of being.

And it's highly probable that every thought, every experience that I process while I'm in that condition of grief is going to be negatively interpreted by me because of my condition of being.

But that not with me, that's not the emotion.

The emotion is just our adjudication of every thought, whether it feels good or doesn't feel good.

And so what led me to this was this awakening and undertaking the, the.

The.

The task of learning to invert the awareness that they're.

Before then, it had been pointed outside of me.

And this is the same for everyone.

There's no exception to how the system works.

While we're promoting this identity, I have to watch your responses to see how you're reacting to my identity.

And I'll modify my identity based upon your responses to try to trick you into giving me more of what I like, which is usually some sort of accolade or positive experience.

After we have this awakening, we learn in order to have the awakening, you have to invert that same awareness inside of you.

And you become aware that you're the interpreter of these experiences.

And that begins the process of further developing that inwardly directed awareness in order to facilitate healing.

Healing is synonymous with advancement along the enlightenment path.

Most people perceive enlightenment to be a destination.

It's not.

It is the path.

Everyone is enlightened to the degree that they have allowed themselves to become enlightened.

So if you're still in that process of promoting that identity, that false perception of self, and trying to trick the world into giving you more of what you like, then you are deemed to be still in a condition of chaos because you're not going to be successful in getting the world to give you more of what you like other than on an immediate gratification basis.

And there's no durability to that.

But when you invert that awareness and begin to explore yourself, you find that emotional baggage that you are carrying, which is why people feel heavy and you begin to heal that emotional baggage.

Then you begin to become aware of the beliefs that you've incorporated into the false identity that perpetuate your experience of stress and you begin to throw those beliefs out.

As you do that, your authentic self is being made evident.

You, your authentic self that is always there emerges.

When you do that, you experience less stress and you experience greater happiness.

Bliss is.

Nothing is defined as perfect happiness, but bliss is nothing more than the absence of stress.

So as you heal you by fulfilling your purpose in life, you experience greater happiness until eventually we enter into that condition of bliss.

I wanna, I wanna unpack a few things.

I've been kind of taking some notes here.

Just I want to clarify with the, the audience.

We're.

When we're talking about enlightenment and, and exploring stuff, we're not talking scientifically, psychology wise, we're talking more spiritually.

Am I correct?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Right.

You can stay, you can try to stay in the scientific field and if you do, you're going to be ineffective in accomplishing your goal.

I agree.

So, so when we're talking about exploring ourselves, think, call it our mission when we, we come to earth is to explore ourselves.

Is that similar?

Because, because I've been doing a lot of research on, on spirituality and, and our purpose and, and, and so forth and from what I gather, it seems like we come to earth on a mission to learn and, and, and to learn how to love and, and like you said, I guess learn a little bit more about ourselves.

Would you agree this is similar to, to what we're talking about?

Yeah, the, the, the nomenclature is important to me varies from lifetime to lifetime.

And we, the average human has had over 3,000 lifetimes and some as many as 8,000.

Wow.

So we're very adept at this point of the process.

And if you make the association of our incarnational history is kind of like we're on a sports team and you practice all week long, you watch game films, you get coaching and then you have a game.

Well, we're, right now we're in the game and when the game's over we're going to go back to the locker room where we're going to watch game films and we're going to get coaching and see what we did, what we didn't do right.

And try to do better for them next game in preparation for the next game.

And we've done this, as I say, numerous times.

But our mission varies from incarnation to incarnation.

One time we may, we, we have been everything at, by this point that we can be, we've been male, we've been female, we've been black, we've been white, we've been rich, we've been poor, we've been aggressor, we've began, been victim, you name it.

Whatever combination that there is of conditions of an incarnation, almost every human has experienced that full range by this, this time of our evolutionary process.

We exist simultaneously in both the metaphysical world and the physical world.

Our physical world existence is an analog projection of our metaphysical self.

And it is our metaphysical self, which is a consciousness pattern that is actually evolving.

That is the, the collection point, that's the accrual of all of the experiences we've had of our multiple incarnations is, has, is comprising the lens of our metaphysical self.

We are still, we, we think in the metaphysical world.

We process thought in the metaphysical world.

And all that is brought, all that we experience is the fruit of that thought.

So we are just an analog projection.

But we're very, a very important part of that analog projection because this is where we create that identity that gives us the, the variable lenses to interpret the experiences that we have.

And so let me ask you this.

When do you, do you agree then that before we, we project ourselves into this world, we kind of pre.

