In this episode of The Living Conversation, hosts Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz sit down with Dean Graves—author, podcaster, keynote speaker, mental health counselor, and meditation/mindfulness guide—to explore his map of awakening and the evolution of consciousness.

Dean begins with what he calls an awakening experience: that moment when we realize that conventional success isn’t making us happier. From there he unfolds a cosmology in which our enduring self is a metaphysical consciousness pattern that lives through thousands of incarnations, evolving across different “densities” of consciousness. According to Dean, humans currently inhabit third density, learning responsibility and awareness in a particularly intense range of consciousness.

He describes how chakras function as “assessment points of consciousness” at both the metaphysical and incarnate levels, and why stages like the terrible twos and the turmoil of adolescence are so chaotic: new levels of awareness open before we have the information or maturity to meet them.

Dean also reframes free will as the perception of separation—the originating “distortion” that allows creation to unfold and beings to experience themselves as autonomous. Over many lives, he says, the evolutionary path is a gradual surrender of that separation into a sense of unity, ultimately moving toward what he calls a “social memory complex,” where many once-separate beings share one consciousness.

Along the way, Adam connects these ideas with Confucianism and modern science—heaven, star-stuff, and our destiny to bring harmony into our particular web of relationships. They compare Dean’s view of incarnation to John Lennon’s “instant karma” and the hero’s journey, and Anthony draws out implications for trauma, illness, and the way the mind shapes the body.

Dean also touches on:

1. The idea that our metaphysical self has already lived thousands of incarnations with specific learning purposes
2. First and second “densities” as the consciousness of inorganic matter, fire, plants, and animals, laying the foundation for human experience
3. The archetypical mind as a blueprint of how we process thought and build a sense of self
4. Why different children in the same family can be so radically different, based on their metaphysical development
5. The feeling that humanity is in “Groundhog Day” and his claim that this is actually our fourth planetary cycle

Throughout, Dean returns to awakening not as a one-off mystical event, but as taking responsibility for our own evolution—stepping out of automatic repetition and actively participating in the path of awareness, love, wisdom, unity, and stillness.

Connect with Dean Graves:

Website: ddeangraves.org — books, podcast, and contact info

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome, everyone.

We are here with our guest, Dean Graves.

And Dean is an author, podcaster, keynote speaker, mental health counselor, and meditation and mindfulness guide.

And I think what I would be interested to learn about you, Dean, first is what's your basis for your excursion into these areas?

The basis for my excursion into these areas is.

Is, I guess, triggered by an experience that we are all programmed to have at some point in time or another.

And that experience is often referred to as an awakening.

Right.

Which is often misunderstood concept.

It is nothing more than that point in our lives when we come to the awareness that all the stuff, all the things that we've been doing may be providing us with what's deemed to be conventional success, but it's not making us happier.

Right.

So is this.

And go ahead.

Sorry, go ahead.

Well, I was wondering about, is this based in Asian philosophy or Western, or do you even classify it that way?

It is a universal experience that we are programmed to.

To have.

Certainly the interpretations and the preparation for that experience differed greatly with Western philosophy from Eastern philosophy.

Right.

So.

But the end result is ideally the same.

Okay.

So, Adam, you had some questions about Dean's mindfulness.

Well, the first thing I wanted to circle back on, Dean, is very interesting that you say we're programmed to have this awakening experience.

And we had a previous guest on maybe a month ago or so, Dr. Nick Egan, and his expertise is in Tibetan Buddhism.

And he mentioned something that was very curious.

And it reminds me very closely of what you're mentioning here, that in Tibetan Buddhism, there's a thought that we all have an enlightenment experience.

And we.

It comes to us throughout our lives.

And in fact, when these traditions, they're so detailed.

He actually said that each person has that experience to the point where it adds up to a certain amount of time in everyone's life, somewhere around three years.

So I was wondering if you had any thoughts connecting that or how that relates to your work, if at all.

Well, yes.

The teachings of the Buddha, however, interpreted since their presentation, are strategic to all of our awareness process.

There is there we all.

We exist as humans.

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

Our enduring self is our metaphysical self, which is a consciousness pattern.

It is not a physical being as we perceive ourselves to be.

