NDE and Poly-Trauma Survivor- Brooke Grove

Brooke Grove is an NDE and trauma survivor who speaks frankly, succinctly, and brilliantly on this mess, we call humanity. Marrying the holy with the human, Brooke helps people heal through a blend of art and science. I love listening to Brook, and I'm thrilled to finally get her on Grief 2 Growth.

Brooke is also a multi-disciplinary integrative healer and writer in co-creation with Spirit.

A former psychotherapist, Brooke has advanced degrees in Clinical Psychology, Marital and Family Therapy, and Clinical Art Therapy, enhanced by numerous post-graduate certifications, including, yet not limited to, Shamanic Energy Medicine, Quantum Fieldwork, and Transpersonal Neuroscience. 

Brooke has been featured on many podcasts, YouTube interviews, documentaries, and IANDS conferences. 
She is currently writing her first book. Brooke maintains a private, international healing practice, offering remote services, wherein her goal is to explore, transmute and empower the evolution of human consciousness through gratitude, service, and Light.

🔗 https://www.brookegrovehealing.com

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I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Transcript

Brian Smith  0:00  
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed we've been planted and having been planted would grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Everybody this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth and I've got with me today Brooke grove. Brooke is a poly trauma survivor. She's a near death experiencer and she's a multidisciplinary integrative healer and writer and co creation with spirit. She's a former psychotherapist, she's has advanced degrees in clinical psychology, marital and family therapy and clinic art therapy enhanced by numerous postgraduate certifications, including yet not limited to shamanic energy healing, quantum field work and transpersonal neuroscience. So you can tell Brooke is a very well rounded, very well educated person. She's been featured on many podcasts. I'm excited to have her in brief to grow today. She's been on several podcasts, YouTube interviews, documentaries, and she's appeared at ions conferences. Brooke is currently writing her first book, she maintains a private international healing practice. She offers remote services, and her goal is to explore transmute and empower the evolution of human consciousness through gratitude, service and light. So I also want to say Brooke, because she has a near death experience, or sometimes she has difficulties with technology we've all I mean that she has difficulties with technology. Technology has difficulties with her. So we were talking before we started recording her video is not working today because her brand new MacBook isn't working. So this video will or this interview will be audio only for Brooke. But I want to welcome Brooke Grove to grifter growth.

Brooke Grove  2:10  
Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Smith  2:14  
Yeah, I'm excited to have you, Brooke, we've known each other I think a couple of years on Facebook. I've been meaning to get you here on the show. I know you're really really busy and been dealing with issues. So I appreciate you doing this today.

Brooke Grove  2:27  
Thank you so much for your patience and flattener.

Brian Smith  2:31  
Yeah, well, I would say before we started recording, I know that you've told your your Near Death Experience story. I know many times and I know sometimes people maybe get tired a little bit tired of telling that story over and over again. But I can't assume that my listeners have heard it. So if you would indulge me and just tell me about your experience. That would be great.

Brooke Grove  2:51  
Yes. So in 2010, I had been suffering from complex autoimmunity for a few years again, and my masters and I have kind of gotten passed around from doctor to doctor. And it turns out during that time, the accurate diagnosis was not actually a sign. So I was taking medication that ought to have been benign to my system. However, they had missed that the liver was involved. And since the liver was compromised, taking the medication that was to help my lungs and kidneys, which were also compromised, actually shut down the liver. And it happened so rapidly that I fell and endured a traumatic brain injury was instantaneously comatose and dealing with systemic organ failure of the lungs, liver and kidneys. Basically, the liver took everything else with it when it went. And so my MTE begins sometime between when they're helicoptering me to the hospital, and then my arrival in ICU. And my first awareness is as exiting the body, seeing the icy room ICU, excuse me room, and what they were wearing and all of the machines and having this childlike curiosity, yet also feeling as if I were in a dream, I'd been lucid dreaming since childhood. And so I kept trying to wake myself up, especially when I start to realize that this person that they're working on looks just like me. So at this point is out of body like experience starts to become scary. And there is this attachment and his interest to the human body. And at the time that my mind or my consciousness, which is what really was my consciousness is trying to grasp what is occurring at that same moment. I'm catapulted out of this very human industrial hospital space into what I can only describe as the cosmos. It was very beautiful space. He's full of light, there are also voids of darkness. Yet, as everything was peace, it was as if whatever had consumed my consciousness prior, was completely released. And all I knew is this ineffable, over overwhelming love, just melting into that, and just feeling so unified with everything around me, both the jewel tone like colors that most of the light for presenting in, but also the darkness, there is no discomfort in this place. I've described it before. And I'll say this, again, as just being held. And this was like being held in a way that for me, as a poly trauma survivor, and my human incarnation, I've never felt held like this before ever. It was as if I could completely just surrender to this energy and be safe at all times. So to my consciousness, this was the most delicious feeling, having not been something I knew too much of in this incarnation. And very quickly, it became evident that the lights were communicating, this was not done with words, this was done through vibration, and inner knowing telepathically if you will, if the lights would communicate. And I noticed right away this incredible union with three of the particular lights, which for me presented in an emerald green, and Amethyst purple, and a ruby red. And this was such an emotionally corrective experience for my soul for my consciousness. Because these lights exactly as they presented to me here on the other side, were lights I had seen as an intuitive child and communicated with, and I had often been told they were a figment of my imagination and unreal. And I always called them angels as a young child. And here, that's how they very much felt. And they let me know I was, in a way, again, without words, home, and that I was okay, and that I was in a space of love. And yes, they were these energies of these lights, this intelligence that I had known as a child, and that they had been with me before, and they would be with me again. And they were really there just to guide and support me. And again, nothing's actually said with the construct of our language, but it's felt, and it was so yummy and delicious and comforting to me. And at that time, I began to my consciousness began to really explore more, to go into different pockets of the space where everything is moving so so quickly, there is no time in my experience of the other side. And I was there for approximately three and a half days. Yet it felt like lifetimes, this journey through the light, there were communications that were given to me are downloaded, that I am still learning to unpack and understand they've become more resonant as things have shifted here on the earth plane, as it's been 12 years. And some of the things I was shown are communicated. They didn't come to fruition for about 10 years into that post MTE journey. So in this space, there's this humongous, beautiful, enchanting, bewildering, larger light, that seems to be the epicenter of it all. And at some point, I become very entranced by it. And yet, from my soul, there was kind of a momentary pause, where I knew how much I want it to be with that light. And I was also curious about what was behind me and what was happening to, for lack of better terms, my body, okay. And so that angelic sort of be knows me that I am able to go to this light that I am of the light, the feeling that I've described before them, suggesting that I was a fractal of that light, and that everything that I'd ever know was a fractal of, so I wouldn't be able to return to it now or at any other time. I ultimately would. Yet I had the choice. And remember my case, I'm comatose, I'm sort of in between. I had the choice if I wanted to go into that light, or if I want to return to the earth realm. Now it's always difficult to describe the portion of the journey, they basically let me know in the most gentle ways that only the light can do that, should I come back to the body to the human, there was going to be periods of more