Plan what it is that we want to accomplish?

Yeah.

And, and you know, how we're going to do it and what lessons we're going to learn.

I guess I would kind of go along with your analogy of the sports team.

I mean, you know, you got your coach that, that's prepping you before the season even starts and, and you're working with that coach to project how I'm going to beat this team and how I'm going to beat that team and, and how we're going to run this play and, and, and so forth as well as while the game's going, while we're over here, we still have that coach on the sidelines to refer back to.

Yeah.

And, and so that is really a good analogy.

I never, I never thought of it that way.

But you know, your, your spiritual guides and, and everything else is exactly what you just described.

It's, it's your, your coach that prepared you for the game and is helping you through the game as well as hopefully celebrating the win after the game.

Yeah.

And so they're the ones on the.

Sideline going, oh my God, why did they do that?

Yes, absolutely.

I, I'm sure my, my guide is bald by now.

Mine too.

First thing I did when I had this awakening and I.

And I realized who my higher self was, that, oh, my God, I apologize to those teenage years.

I was stupid.

I didn't know any better.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

And, you know, it is.

It is funny because you talked about that awakening and, And I kind of feel like that's where I'm at in.

In my life.

Right.

There's a lot of things that happened in my past that I didn't put much thought into.

Right.

They were just part of life.

It happened, and that's life.

And I didn't think about exit points.

I didn't think about what I'm supposed to learn or, you know, I was in that I need to find more of what I like.

And.

And I probably wasn't learning the lessons that I said I was going to learn when I came here at that time.

And.

And recently that has all changed for me.

We've had.

I've had this last year, you know, between me and my wife, we've lost, you know, all.

All of our parents.

And, you know, at first it made me start thinking, man, this is, you know, what did I do to deserve this?

And then, you know, I start talking to people and they say, well, you know, you picked this.

This is, you know, these are the people that you pick to be with, and these are the lessons you learned.

And I said, man, I wasn't any smarter over there either.

And, you know, but, you know, when you dig deeper, that's not what they mean.

You know, you pick the people you're with as well as you pick the part where you're gonna veto away from each other because you've learned everything that you're supposed to learn with that person, and, and they're no longer part of your mission.

Think of it as one of your players got traded.

You know, the team.

Team had changed the new dynamic.

We needed a different skill set.

And.

And, you know, we traded that for the new.

And yeah, absolutely.

You know, and I think.

I think that's where I'm at in.

In my life is.

Is I'm learning.

Everything that happened to me in the past, I've learned.

You know, I put a lot of thought into this these last few weeks for sure.

So I, I don't.

I don't claim to be no expert, but, you know, I start thinking back of my military time and some of the questions that I was asking back then without even considering myself.

Spiritual, you know, they were more biblical at that time because that's all I knew.

And, you know, asking questions, you know, like, you know, the Lord doesn't want you to kill.

But, but what about us military people?

You know, are we just doomed now because we fought wars and, and obviously people died during those wars.

And it brought a lot of those kind of questions to me.

But, you know, then I kind of veered away from that, and now I'm, I'm back and I'm realizing that was a sign that I am supposed to start learning more about spirituality years ago.

And for whatever reason, I chose not to learn one of the lessons that I put myself here for.

Well, it requires awareness.

Yeah.

And, you know, as we age, hopefully we gain greater awareness and learn to invert that awareness.

And that's what that emotional baggage that I was alluding to is.

It's very heavy.

We get to keep those lessons that we didn't learn as emotional baggage.

And we have to heal that, because that's a significant contributor to our well being, to our physical and mental well being, is to resolve those experiences that we had that brought us very valuable lessons that we didn't learn at the time.

And I explained to people, it's kind of like a homework assignment.

And you can do your homework when it's assigned or you can not do it.

You can go hang out in the street corner and sing, do up or whatever, but you get to keep that as emotional baggage.

But emotional baggage gets heavy and those homework assignments have to be done.

And it's like you have a textbook assigned for every homework assignment.

You got to carry that textbook until you do your homework.

When you do your homework and put the textbook down, never pick it up again.

But until you do, it's going to be heavy.

And you may remember textbooks are heavier than regular books because they're all that laminated stuff.

Yeah.

And so the healing we're directed by, that inwardly directed awareness allows us to become aware of what it is that we haven't learned yet from these emotional experiences.

Learn them, put them down and feel lighter.

And that invariably is the response that people have when we do the work together as they feel lighter.

It just.

