Finding Your Purpose as a Man - Dean Graves

Dive into a compelling exploration of masculinity and spirituality with our special guest, Dean Graves, a spiritual teacher who brings over 20 years of experience in mental health and guidance. This episode encourages men to reflect on the essence of their identities, focusing on the unique lessons learned through the male experience in contrast to societal expectations. We challenge notions of success rooted in power and ambition, emphasizing that true fulfillment emanates from within.

Dean invites listeners to consider why a soul might choose to incarnate as male and why many men experience a disconnection from their deeper purpose until later in life. As we unravel the complexities of the 'ego mind,' we highlight the importance of inner awareness and compassion—qualities that foster genuine connections and understanding.

The conversation touches on how masculinity can be redefined, urging men to step beyond the confines of the 'false self' shaped by societal pressures. Discover how providing service to others contributes to a sense of unity and meaning, reinforcing the ties that bind all human experiences.

This enlightening dialogue not only offers powerful insights but acts as a catalyst for self-exploration and spiritual awakening. Join us on this journey of self-discovery, and remember, your purpose is not just something to chase but an awareness waiting to be uncovered within you. Share this episode with someone who might benefit, and don't forget to follow and review!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Mind Over Masculinity
• 14:53 Exploring Masculinity and Spirituality
• 24:40 The Purpose of Male Incarnation
• 44:14 Dean's Insights on Masculinity
• 53:32 The Role of Ego in Masculine Identity
• 57:21 Finding Meaning in Life through Spirituality

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hey everyone, welcome back to Mind Over Masculinity, the podcast where we dive deep into the soul of what it means to be a man. Today I'm your host, avik, and today we are exploring something that will crack open some new perspectives on masculinity. It is why does spirit choose to incarnate as male, and what challenges does a man face in becoming aware of his purpose? That's a great topic, right? So my guest today is Dean Graves.

Speaker 2: 0:45

So welcome to the show, Dean.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Thank you, avik. It's delightful to be with you today. I thank you for the opportunity. Lovely, lovely, that's really great. So, dear listeners, before we start, I'd quickly love to introduce all of you with Dean. So Dean is a remarkable spiritual teacher, meditation guide and mental health counselor with over 20 years of experience. But what I really admire about Dean is that his story isn't about chasing the fame or building a guru image. So he's real, he's grounded and has helped countless people heal and find their purpose through spiritual awareness. So, dean, thank you so much for being here today, and I know our conversation today is going to kind of get deep. So welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Well, thank you, that's a very flattering introduction. I'm grateful for that. I hope I can live up to that.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Exactly, you are definitely so, I mean in your spiritual understanding. Why do you think that a soul chooses to incarnate as male? I mean, what unique lessons are there for the masculine experience?

Speaker 2: 2:04

unique lessons are there for the masculine experience. Well, let me preface that a little bit, if I may, to give a little background into why we even have the choice of male and female incarnations.

Speaker 2: 2:18

The purpose of creation is so that the one infinite creator might know itself by experiencing itself, and in order to do that it is necessary. We are the one infinite creator, exploring ourselves at a range of consciousness. That range of consciousness is a defined range of consciousness, that we have, certain capabilities that are afforded us within that range of consciousness, and they are to some degree restrictions on us only because of our capacities, and the restrictions are intended to encourage us to explore as deeply and completely the opportunities to know ourselves within this range of consciousness, with a subject-object relationship between the one infinite creator, which is the creator as the object, and an analog projection of the creator, which becomes the creator as the subject. And all of creation is expanded upon that basic initial creation. Basic initial creation.

Speaker 2: 3:45

The male, by its nature, is deemed always to be the subject. The female is deemed always to be the object and for sake of understanding, you can put that into a simple context the female perceives itself to be closer to the creator more of the create. The one infinite creator and the subject always perceives itself to be more separate from the creator, uh, the creator as the subject. And so this dichotomy, uh, explains all of the interactions of all consciousness throughout, all of creation. In our neighborhood that is defined as the female being the object and the male being the subject, male being the subject. But that's not to say that in every interaction the female is always the object and its perspective, or the male is always the subject and its perspective. The female, the object, is always the teacher, the subject is always the student.