suffering, great suffering isn't really how it felt. And even my consciousness had some hesitation to that, as a poly trauma survivor, having only known complex trauma on the earth walk in my soul was hesitant to return to that. And yet they simultaneously let me know that should I choose to come back, I would step from karma into Dharma, ultimately, and that I was a part of a group, a collective, it was not grandiose at all, they made it very self evident, I was part of a larger groups here to help was an evolution in consciousness. And they really did show it in like these beautiful golden ways and colors of light that was here to uplevel humanity. And again, they didn't say it like that, it always sounds grandiose to me. And when I say it, the way they communicate in light was you are part of a team. And if you choose to come back, you step into that power of the team. And they made a very evident when I expressed my hesitation to coming back, that the pain that I so much wanted to avoid, encountering more of was actually my strength. And that it would be through going through more of that pain, and learning to alchemize, its light, that I would be able to help others and step into my power. And this therein was suggested to lead me into my dharma. Now, they never expressed specifically what the Dharma was more so that it was part of this greater picture. And that these persons might be joining in some aspect where community of teachers and forward thinkers. And so I felt very ramped up by that I wanted to go back to the body, knowing that I could make something of all this suffering, because in my life, that's what I had really wanted. And there was a moment of pause and lingering into that big, beautiful creator light. But knowing as they told me that I would be reunified with it. So it wasn't a goodbye forever. It was a seal later. And as quickly as I made the commitment to return to align to what I was here for, I realized that I'm in this vast, almost infinite like space, how do I even get back, because my consciousness is moving like them just like speed of light, super, super fast. And so they told me to look like I look at the light unlike any other. And so at that point, I'm starting to look for light that's different. And I'm instantaneously like, spun around or so it felt to this terrific, winding artificial light. But right before I was catapulted into that, there are two very gentle, beautiful, I call them or lights because the way the aura appears to me now that they're very different than the angelic lights, they're softer. And they see these two lights. And the fundamental difference I remember Brian here is that they didn't hold me. I wanted to hold them. And I have no idea what that was about. But I was curious, and one was beautiful indigo blue, and another was a different shade of like an emerald green. didn't get any message from that had no knowing. Next thing I know, I follow that horrific artificial light catapulted back into the body, open the eye, the first thing that greets me is a flashlight, which is being shown in this my eyes at that moment to check my vitals. And so that was my return back to the human.

Brian Smith  14:08  
Wow. So I'm curious. You mentioned you said as a child, you have lucid dreams. And I guess when you first had this out of body, well, you realize you're out of the body. You felt like you were dreaming. Is that right?

Brooke Grove  14:22  
I did. I did. I think for my consciousness that was a bit confusing, as I've been going out of my body for decades as a poly trauma survivor, and it wasn't some blissful out of body experience. It was classic dissociation. And so lucid dreams had been a gift of spirit that I had gotten while they were on my did high school I started noticing that something interesting was happening in my dream state. As a child, I wouldn't have described it that way. But I did have an awareness that I had a superpower to alter my dreams from within the dream at a young age.

Brian Smith  15:00  
So it sounds like you were, do you think your your spirituality, your connection with the other side was that developed because of your early trauma.

Brooke Grove  15:10  
I believe that it was congruent to who I am as an individual, as a mother myself now, and having worked with young children, and I believe we're all born with that capacity. And it's something that's indoctrinated quite often out of us. And so I had vocalized mine, I was a very shy child. And I was very energy sensitive, I would say, from about three, I've heard comments from my family about that, how I would behave, so a typically per their perspective. But to me, I was always seeking safety. And I didn't always trust the people around me, because they didn't feel safe. And so the lights and the nature spirits, and the Earth itself, were where I really took my creativity, I took my trust, and I gave it to them. And so there was a relationship that was forged there that I kept until it was really conditioned out of me.

Brian Smith  16:05  
Yeah, that's a really good explanation. Because I think that we do all have that innately when we come in, but for some reason, most of us let go of it or you know, around a certain age, I guess, 5678, somewhere in that range. And people tell us that, you know, for example, your your imaginary friends are just imaginary and you're talking to angels, they're like, well, that's just your imagination. So I think for maybe some people were able to hold on to it longer for various reasons.

Brooke Grove  16:33  
Mm hmm. Definitely, definitely.