Particularly when, when we relieve traumas, the traumas, they just, oh, my God, you know what?

That has been a burden for 30 years.

Why didn't I get rid of it before?

The, the work that I do, traumas are relieved.

I get rid of traumas in 10 minutes.

People may have had them for as I've worked with several Vietnam vets that have had it for 50 years, these traumas, and they go away just like that.

Now, PTSD is different from the trauma.

The trauma is the seed.

Right?

And we, this, the trauma is the hickey, the problem, the gap in our experience.

But we can't deal with that.

So we create other behaviors that are harmful to us and to others.

That's the ptsd.

But those are contingent upon the continuation of the trauma.

So when you heal the trauma, you can for the most part become aware of those behaviors that you created to compensate for that trauma and heal the PTSD yourself or with real little help from a therapist, you know.

And, and that's a, that's a, a very valid point.

Right.

And for all my listeners out there that, you know, they're, they're science based and, and they don't want to believe in things that they can't see.

What you said has been proven scientifically.

You know, that seed that trauma is the, the bad connection that is formed and that's exactly what PTSD is.

It's layers of, of con.

Connections that feed off of that seed that make new beliefs and, and new connections in your brain that are not necessarily positive.

They're ways that you have thought things.

You know, like I used to believe that I had to have a gun in every single room because of all the stuff that I have seen.

I know what is outside that door.

And at any time I could be that person that is dealing with that again.

And, and yes, that is a possibility, but it's not a likelihood.

I'm not in an environment.

Right.

Anything is possible, but very few things are probable.

Right.

But my belief on that causes other bad behavior, like not wanting to leave.

Right.

Rather staying in the house where it's safe.

It creates belief that trust issues.

Everybody I talk to until proven otherwise is guilty.

You know, and, and all of those things, like you said, those are the PTSD's, those are the, the symptoms that people don't see.

But they can see that seed.

They, you know, when you tell them the trauma that you went through, they can see that, but they don't see everything that happened off of that.

Right.

And, and, and that, that's, that's science.

I mean that, that has been a proven point as we've started going through, learning more about PTSD from the time it was called shell shock and, and all the other things that we just really didn't understand what was happening.

Right.

Nowadays we're learning there is some more complications.

You know, TBI can create other effects to this and, and so forth that make it a little bit more complicated.

But for the most part, you know.

Yeah, you are 100.

Correct.

That's, that's exactly what's happening in, in somebody's mind that's dealing with trauma, whether it be sexual assault, whether it be military related car accident.

It, you know, the trauma is irrelevant.

Yeah, you can, you can have a trauma if you haven't slept for a couple days and haven't eaten and you're driving down the street in heavy traffic.

Yeah, you can have a trauma from that because your condition is lowered beyond its functioning level.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You know the other thing too, and I want to make sure that we touch on, and this probably goes into how you work with some of your guests and your clients on helping them get through this.

I have just recently started discovering the power of meditation.

And I'm not good at it.

Don't claim to be, but I do make that valid attempt to try to do it every day.

Usually towards the end of my day as I'm getting ready to go to bed.

And since I've done that, I have noticed some changes.

I have noticed that my attitude's a little bit better.

I have noticed that if I don't take my pills for a couple days, my attitude doesn't really change.

Near as bad as long as I've been meditating and kind of getting rid of some of that stress and tension that, that follows with it.

I'm not saying it's a cure all.

That's not what I'm saying.

But I, I am saying that it is kind of like a, a way to plug your body back in and recharge.

Right?

Absolutely it is.

Would you, would you, would you say that's part of the process when you're helping other people, is teaching them how to dive into that, that self awareness and, and start learning what some of your dreams mean, what, mean what you know, your feelings and, and how to let go of things through meditation?

Well, meditation has, with without a doubt is the most dramatic tool that we have available for healing is very difficult to do for most people.

And I explained to my students, people come to meditation almost invariably because they're running away from the stick, whatever that stick is.

Life hurts.

Yep.

And that accumulation of things.

And if you're diligent, if you, you, you'll start and have difficulty starting to meditating.

There's no one that has not meditated and has been living solely in the village and all the problems that goes and immediately becomes a good meditator.

Meditation is learning a transition.

But what you're doing is you're learning to invert that awareness that we were just talking about inwardly.

And you start becoming aware of those things inside of you, the emotional baggage and the beliefs that you've incorporated and is through that inwardly directored awareness, through deeper and deeper meditation, that you affect healing in a much more dramatic and much deeper way than ever you could imagine was possible.