We experience a multitude of incarnations.

The average human has, by this stage of our.

Our experience in creation has experienced over 3,000 incarnations, many as.

Many as much as 8,000 incarnations.

And they're very purposeful.

They are how we learn and what we learn during an incarnation accrues to our metaphysical self and modifies, reforms our consciousness pattern.

And the consciousness pattern is what is actually on the evolutionary path.

The evolutionary path is synonymous with the Enlightenment path.

There's no difference between the two.

Enlightenment refers to light.

By virtue of its name, Light is information, and light informs energy and how to be.

We are energy.

And by virtue of the experiences that we have during an incarnation, we shape this consciousness pattern uniquely as our in.

Our incarnations are unique in and of themselves.

And so consequently, by doing, by having this type of experience, we fulfill the purpose of creation and our individual purpose as.

As a participant in creation.

Lovely.

Okay.

I guess I would want to know, Dean, One thing that comes to mind is that this reminds me a little bit of.

In our background, we learned it as being and non being.

When you talk about the metaphysical consciousness pattern, I think, Anthony, maybe you could speak to that later.

It's very interesting, and it has a lot of relatable topics to us as well.

I also had two thoughts.

One, first of all, I'd like to hear about your experience in early adulthood and how you started to come to these realizations, how you decided this was part of your path.

But before we get to that, I want to touch on something that I've thought of before, where sometimes I feel like the incarnations, since we can't.

Nine times out of 10, 99 times out of 100, we can't really experience them.

Sometimes I feel like the karma is almost like John Lennon's instant karma, where we have all these incarnations in our own life, or in a Zen way, it's like we have so many moments.

We have maybe a million incarnations even in this life.

So one, I'd like to get your take on that, of the sense that maybe every moment is almost like a new incarnation.

And second, I would love to hear more about how you went from, you know, adolescence into adulthood and where this kind of struck a nerve with you at the earliest stage.

Okay, well, answer that fairly quickly.

My teenage years and early early adolescence were as chaotic as everyone else in the world.

It's a.

Is intended to be chaotic because we are the nature of the human experiences.

When we are born into an incarnation, we have a set of chakras, our consciousness pattern has a set of chakras, and our incarnate self has a set of chakras.

And they are, for all intent purposes, they are independent of one one another A chakra is nothing more than an assessment point of a level of consciousness.

So when we are born, we, we exist within a range of consciousness.

That a range of consciousness is very low on the consciousness scale.

We are third from the bottom in that consciousness scale, and it's called third density.

We are learning the curriculum of third density.

In anticipation of graduating to the next range of consciousness.

The first and second ranges of consciousness are nondescript.

So what is learned by consciousness participating in those ranges of consciousness essentially is not preserved in an individual being's evolutionary advancement.

The first range of consciousness is what we would consider to be inorganic matter.

But it also begins with fire.

Fire is the lowest range of consciousness.

The second range of consciousness is what we would consider to be plants and animals, organic matter.

Those both are foundational densities.

Because they are necessary to exist in their own uniqueness.

So that we, participating in the third range of consciousness can have a platform in order to have experiences.

And so they are very strategic to our experience of creation.

But they themselves are not considered to be as potentially informational for creation as our range of consciousness.

Our range of consciousness, by far is the most intense range of consciousness.

Because we have adequate awareness in order to assume responsibility for our progression through the range of consciousness.

But we're not smart enough to know how to do that, okay?

And so it makes it very intense.

The first two ranges of consciousness are considered to be foundational.

There are multitude.

Every planet out there is at least a first density consciousness.

Many of them are first and second density consciousness.

And time is required for them to create their uniqueness.

To initiate a third density range of consciousness.

None of these developments are arbitrary.

They are all determined to be ready for a new experience.

Within creation.

There are 32 archetypes of the Creator.

Five inherent characteristics, and 26 other distortions.

Of those five inherent characteristics, of which free will is one.

Free will is the originating distortion that allows creation to begin and to develop as it has begun.

As philosophers, I'm sure you're familiar with the multitude of debates as to whether we have free will or don't have free will, which has been reoccurring over the history of mankind.

The problem with that argument is it misunderstands free will.

The decision to be able to choose right, to turn right, or to turn left is a product of free will.