Brian Smith  16:37  
So after you after you came back into your body, I know a lot of times when people have near death experiences, it's difficult to integrate those experiences. I'm wondering what your integration process was like, especially in light of the fact that you've been having other experiences before this even

Brooke Grove  16:54  
my integration experience was quite difficult. When I came back into the body, you know, all the beautiful information they had shared in the light, it was almost like instantaneously, that switch flipped off. Because my toddler isn't mind to lower mind as I see it. Now, the ego really tried to come in and invalidate the experience, having been a child who was stigmatized for having spiritually transformative experiences are having this connection, it wasn't safe to tell anyone in my immediate environment, I also had some pretty complex family dynamics that were co occurring with all of this. And so just in that system, it wasn't safe to even really exist in that moment, because so much trauma was being activated from multiple persons. And I was the classic in psychology, they call it the identified patient who's the person that comes into treatment. Okay. It wasn't until I started formally studying psychology, I had a professor say, the identified patient is often the healthiest person in the system, because they have decided this is sick, and they start acting out the dysfunction. And it's an unconscious effort to get healing. Okay, so having been the identified patient as a child, because it was this frenzied familial state going on, I didn't feel safe stepping up and saying, This just happened to me, in addition of what was going on, I didn't feel trust and connection with those persons to be supported. And so I didn't. And that was very difficult for me, Brian, because the minute I woke up, there was no spectrum of gentle shift. It was rapid onset of after effects. So I'm sitting in an ICU bed, I'm still intubated, unable to talk. They're not aware I woke up, they thought my eye movement was some sort of reflex. Okay, because I'd been having those the whole time, I was comatose. And so I was in the body. In this very strange state where nobody was aware I was there attempting to communicate, but I couldn't, because I was strapped down had a PICC line going into my brain. And so if I moved that PICC line, it would have been very dangerous. They already believed I was potentially brain dead. Okay, so all these measures had been taken. So I can't communicate. And at the same time that I cannot communicate to the human and no one's attending to me, on a cognitive level, I start noticing that nothing looks normal. Nothing was behaving the way that I understood this brown to behave. And so at the same time, that I'm unable to really connect with anyone and find out what happened to me because I didn't understand at this portion, okay. I start realizing that I'm seeing some sort of energy that's in between what's seen and unseen to most people. And that was very difficult. For me having been a psychologist in training at the time and about to defend my PhD, I had been taught to stigmatize certain things in a clinical program. Okay, um, much of what was happening to me, made me question my own sanity, I would check my mental status in that bed, and I would be like, I'm boring, and two times four, which is person, time, place situation, if you're oriented times four, you're not set to be psychotic. While I'm sitting in the bed blank, well, I'm not psychotic. But what is happening to me, and in the absence of being able to talk to people, at that point, I said, I don't even know if I believe in God, because at that point, I'd actually been agnostic. Okay. In my clinical training, I wasn't I never went as far as to be an atheist, but I was like, I don't know what it is. And I'm not gonna define it, that kind of thing. But it could be there. Okay, well, suddenly, I'm sitting in this bed, I'm seeing this stuff move, I'm still seeing those three colors that I've seen on the other side, the red, green, and the purple. And they're floating all around the room and moving on, like, if you're real sure, all I can talk to help me. And so at that point, I started realizing that I could work with those lights, and that they would assist me. And so they just started intuitively teaching me how to place them, like on the organs and things in the body with my intention, because again, I cannot move my physical hands. And so I had a good probably 48 hours, I played with the light before I had a nurse realize I was awake, and started attending to me as a person. So that's, that's a getting of my After Effects journey. And it only got more transpersonal. And psychedelic from there on out. But at least I'd had that very grounding experience, where yes, it was outside of my comfort zone. And it was outside of everything I've been taught. And yet, they attended to me with the same love and reciprocity that they did on the other side. And in that moment, a relationship has become the most substantial and my life now was forged. Or reports. relocated.

Brian Smith  22:31  
Yeah. So it's been several years now, since your experience, do you still see ours? Do you still see energy and stuff like that?

Brooke Grove  22:41  
Yes. And now it's become normative to me and the times that I don't I get concerned. But yes, I see the quantum field almost all of the time, there's particular times where it's more present, like when we have full moons, we have certain events in the cosmos, it's thinner, the veil is thinner. But yeah, so she or as I've, I've learned to cook bone. That's for my own sanity. So that's just so if I'm going in to say like you and I have presented it, I and say I'm going into a big conference like that it's very emotionally and spiritually loaded, then I'm going to do everything I can to cloak persons so that I'm not receiving everybody's auric signature and everything that's coming through it, because that's very hard to calibrate all that information. And it can be very dysregulated to my nervous system as a trauma survivors. So that was the hardest part. Honestly, I've read integration with learning how to ground that.

Brian Smith  23:42  
Yeah, that's it's interesting, you say that I was just at the help affair helping parents heal conference in in August. So just a few months ago, about four months ago, as a time we're recording this. And the energy and I don't have that sense, but I just I could tell. And there were a lot of sensitive people around that, when you had that many people there that are that have gone through loss of a child. And we had a bunch of mediums there and stuff. And I know, my daughter's are sensitive to energy. And we came back and she was just like, she was like buzzing. So I think that's an experience people can have when you have that sensitivity.