But I tell my students that we, you'll, you'll come to meditation and you'll have difficulty with it, running away from the stick until one day, and whenever that appears, it'll appear because you're ready for it.

You get a bite of the apple and you can sub to.

I had one guy that says, well, I don't care for apples, but I like lasagna.

Okay, well, you got a bite of the lasagna.

Whatever works for you.

But you get a taste of what it feels like to begin that healing.

Yeah.

And so your motivation transforms from running away from the stick to chasing more the apple or the lasagna or whatever it is.

Right.

So your work greatly improves and is significantly more effective.

And you can go just as deep as you possibly can imagine and even deeper as far as that healing and that self self exploration.

When you meditate daily, it's just like going on vacation.

And I'm sure you've probably gone on vacation, you work up to a point, then you go on vacation, and then you come back from vacation and you go back to work.

Well, while you're working, then you're dealing with problems.

When you go on vacation, if you're like most folks, it takes you two or three days to get out of that work mentality and get into the vacation mentality.

You enjoy your vacation and then you come back to the work.

Well, the same problems exist after your vacation that did before, but you're different.

Your perspective is entirely different.

And so the solutions to those same problems becomes much easier.

The same is true with meditation.

When you go into meditation, you're going into the guru's cave.

I call it the guru's cave has no problems.

And when you come out of your guru's cave, you're out of meditation.

Then you got to go back into the village where all problems exist.

But your perspective about those problems is greatly transformed.

So they're not as nearly as significant as they were before you went on vacation or went into the guru's cave.

The development of your meditation practice automatically leads into mindfulness.

Mindfulness is nothing more than learning to take that frame of mind that you achieve in your meditation back with you when you go back into the village.

So you still have that meditation, detachment from the problems of the village, and so their effect on you is dramatically different in your capacity to find solutions is dramatically greater.

That's all matter.

That's all mindfulness is.

And that's what meditation does for you.

But it is because it in inwardly inverts that awareness.

The same thing you did when you first had that, you've just developed it to a much finer point and much finer skill until you can live there.

And when you live there, then you stay.

As Eckhart Tolle explains, you live in the moment.

And so you're not worried about the past, you're not worried about the future.

You're just in the moment and you can enjoy the moment because that's really all that there is anyway.

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because at, at the end of the day, I have discovered that one of the challenges is exactly like you said, you get the, the taste of that, that apple or the lasagna.

And for me, that happened, you know, the first time I, I meditated.

And then after that, it has been all downhill.

Since then, I, I have struggled trying to get back to there.

I have a hard time and, and it's because I seen it and I enjoyed it, I liked it and I wanted to be back there again.

But now I'm chasing it.

Right.

And it's hard to get relaxed.

And now, weeks later, I have discovered that I am now able to get myself relaxed.

I just struggle staying in that point.

My mind starts focusing.

An outside noise, something.

Right.

And all of this comes from learning and practicing.

You know, part of being on the team.

You know, we're now fine tuning some of our plays.

We learned how to do it.

Now we're going to fine tune it.

And so it's a hundred percent exactly like that.

But it is tough.

It's, you know, when somebody tells you just lay there and do nothing.

Don't think about nothing and just be relaxed.

You're like, man, that is easy.

I wish I could do this every day.

But it is a lot harder than what people think.

It really is.

Well, the purpose of meditation is not to stop your thoughts.

It is not possible for us to stop our thoughts.

If we could stop our thoughts, we would move out of time.

Yeah, but I explained to people, it's kind of like being in a stock brokerage office and floor of stock brokerage office.

The ticker tape is running around the top of the room constantly with all the, the stock quotes.

You can look at it or you cannot look at it, and the Same is true with our thoughts.

In meditation, you can watch your thoughts and look at your thoughts, or you cannot pay attention to them, but they're still going to run.

And so you want to learn to let the thoughts run while you do the work of healing you and going deeper inside of you.

When you're ready to it, look at it, see what's going on, and then shut it out and go back into inside of yourself.

Yeah, I agree 100% and I know we're getting towards the end, so I want to, I want to hit a little bit on your books.

And for me, I really kind of think that's where I kind of surrendered right was I wrote my first book and it was more of a document of me wanting to explain to my family the things that I went through without having a conversation.

And so I didn't plan on publishing it.

I wrote it down to give to my family and give them the answers that they were looking for.

And my daughter asked me to publish it and.

And that's when it became extremely difficult was, you know, having to go back and reread things over and over and over again.