Speaker 2: 5:02

But in the course of a male-female interaction we exchange those roles. So in the course of a 30-minute conversation with the female, the female may be in one thought the object and in the next thought be the subject. So we exchange those roles, those interrelationships. Even in the course of a brief conversation with the female, we are as a whole to learn sympathy and compassion, which prepares us to move towards the next range of consciousness in which we will explore love. In this particular range of consciousness that we experience, our task is to explore awareness and actually become awareness. And so the necessity of incarnating in alternate roles of male and female. We are assuming that lens from which we view the nature of our experiences during our incarnation, from either the closer to the creator or farther away, perspective-wise, from the creator in our interactions and our experiences.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Wow, awesome. And I think a lot of men listening may resonate with that feeling of reaching their 40s and 450s and realizing that they have been living on autopilot. So what do you think keeps so many men unaware of their deeper spiritual purpose until later in life?

Speaker 2: 7:06

Yes, that's because we, as consciousness experiencing this range of consciousness, there is a design for the nature of our experiences, which is designed by what is called the archetypical mind. The archetypical mind is a blueprint for how we process thought, and a primary characteristic of this range of consciousness and the archetypical mind is that we are compelled to create a hierophant, or a false perception of self, and we do this based upon our experiences, for the sole purpose of getting more of what we like. That is what motivates male, female, everyone, throughout all of creation, is motivated to get more of what we like. Of course, when we begin this process, we don't know what we like, and so a large part of our incarnational experience, our beginning anew with each incarnation, is to try to figure out what it is that we like. The hierophant is a device to allow us to create a mind, which is called the ego mind, which is an independent mind from our eternal self, our metaphysical self, which is a consciousness pattern. And because we are compelled to create this ego mind, we perceive ourselves as autonomous beings, both male and female. And because we're motivated to get more of what we like, then we experience a lot of things.

Speaker 2: 9:02

If you determine that, for example, chocolate ice cream is your favorite flavor of ice cream.

Speaker 2: 9:12

Cream is your favorite flavor of ice cream.

Speaker 2: 9:13

In order to reach that determination, you've had to taste, if not all of the other 149 possible flavors of ice cream, a good number of them, in order to narrow down the fact that your favorite is chocolate. The same is true with the nature of the beliefs that we agree to keep within this hierophant, this perception of self. We've had a multitude of experiences and based upon those experiences, we've narrowed down those beliefs that we need to keep into this archetypical mind to guide the nature of our experiences throughout our incarnation, of our experiences throughout our incarnation, after our incarnation. When we die, then we surrender that ego mind and we function as our enduring mind, as our more deep mind. That is the product of our consciousness pattern, our eternal consciousness pattern, and we will reincarnate again predicated upon what advancements that we have made in learning about and becoming awareness and learning that criteria of learning about sympathy and compassion, in the end goal of recognizing that we surrender our perception of autonomy and begin to integrate more with other souls, to recognize the unity of our existence rather than our separation.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Yeah, wow. So I mean you often talk about masculinity through the lens of societal expectations strength, ambition, leadership. So how does the spiritual path challenge or maybe complement these traits?

Speaker 2: 11:13

Well, we are a mind-body-spirit and the mind the order of that presentation has purpose. Our mind is something that we create, and we have potentially the access to a multitude of minds all the way through the higher levels of consciousness, at this range of consciousness, because we create this ego mind. This ego mind is who we perceive that we are, and surrendering that for almost everyone is fearful, because if we are not who we think we are, then who the hell are we? And so it's necessary for us to become inwardly aware of who we are and what aspects that we have incorporated into this lens, this ego mind that we've created, are actually being productive and providing us more of what we like. The irony is that we perceive that we exist in a physical world which is actually a temporary simulation of our enduring experience, and we perceive because of that, on a spectrum, on a gradient scale, that immediate gratification is giving us more of what we like. But as we mature in our consciousness evolution, then we begin to surrender those immediate gratification experiences to become more enduring and we enter a social phase where we are becoming aware of the beliefs and how our beliefs interact with other people's beliefs and begin to surrender those into a more stable alignment with the characteristics of the one infinite creator.