Brooke Grove  24:19  
Definitely. And I joked about this a little bit when I was at the last conference, yet I was very scared to be in person communicating because when I started speaking about my NDA II, it was right before everything shut down. And so I spent years doing interviews online and speaking online and doing conferences online yet not in person. And so when I got there, I was like, Okay, well, we know how technology responds to me. So that's really anxiety provoking, right, like and now we're gonna have a live audience. And I'm not sure how my energy system is going to respond to this. And there was a moment where we were having technological interference for currently, I couldn't tell if they were hearing me, right because of how my aura was responding to all the technological stuff. And I just was like, You know what, let's just go into q&a, because their fields were all lighting up like Christmas trees, and I'm like, instead of trying to shut this down, I can just embrace it, and roll with the energy. And as soon as I did that, it was a lot of fun. And I got over that fear quite quickly, yet, it was a test. And it was up leveling as well.

Brian Smith  25:36  
But I love your talk at ions. By the way, I've listened to it a couple of times. And the title was practical oneness, grounding luminosity into the lived experience of our humanity. And I think this is where you made some comments there. Because a lot of times, people, people like myself, who study in the ease, maybe not existentially why, because when we first hear about indies, we go, I want one of those, you know, that sounds like a great thing to have. And I hear you, I hear you laughing as a beggar bringing that up. So but you address that in your talk. So talk to people about what it's like to go through that experience.

Brooke Grove  26:14  
I feel that there is a lot of romanticizing, that goes on for any mystical experience. Okay. And that's because the Transcendent is so yummy. And it, it gives purpose and meaning it's, it makes sense why we would be, you know, attracted to it, and some would want to seek it yet, like anything that is going to radically shift you towards growth, it's going to make you uncomfortable, hey, so you can have this beautiful peak experience that by its nature is temporal, get the minute you come down. So as I like to call it this heart and fully human ground back to this earth walk, you then have to not only embody what just happens to you, but you have to actually alchemize the change within your system to hold that. And one of the great lessons my After Effects continually give me and I see constantly with other people I work with, is our system can only calibrate so much light at once. Okay, so when we have these transcendent experiences, we're immersed in the light quite often. And then we're coming back down here. Now there's something within our field is being activated by this transcendent that's being turned on or reactivated by it. Yet, we then have to allow our bodies to hold space for that. And as they used to, say, an old computer science garbage in garbage out, right? Well, a lot of us in this realm are constantly putting junk into our systems. Whether it's food, alcohol, TV relationship, the internet, it doesn't matter, there's so much stuff coming in, it's not energetically a match for the light. Okay, so you can go through a very intense purification journeys, when you're going through light upgrades in the field. And I'm very cognizant of all of this and stage and can express it and work with it. Not everybody has those opportunities, or that awareness or that training. And so sometimes they're having these peak mystical experiences in complete isolation, they're not reaching out or talking about it, because they're not, they don't have the language for it initially, and they don't feel safe, okay, or they're afraid of the stigma. And so they carry it alone. And so what often happens, and I've spoken so much to you, and I'm passionate about is acknowledging those first seven to 10 years and seven to 10 is a really loose approximation for how long it takes to integrate a profound peak mystical experience, be it an ND E, spiritual transformative experience, shared death experience, you name it, well, the more time you spend in the light, or the more it shifts your field, the harder reintegration generally becomes. And so you can go and have this beautiful experience with all these persons romanticize and seek out. And what they don't understand is some of the things that they didn't want to deal with, like the shadow work, the healing prior are going to be amplified by this mystical experience. So there's really a lot of work that CO occurs with it. And it's about your willingness to allow yourself not just the death of what happened to you prior to the nt E. But the recurrent death of the person you were before to make space for the person you came back as well and they're often more eight different people.

Brian Smith  30:01  
Yeah, well, that. Yeah, that was brilliant. I love what you said there the death of the person that you were before to make space for the person that you're that you've come back to be. And maybe that's why people have indies often struggle and in the divorce rate is fairly high for people that have had near death experiences. Because their spouse will say, you're not the same person that you are. And their friends and family will say, you're not the same person that you were.

Brooke Grove  30:25  
Yep, yep. And you have to make tough decisions. I mean, I walked away from a marriage as well. And I've chose to completely re author who I make connections with now, because there was such a, there was a pronounced period where I attempted to stuff this into a closet and be who I used to be. So I could maintain those relationships. Yet that became a hindrance to where I was going and my own happiness. Because if I'm not connected to the light, I really don't want to be here. Yeah, I

Brian Smith  30:57  
think I don't know when you made the shift. Even career wise, because you're a psychotherapist, you've got advanced degrees in clinical psychology and marriage and family therapy. So did you make a shift after that to the more shamanic and quantum field work and as more will be will call mystic. I

Brooke Grove  31:15  
did. I did. And it was little by little, it began by leading clinical psychology, which was very painful decision for me, because again, I'd been at the I was candidate I was defending my dissertation, yet, I came back and wanted to integrate the mystical in a very rigorous, revered program that's very clinical. And they wanted nothing to do with the mystical. And so we happen to have another school nearby, that was transpersonal psychology. And they were the founders of it, and they had plenty of room for the mystical. Yet, when I got there is when I started to realize what's become so much of the thesis of my work, which is spiritual bypassing, I saw very early on that going into that realm was not going to serve me any better than clinical psychology, if I was seeking authenticity, because there were persons really chasing and seeking the transcendent, if they weren't embodying it, you know, it was almost like the drug of choice in the moment, like, you know, let's go meditate forever and have this experience. But when we come back to the ground, we're not embodying it, we're not living in alignment with it. And to me, it was like, I don't, I don't think this feels any better. And so that's when I started looking for wisdom, traditions, and healers that were kind of off the beaten path to assist me. And shamanism gave me my first taste of that, because when I met legitimate indigenous shamans, they immediately saw what was going on in my field, and named it as a gift from spirit, and that all the illness had been my initiation, and that I was to use this light to heal. And they had ancient tradition as to how to ground it and how to work with it. And it was completely normalized. And finally, it was like, Okay, someone understands who I am. And I can take this and use it on myself, and then I can help others learn to use it for themselves.