Going through the editing process and all that stuff made it really challenging.

When you first sat down and decided you were going to start writing books, what challenges did you find?

Well, I've written four books and as it turned out, they were essentially chronicling where I was in my process.

So the first book that I wrote was Enlightenment, plain and simple.

It is.

I wrote it in order to be helpful to family and friends and students that I had at the time.

And it is.

If you've not begun the process or if you've just decided that you want to begin the process of healing but you don't know where to start, then that's the book that you want to read because it gives you some basic concepts and basic tools to use in order to begin healing.

The next book was the Identity Model, Understanding and Healing Mankind, Stress and Suffering, which it explains this identity, it explains what the identity does and how the identity works in order to perpetuate our stress.

And it also has specific exercises in the back that I use in my mental health practice, counseling practice in order to heal traumas and.

And all sorts of things remarkable what it will heal in just a matter of minutes.

But they can all be self applied without any fear or harm.

The third book was edifying Children of a Lesser God, which is Answers to Existential Questions, which again was a step beyond in my development and my most recent book in my compendium book is called the Enigma of Consciousness, a spiritual exploration of humanity's relationship to creation.

And they're, they're.

At the time that I was doing it, I didn't realize it, that it was a progression, but it is very much a progression of how anybody and everybody is going to go through the healing process and surrendering these hegemonies and these beliefs that perpetuate our stress and suffering.

Yeah.

You know, it is.

It's one of those things, Right.

That people don't understand how that art of being an author and writing has developed into more of a passion.

Right.

I don't think anybody in today's world writes with the thought process that once I publish this book, I'm going to become Stephen King and become a millionaire.

Right.

But you always have that hope, you know?

Yeah.

You know, sure.

Everybody's like, if it happens, that would be great if I could do this full time, because again, I'm.

I'm chasing what I like.

And being creative and being able to express myself is a great quality and a battle of enjoyment.

You know, at the end of the day, though, in today's world, I think books have a more meaning now because it's similar to podcasting.

You know, you.

You are passionate about something and you want to share it with the world.

Right.

You want to share your thoughts, you want to share your promise.

You know, I, I don't even monetize my show, and it's been around for.

For years.

And it's because this started out as therapy for myself, telling my story over and over again, and now I get to have other people on and, and people like yourself where it's not so much necessarily a story, but I'm learning stuff from you as.

As we're speaking, and that is worth way more than an advertisement or, or selling some coffee or something.

You know, at the end of the day, it's.

It's about passion.

And I think that's where writing and, and podcasting has just blossomed into some amazing stuff.

Well, you know, therapists like to call that journaling.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's essentially what you're doing with.

What we're doing now is what we have done with the books.

It.

It's all some form of journaling.

Yep, absolutely.

Well, I'm going to bring you forward, Dean, and let you tell everybody where they can find you, where they can.

Can learn more about you, where they can sign up to be a student and all that good stuff.

Great.

Okay.

Well, I. I have a podcast.

Wherever everything is centralized, the Podcast is the initial D Dean D E A N Graves.

All one word.

And I have links to all my books, my podcasts and all the, the work that I do is healing traumas, rapid trauma recovery methods and how you can contact me if you have traumas and you're ready to get rid of them or if you have suffered from depression or many other diagnosed conditions that a large number of them are easily healed.

And so I encourage a session.

I don't look for a long term relationship.

I'm not the kind of therapist that wants you to sit on the couch or lay on the couch for, for 10 years to, to tell your story.

I work healing as dramatically and as quickly as I can and a few short visits.

So if you're ready, I'm ready.

And hopefully the information that I've produced out there is, is a guide for you and can help you along your healing path and your enlightenment path.

All right, well, I hope everybody got a little bit out of this and you know, can open up their mind and as I have, you know, here recently in this part of my life and, and learn that there is a lot more to the human being and, and the reasons why we're on earth and, and ways that you can handle things.

Not everything requires a pill.

You know, there's a lot of ways to, to get through some of the, the trials from, from problems that have happened, you know, traumas in your life that, that have happened.

And just being open minded allows you to expect, express these and learn these and, and, and give things a shot.

You know, if it doesn't work, great, you can move on to something else.

But if you don't try it, you'll never know.

And so that is the benefit of being open minded, learning a little bit about yourself and hopefully at the end of the day we're all better for it.

So I hope all of y' all out there can remember, don't let the day kick your ass.

Kick the day's ass, Sam.