Free will is the perception of separation.

And so, because we have the perception of separation in our range of consciousness, autonomy of a being, we have a multitude of choices, even in interacting with one another.

But it is through Those interactions that we are provided with the opportunity to explore ourselves.

And so free will is the first originating distortion of creation that allows creation to exist.

And it is the tool that creates consciousness.

Now, as far as my going back to your other question.

After my teenage chaotic years and going to university and beginning to actually pay attention to my studies for a period of time.

Sure.

And found philosophy.

And began to study philosophy and was greatly intrigued primarily of Kant's conclusions of our inability to actually experience the world.

And that is more foundational than I think most of the philosophy, philosophy world realizes in that it discounts the authenticity of the physical world experience entirely.

And.

And which is reiterated by the Buddha's teachings as well.

Right, right.

So that with that understanding, it is.

It was a breakpoint in our.

As our.

As human, as humans understanding of who we were and potentially gave us that opportunity to develop our perception of self more accurately.

Well, I am very interested in how you've come to these ideas.

We have to take a short break.

We are here with our guest, Dean Graves.

How can people contact you?

I have a website with all of my contact and resource information.

It's the initial D, Dean Graves.

All one word.

And they can contact me.

They have contact.

Are they.

All my books are linked to that.

The podcasts are linked to that.

And I also do mental health work with people that I. I focus primarily in people that have experienced traumas and have some unique techniques for trauma.

Rapid trauma release.

Sure.

So we'll be back in just a moment, so stay tuned.

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

And we are here with our guest, Dean Graves.

So before the break, you were talking about a model about There's 32 archetypes of the divine and five, forgive me, five inherent characteristics.

That's right.

Okay.

How did you come to this understanding of what.

Where does this model come from?

It comes from my teacher, for lack of better description.

Okay.

My teacher is.

Is not incarnate.

They were, but they are not incarnate.

And they are one of the.

The creators of our experience, human experience.

And all of creation is structured according to these five inherent characteristic characteristics.

Okay.

Dean, could you.

Could you list the five briefly for our listeners?

Yes.

Awareness, Love, wisdom, unity and stillness.

And they are hierarchical from the standpoint of you have to become aware before you can explore love.

You have to become.

Become love in order to explore wisdom and so forth.

Our range of consciousness.

The curriculum for our range of consciousness is elementary, and we are tasked with becoming Awareness in order to prepare for graduation to the next range of consciousness.

So I'm real interested about how you came to contact your teacher.

Well, they contacted me, okay.

And it was a pre incarnate plan.

And by virtue of that, I'm.

I'm simply a messenger, right?

I have a long.

I'm part of that.

In our range of consciousness, it's difficult for us to understand that most of creation is not.

Does not perceive itself as an.

As autonomous beings.

As we evolve, what we're actually doing is surrendering this concept of free will, perception of separation.

So we are beginning to see other.

What we now perceive to be other beings, to be other autonomous beings as extensions of ourself.

And as we do that and surrender that perception of separation, then we actually migrate more towards the perception of unity.

And we actually surrender this perception of autonomy and become a larger unit.

What we would perceive to be a unit called a social memory complex.

Social memory complex is simply an accumulation of what we perceive to be autonomous beings having merged into one consciousness.

Wow, that's very interesting to me, Dean.

And while you're speaking on that, it reminds me of a few things that my background is most deeply in Confucianism.

And in Confucianism we are all made of heaven.

And this relates to.

I often relate it back to Carl Sagan, Neil Tyson, De Grass scientific theory that we're all from the big Bang, we're all starvest and the sense of oneness.

When you, Confucius and the sage kings before him said that when you investigate things, you.

You basically you can extend your knowledge into all things.

You can understand that we are all one in heaven, so to speak.

Then Confucius takes it a step further and talks about how we are actually come into this body, come into this being, come into this humanity as our destiny.

And our destiny is we have this destiny in our own unique set of relationships.

That we are actually meant to be bringing heaven and harmony into our unique set of relationships.

I wonder, you also mentioned something about social memory.

Do you also see a relation to the way I'm seeing it in these concepts?

Well, in our range of consciousness we do not have the capacity yet in order to form a social memory complex.