Brian Smith  33:19  
Yeah, I noticed you did touch on the phrase, you use it after your talks, hardened holy humanity. So what is what does that mean to you?

Brooke Grove  33:31  
Part of my medicine and what I am here for is to find balance. And so when I say that, I'm acknowledging that it is very difficult to be human, yet it's also holy to be human. You know, I've joked in my poetry before, that the angels are jealous of those that get to walk the earth at these times. Okay. And all I mean by that with love, is that it is a very spiritual and beautiful experience to be human. And yet right now, the bulk of persons likely would not concur with that because we're in a period of death, and restructuring, and the new being born and that looks like a lot of breaking down. Okay, but at the same time, the hardness and the holiness are always co occurring, we will always have peak experiences of the Divine of love of connection, all of those things. And we will as long as we are here in a state of duality that we're currently in I'm saying currently, then we're going to have this hardness that comes with it. So to me to acknowledge hard and holy together makes it all okay, and remembrance that we are here out of our souls desire to be here. Okay. And so it is a holy experience and we are To cherish, cherish it excuse me yet at the same time, we do not have to bypass the fact that it hurts. And there's a lot of pain and a lot of suffering humanity.

Brian Smith  35:10  
Yeah, that's that's what I got out of your talk, I think, almost more than anything. And it's interesting how these things come around to me. That's something coming back to me many different ways from any lessons the last couple of weeks. Because we do get into time I think all of us as humans, sometimes we forget, you know, why are we here? And we hear people say, Well, it's a privilege to be born human. It's a privilege to be here. But we focus so much on the pain. We're like, are you serious? This is supposed to be fun?

Brooke Grove  35:41  
Definitely, definitely. I mean, even with all the experiences I've had, when I get into the really nitty gritty of the pain, it's there's times I'm like, why would I choose to come back here. And I think if you talk to any nd year, that's honest, even though we love what we're doing now, and the depth and the expansion that's brought to our lives, most of us are thirsty to go back. You know, and we often second guessed, if we were given a choice, we second guessed that choice.

Brian Smith  36:09  
Yeah, I think that's, that's, I think that's very real. I appreciate your authenticity, when you say that. Something said of the conference, because I know you've had some some you still have health challenges. And you made a comment, I think you said illnesses the way my system likes to upgrade.

Brooke Grove  36:24  
Yep, that's true. It is. And it's just something I've had to make space for. And, you know, owning it has given me a confidence and my authenticity, which is so important to me, given how much for the lack of authenticity I saw in academia, my early explorations of spiritual healing. And so for me, there, there's been this illusion that's been projected often on other talks, which is that if you healed from the coma, and you healed from the organ failure, then you're like, miraculously fixed for life. Okay. And so it makes it hard to openly say, Hey, I'm still going through this, yes, my organs fully healed. And I don't need medication for them. But they have consequences to that, like, I'm hypersensitive to inflammation, because my some of the organs that control that fail, so they're more sensitive to certain things. And I've had to make shifts in my life. And when people were first meeting me with that projection, after I started speaking out, I almost felt like shame, because of the fact that I was getting ill. And then I was like, No, I've worked with spirit all the time. And they keep telling me that this is part of the up leveling, and every time I get through it, I do get stronger, and I have new wisdom to communicate to persons. So it became very important to me in the past few months, with all the shifts that are coming through with humanity. And this really rejuvenation and interest in nd ease that we see in the populace to own. I am still tenderly human, and I am still healing every single day, Spirit gave me some beautiful gifts and some great wisdom. But that does not make me any less human than anyone else.

Brian Smith  38:20  
I think it's so important that you say that book. And because, you know, it's interesting how we as humans, we tend to gravitate to different extremes. And I hear a lot of people in their spiritual community, you know, saying, Well, if we just think the right thoughts and believe the right things that will will never be ill again. And if you're if you're ill, if you're sick, that just means you're not thinking correctly.

Brooke Grove  38:43  
Yes, and, you know, see that for a balanced medicine, again, to me, Brian becomes so important, because as a child trauma survivor, when I hear people subscribe things like the law of attraction to all forms of abuse, I get really triggered or activated, insofar as I'm sorry, but my 12 year old self did not call in the violence that happened to me. I don't believe any child does that. So we have to be very mindful of our spiritual integrity. I believe that there is a time and a place for almost all of the major theories and practices out there, but when we become dogmatic about anything, be it science, spirituality, politics, whatever, when we become dogmatic, we are unable to grow.

Brian Smith  39:36  
I completely agree. And you know, you mentioned karma earlier, which is an interesting system. It's misunderstood by I think most people, but you, you again, you get into that trap, you take it to an extreme and you'd see someone suffering. And you could say, well, that person obviously deserves that suffering. Therefore, I'm going to leave them in their suffering so they can burn off their karma or whatever, which can lead to a really you know, A sick kind of world that we live in. And as you said, you know, even the law of attraction, I think it has its place. But it also has limits, it doesn't mean that everything that happens to someone, they call them to themselves.

Brooke Grove  40:13  
Exactly. And that's that it's really being mindful. You know, you hear a lot in spiritual communities, a lot of bashing on religion, I'm not a religious person, I don't like any kind of system that is patriarchal and going to bring harm. Okay. Yet at the same token, some of the way that the spiritual people attack religion is the same thing they're complaining about. So that lack of integrity, that lack of humility, in that there is a middle path, in all ways is something we need to be most cognizant, the more passionate we are about something, the more we need to step in a place of neutrality and really see, what about this? Am I really aligned to you? And what do I really want to grow from and spread from this? Or what is really just some projection that's coming from my ego and my shadow? Yeah, because it exists for all of us, no matter what walk of life we're on. And I just want to be part of communities that can own both the light and the shadow, because if we're still walking this earth, we still are human. And we owe it to ourselves to really honor the full expression of that, which is the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in the middle.