Speaker 2: 13:10

And when we perceive someone who is demonstrating characteristics that we deem admirable, for example someone who is deemed to be moral and has integrity and reliability and all of those qualities that we identify as advanced masculinity, are because that individual has progressed from the immediate gratification stage into more of an alignment with the one infinite creator and with that becomes something that we are.

Speaker 2: 13:51

It's not a matter of being trained to behave in a certain fashion, that just becomes who we are. And we progress beyond that point in surrendering more of this ego mind, this hierophant identity, until we, even at this range of consciousness, can allow ourselves to feel our creativeness. And when we do that, then all of those false beliefs of racial identity and family affiliation and on and on and on, all of those basic beliefs that we perceive who we are, begin to fade and we become much more of our authentic self. And our authentic self is our createrness. And invariably, without exception, those feelings, those beliefs, those perceptions of self feel much better than any other transient beliefs that we may have incorporated or objectives that we may have incorporated into our perception of self.

Speaker 1: 15:01

That's really lovely. I mean, I love that you brought up the idea of leadership from within, and I think men are often taught to lead others before they lead themselves. That's where a lot of confusion comes in. So that's really thank you so much for sharing this Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:17

Thank you for allowing me.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Yeah, anytime, always. So also, like you know and like, let's touch on the mental health path as well. Like, many men struggle with the anxiety, depression as they search for meaning in life. So how can the spiritual awareness help men address the struggles from the inside out?

Speaker 2: 15:44

Well, the work of Eric Fromm is very useful in understanding how finding meaning in life provides us with the guide to how to direct our lives and how to overcome the chaos that this hierophant perspective allows us. And his work is called Logotherapy, and it is a result of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, and he was a psychiatrist, and he came up with this theory that when we allow ourselves to find meaning by being of service to others, that every experience that we have allows us to surrender that perception of separation and orient ourselves to pursuing meaning as it serves others. And so, consequently, with every experience, with this foundational perception of meaning, that we become more and more a part of the whole, even greater than our perceptions of part of the population of Earth, and that meaning provides us with the stability that we need in order to function at a higher level of consciousness.

Speaker 1: 17:20

Got it Understood, and also you have guided others on their spiritual journeys. So what's the most profound lesson you have learned about your own masculine energy and need purpose?

Speaker 2: 17:35

Well, I have learned very simply that it is a lens through which I'm enjoying my experiences. And it's only through modifying that lens and recognizing the unity of all of the souls, that the one infinite creator, experiencing myself at this range of consciousness, that allows me to feel that. And when you reach that point, that is a significant transitional point when you actually can feel that, so you can feel that sympathy, you can feel that compassion for others that are still suffering from the delusion of the autonomy of their beingness. And that is a dramatic turning point for anyone along their path in enlightenment to realize the unity of all of our experiences our experiences.

Speaker 1: 18:48

That's so lovely, great, so lovely. Dean, this conversation has been truly eye-opening and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and the insights with us today. And I think that our listeners have a lot to reflect on when it comes to the spiritual lessons of being me and living with your purpose. So, for everyone who is listening or tuning in, do not forget that your purpose isn't something you have to chase, but it's something you become aware of by going within. So take that first step, whether it's meditating for five minutes, journaling about what masculinity means to you or just being open to the vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 19:33

And if you have enjoyed this episode today, share it with a friend or family or someone who actually needs to listen to this, and leave us a review. And don't forget to follow Dean's work, so I'll leave the links, all the links, in the show notes for that easy access. And stay mindful, stay intentional and remember that your purpose is waiting for you to uncover it. So until next time, this is your host, avik, signing off from Mind Over Masculinity. Till then, be happy, be mindful. Thank you so much.