But certainly we can learn to live together more harmoniously and the nature of our design.

And we.

Well, let me preface that a little bit.

Our experience is by design.

We function according to an archetypical mind.

An archetypical mind very simply is just a blueprint for how we process thought and with the understanding of what a mind is.

A mind is nothing more than a bundle of thoughts, of beliefs.

That's all that a mind is.

It has no physical presence.

It has no significant longevity other than our willingness to preserve.

Has no physical body, in other words, of any sort.

Our mind becomes the lens that we use to interpret our experiences and thereby create the uniqueness of our experience.

The brain and our body is a man of the condition of the brain.

And body is a manifestation of the mind.

So that illness is not predetermined.

Certainly a lot of bodies have a predisposition towards an illness, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be triggered.

It's triggered by the mind through the nature of our experience interpretation during the course of the the life that we're living.

Part of the design for the archetypical mind is that we will begin each incarnation in and this is also true of our metaphysical self.

Our metaphysical self begins its participation in creation in a condition called primordial darkness, which very simply means we know nothing.

We're a clean slate.

We can paint anything on that slate, on that canvas that we want to.

We essentially begin each new incarnation on a relatively clean canvas.

But we begin in the condition that our metaphysical self is at the time of the incarnation.

And so if you've any, anybody that's had more than one child knows that there's absolutely no way that these children could have been reared in the same environment and behave so differently.

And the reason for that is each one is a separate metaphysical soul that has incarnated according to how it's metaphysical self is at the time of that incarnation.

And so they have already developed a personality in their metaphysical self.

And some of them are more advanced than others, and others are less advanced than others.

But we choose our incarnations for the sole purpose of that incarnation has the probability of providing us with the type of experiences that we need in order to evolve.

So some of those are very difficult by choice, others are very non challenging by choice.

But during the course of that lifetime, there's a high probability that that being is going to encounter the types of experiences that they need in order to evolve their metaphysical self.

Hero's journey yeah, one of the conditions, the elementary conditions, and when we were talking in our previous session, we were talking about the teenage years and the difficulty of teenage years.

This is the range of consciousness that we are tasked with becoming.

Awareness.

We begin each incarnation as an infant and our metaphysical chakra, just the first one, is the only one that is open during our infant years when, when we enter the Terrible Twos.

That means that our second metaphysical chakra has been activated.

When we go through puberty, the third metaphysical self.

Metaphysical chakra, has been activated.

Each chakra activation increases our capacity for awareness.

So what the Terrible Twos are doing is they have this additional awareness, but they have no information to.

To fill it.

And so they're challenging the world around them in order to provide them with the information that they need in order to develop further develop their hierophant, their perception of self.

The same thing occurs again when we are going through puberty, and that's why teenage years are so difficult, is we have adult capacity for awareness, but we have no information.

And so we're trying to gather the information to fill the void that has been left by this increased awareness, but not additional information.

We will stay at that range of consciousness until we assume the responsibility to open our next metaphysical range of chakra, our next metaphysical chakra.

If we do not, we will repeat our incarnational process, conceivably forever, until we awaken, as we talked about briefly, and assume responsibility for our progression through the evolutionary path.

This sounds.

Adam, maybe you can remember the Bill Murray film that he keeps repeating.

Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day.

Right.

Groundhog Day.

Yeah.

We all have our patterns.

Well, I got news for you.

We've been.

We've been in the groundhog.

This.

Our population has been in Groundhog Day.

For this is our fourth planet.

Oh, okay.

Not just Earth, but the fourth planet.

We didn't do well with the other three planets either.

Well, hopefully we can come to a higher level of resonance.

Well, there are lots of things happening in order to further ensure that that will happen.

Right, right.

Well, we're coming up on another break.

And.

I'm Anthony Wright, and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with my co host.

Yeah.

Adam Dietz.

And we're talking with our guest, Dean Graves.

And Dean, you are a author, podcaster, keynote speaker, mental health counselor, and meditation mindfulness guide.

And how can people contact you?

They can contact me through my website, the initial ddeangraves.org and all my books and podcasts.

Everything is referenced on that.

Great.

All right, we're going to take a short break, so stay tuned.