Brian Smith  41:29  
Yeah, well, I can tell you as a person who came from a very religious fundamentalist background, and in getting into this, quote, spiritual community, I see this exact same mistakes being making in the spiritual made in the spiritual community. For example, when I heard about the law of attraction, I'm like, this is just the prosperity gospel that I heard of when I was in Christianity, that if you just did the right things, and prayed the right things, then God would quote, bless you. And if you were if you were sick, or you didn't, you had any lack of anything. That meant there was something wrong in your mind, that's the exact same thing, that people that get dogmatic with the law of attraction are saying,

Brooke Grove  42:09  
exactly.

Brian Smith  42:11  
You talk that you're talking to you said, I love this, like you said, My shadow is as brilliant and radiant as my light. So tell me what you meant by that.

Brooke Grove  42:22  
Well, the shadow gets a bad rap in both psychology and spirituality quite often as kind of this place for repressed monsters. Yeah, the reality is, the shadow is seeking light, the shadow wants to come out of its cave, it wants to be alchemize. To light. I know for a fact, Brian, that the work that I do now. And the passion I have for so many things would not be possible. If it weren't for the shadow, the dark is the pain, the suffering, the all of the knowledge that comes from that, but really the experience of having to be in that darkness and hold space for it and find a way to love it. Because I often say this, I had to befriend the shadow, I had to invite it in as an ally, so that I didn't keep running from it or burying it. And so the more that I embraced the shadow as an ally, the more that I started to understand that these illnesses were invitation for new wisdom, then it became, okay, when this comes up, it's not a bad thing. It's spirit, giving me the opportunity to add another skill set to my toolbox. And so my shadow in a way has really paid dividends of growth towards me, it has taught me things about the light that I wouldn't understand otherwise. But most importantly, perhaps, it's taught me that I'm not infallible. It's kept me in a place of awareness that I like any other person. I'm susceptible to becoming grandiose and egotistic, and all of these things that I didn't like in other spiritual communities. So when my shadow has something to say, or a voice, I understand, it's there to assist. It's there to keep me grounded, it's there to give me a new medicine. And so it's not something I shame or do value. I don't put it on a pedestal. But I very much will not be one of those people going around subscribing love and light to everything. Because the reality is this realm. It's not all love and light. And while I do believe that that's how spirit communicates and they're really where we want to go and where our allegiance ought to be too. It's just not where we're at. So for me Love Light and Shadow shadow being the accelerant for where most of my love and light come from. Wow,

Brian Smith  44:59  
I love where you put that Yeah, I think, you know, when it comes to shadow, ego, these are words that again, we can get really dogmatic about and say that they're terrible things, things that we need to get rid of, we need to, you know, I hear people talk about killing their ego, which I think is a gross misunderstanding of what your ego is, you need your ego. And I'm just learning about shadow, I interviewed a woman who's a transpersonal, psychologist, and I was reading her book, and I'm like, the shadow was kind of like what develops to protect us, because we have to protect ourselves and on this planet in this world. So we don't want to throw that away. And we want to acknowledge the fact that it serves us to a certain point.

Brooke Grove  45:41  
It totally and I mean, to give a, like a real world example of that, if I had just stayed in my love and light way of being, and the way that so many of the communities, you know, want us to subscribe to, I went through another one of the hard periods and spirit had a lot of too, and I needed to advocate for myself, I needed to protect myself and protect my children. In the past, I had never held an abuser accountable. And I, because I've been told that, you know, I was the one at fault. And I believed it at the time, after my nd E and all of this work. When this next thing happened. There was this awareness that my fight response came on. And my flight response was holy. My fight response was the shadow saying, No, this time we hold someone accountable. This time we protect ourselves, this time, we let people know this cannot happen to. And so for that period, where I didn't really have a lot of support, we were in lockdown at that time. My shadow was everything. And it got me where I needed to be protected me protected my children. And that is a healthy amount of shadow. And I needed it because in spiritual communities, I was being told over and over to kind of stay in that love and light place that love and light place would not have protected me at that moment.

Brian Smith  47:04  
Yes, I'm so glad you said that. I think that's that's really important that we we you know, so that's why I was really excited to talk to you about today because of this, this integration and this acknowledgement of our humanity, the acknowledgement of the world that we find ourselves in, I hear people say, you know, we should never be angry. And I'm like, There's no such thing as as righteous anger. And then and also, while, things may everything might be okay, on one level, because I hear a lot of people say, Well, everything is okay. And we should never push back against anything because things are as they're supposed to be. But I'm like, but that's part of the game we play we come here to is, we're here to push back on things. We're here to fight injustice, we're here to stand up for ourselves. And for others, that's that's part of the that's part of the realm that we're in.

Brooke Grove  47:51  
Most definitely, I feel, you know, humans are hardwired for connection. And so that's how we're seeking to heal quite often. Yet one of our core wounds is that we have to understand that the type of connection that the soul often wants, which is just like the complete unification, this complete understanding, it's not going to happen the way that the mind seeks it. And what I mean by this is, people want people to be like them, so they feel connected to it, because then you're normalizing what they go through and their experience. But the reality is, we are so vast and we are so complex, people are going to understand fractals of your experience, but they're not going to necessarily understand the totality. And that's okay, we need to stop attempting to make everybody exactly like us to feel connection and comfort.

Brian Smith  48:46  
Wow. Yeah, I like to talk about that more. Because when I hear people describe their near death experience, a lot of them talk about this connection that they feel that's so deep and so complete. I recall a friend that shared her experience that she said she saw all these other beings and she's like, I'm not sure if they were past lives, or if they were relatives or what because we were so connected. It was hard to know where I began, alright, ended and they began. And I think we do seek that. I mean, I know I'm attracted to that. But it's that's not really possible here, right?

Brooke Grove  49:22  
Well, that's the thing it can happen in peak experiences. And peak experiences do not have to be some profound nd II thing, we can have a peak experience for the familial celebration, and if everyone's in alignment, and enters it from the heart. So those type of peak experiences of relational connection are entirely possible here. Yet, what you alluded to in your friends description is what we're all thirsty for, because in some level, the oversoul which to me is the seat of the soul that exists beyond the physical chakras. It remembers of its past lifetimes and incarnations and experiences and One of the things that remembers is being completely unified with the Creator. It doesn't have the separation wounds that we all have. However, the minute we become embodied, we have this separation wound, and we attempt for our human experience, our soul is thirsty for that type of deep, intimate connection that we know from the other side. And you can be thirsty and hungry for it. You can cultivate it in your lived experience, but you must understand it will be temporal, you cannot hold on to it all the time here, because things are always in flux and and shift. But most importantly, because we're still in a polarity row. Yeah, okay. So there's two things always co occurring. It's not that this experience of the Divine, and this profound connection cannot be here. Absolutely. It can be here. Yeah, we have to consciously co create it. Okay. And part of what I often see is rather than CO creating and saying, This is me, I bring this to the table, this is you, you bring this to the table, we can be in loving connection with the awareness of our gifts and limitations, is this instead desire to only sit with people at the table that are just like you are subscribed to your beliefs, or your religion or your whatever. And the reality is that's causing what I call more disqualified vibrations, it's causing more separation. So if your goal is to actually unify, then we have to be, in a way like the creator in many NT E's to say, Hey, you're a piece of me, I'm a piece of you, we don't have to look and operate the same way. We're still at intrinsically at the end of the day. And when we're all back on the other side, we're all part of the city white. We just choose to express ourselves in different frequencies, colors and vibrations here.

Brian Smith  51:56  
And that's okay. So what is it? What is the point of coming here for incarnation for this to this heart and holy place? What are we what are we here to accomplish?

Brooke Grove  52:07  
Me, it's really giving the soul an opportunity to have new experiences, really, I don't know that I can, I don't feel that I personally have some all knowing wisdom to say there's a definitive what I know. But for me, from what I've seen, in my experience, and my experience with spirit, it really comes down to embodying love, embody love in the midst of pain. To me, that's what being humans about.

Brian Smith  52:33  
I know when in your talk, you talked about I don't know if you call it channeling, but you've been putting messages on Instagram. And one of the ones you said was our feelings, not the secret. We didn't come here to make sense. We came here to make sensations. Yes. So for you, do you feel it's a? Is it about experience? Is it Do we come here to have experiences?

Brooke Grove  52:58  
That that's Yeah, that's really what I meant there is that we were coming here to have experiences to have, you know, this tender experience of the full gamut of the spectrum of emotions. Okay. And, you know, my experience with the other side working with them, and dialogue with them all the time for my personal growth, they, they're pretty much at the vibration of love all the time, which is what we are when we're on the other side, too. But as we've talked about, over and over again, today, that's not the frequency that humanity is at right now. Right? So no matter what the soul chooses to come here, for, you're going to have a multitude of experiences. And no matter what they are, it seems that this they are to recalibrate our system to come back to love. We were born love. It's as if we just have to return to it over and over and over again. And that doesn't need to make sense to anyone else. It just needs to be experienced and felt

Brian Smith  54:04  
by the that's the conclusion that I keep coming to. It's like you said we were born love. I think even when we're incarnated, we still have that. And there's an Earth Wind and Fire that talks about this, you know, Child's born with the heart of gold, and the way of the world makes his heart grow cold. And we're and we're always but we're then we're trying to get back to that. It's like a game that we play with ourselves. It's like, let's go to this hard place. And let's forget who we were who we are. And let's pretend that you know, let's just have this little game of pretend and see if we can find our way back.

Brooke Grove  54:43  
Yeah, and who knows, maybe we get to go somewhere else later. That's not so hard. We'll just stay with the love.

Brian Smith  54:50  
Yeah, yeah. Well, I you know, as I said, it's and it's interesting that you talked about in your experience, you were told and it doesn't sound grandiose to me at all that you're part of A group here to raise the vibration, or to whatever lead us to the next thing that, you know, it's humanity that makes that makes sense to me. I think there are people here, who are here to be helpers who are here to, to help the rest of us wake up.

Brooke Grove  55:18  
Definitely. And we're seeing more and more of that, like just activations. I mean, even all the hardship we've gone through as a collective. And these past few years, you're seeing people radically altered their lives as a response to this. And that's all part of it too. And as we returning to what we talked about before, you don't have to have this peak mystical experience to get there. For some of us, it's a necessity to radically alter our trajectory, to each their own.

Brian Smith  55:46  
Yeah, I heard a woman who had a near death experience, talk about the fact that she felt that it was a course correction is the only one I can think of right now. She was like, she felt like she was not going in the direction she was should be going in. And so she planned this near death experience in case she was off of her path. And just like if I if I'd been on the path, maybe I wouldn't have had to break my spine. You know, but that was, that was the thing that set her back on her path.

Brooke Grove  56:12  
Well, totally. And you know, I've never talked about this before. Yet, prior to coma. I had had multiple awarenesses. It's something was coming. And it involved death. I wasn't showing anything specific yet. I remember I was up in Palo Alto studying at the time. And this lady approached me and I had been having some really intense experiences on this retreat site we were on. And now I understand they were spiritual experiences. At the time, I thought my roommates and people on the ground were messing with me, things were moving all over, like stuff was happening when nobody was around. And I was feeling presences of spirits. But I was very bothered by it. Okay, because again, this wasn't my norm. It made me uncomfortable. It was just regulating my nervous system. And then I had stuff disappearing when I needed it to get to class where I wasn't really stoked. Well, as I'm up on the campus, walking around, this woman comes up and she introduces herself and she says she's from First Nations of Canada, and she's a shaman. And she's like, I have a message for you, would you like to receive the message? I have no idea of how the rules work back then. But she asked nicely, and I say yes. And she says, very soon, you're going to have a choice. She's like, you can go or you can stay sick, I hope you stay. We need you. She walks away. That was November, my coma happened in early December. And that was just one of a multitude of things that had come up. But at the time, my my ego and my human could didn't understand it. And so I kept just even with the doctors, I told my doctors I said, I believe this disease was caused by trauma, I believe somehow my body is responding with inflammation, which is causing all these systems. But I don't think your diagnosis is right, and you are going to kill me if you don't get it right. Sure enough, you know, my nd happens. So for some of us, I feel there isn't awareness. But because we've been taught, or we allow ourselves not to trust intuition. We don't hold that as a sacred type of intelligence, we often will have to take the harder path, because we've ignored all the mile markers along the way. And I definitely did that.

Brian Smith  58:33  
That makes that makes sense to me. And it really it No, it's it's interesting, because people a lot of times we'll think about these events is like punishment, you know, so I had to get ill, or this had to happen to me, but that's looking at it from a very human perspective. And we of course, as we've been saying, the whole time, you're we're both human, and we're, we're transcend that at the same time. But from a spirit perspective, it's like, well, that's what it takes to get us back on course. And if we know this is all a temporary experience, and one day we're going to be happy, healthy and whole, then I think we'd be willing to say, oh, I need this little I need this bump, it's got to be this, this illness or this loss of a job or divorce or all the things that we go through?

Brooke Grove  59:13  
Definitely, I mean, when I the familiar thing that I referenced earlier, I'm just gonna call it what it is because I can say this now, yet it was domestic violence. And at the time, given what I had gone through in my history, there were moments where my human really struggled with did I call this in is are these law of attraction people right because of my past I'm just continually going to go through this and at the time and I still to this day would never wish this on anybody as how they grow. Okay. it in the end when I made that pivotal decision, to actually name it for what it was, go to the police and take the actions that were necessity to protect myself and my future my children. So that ended up helping my human and also helping the child who had suffered through that. And never had anyone validate their experiences ever that helped that part of me heal in ways no amounts of therapy could do.

Brian Smith  1:00:17  
Yeah, wow. I just got goosebumps as you said that I'm, there's a book a series of books I'm obsessed with called the team, by by Francois key, and there's, there's channeled from her mother who's in spirit now. And one of the concepts is that we're on teams, which we've talked about here today. But also that we can actually heal the past that we think about being in the present and healing the future. And we know that the present actions can affect our future, but she actually says that we can heal our past by by doing things. So by like, for example, someone who has been a victim of abuse, who maybe weren't able to stand up for themselves in the past, but when they stand up for themselves in the present, it actually has a way of rippling of back and healing their past.

Brooke Grove  1:01:03  
Exactly, and at the same time, it gives an ancestral healing to the generations that come afterwards, you know, like my little boys, in this case, the the dads mother had died from domestic violence, okay, statistically, when that happens, and they start being violent, guess what would happen to the person like me, the story replicates. And then the children have that carry it on you by breaking that cycle and nailing it. And not only did it bring me healing, but it knew that no matter what my boys would grow up to believe in no matter what anyone told them, they can unequivocally say, a judge and a court of law agreed this to be true. And so no matter what everything else, it gives them that to know that that's something that they're going to have to walk with tenderly throughout their lifetime. But it was real. And for me, as someone who was told half their life, horrible things that happened wasn't real by a family that wanted to protect its moves. That was a very powerful experience. Yeah. And I'd also like to argue of Thank you, thank you. I'd also like to say right there that that's part of why I argue against things like slowly giving your power to something like the law of attraction, because if that theory was fundamentally right, then when I was highly reactivated by the trauma that presented in that form, I wouldn't have fought back the way that I did, I would have been operating from fear. And I did not operate from fear. Okay, so there is something to the soul, and the ego as well. And the shadow that is beyond that type of thinking, I feel it's too basic for what we are.

Brian Smith  1:02:45  
Yeah, I completely agree. We as, as humans, we tend to we tend to go to these extremes. And it's got to be all one way or all the other. And it's not we are we are this this mixture. We live in this in this polarity, as you talked about? You one of the things you put up when you were doing the lion's presentation, you said it was messy, yet it was authentic and beautiful. The mess became my prayer. So embracing the the messiness and the humanity and wrestling with these questions that don't have easy answers.

Brooke Grove  1:03:18  
Mm hm. And that's the thing, perhaps we're just here to live the answer. And each of us has a different answer. And that's what the uniqueness of our experience is about. And maybe that's why our ego doesn't like someone else telling us most often how to do it. Because our souls are rebels, they know that we each have our own unique way of doing it.

Brian Smith  1:03:40  
Well, you know, it's interesting is doing this, doing this show doing this job, Mike, it's just my job to ask people questions. And it's funny, I talked to people have their experiences. Sometimes we think, Oh, well, they've got all the answers because they've been to the other side. So I have to ask the questions, even knowing that, you know, you don't have all the answers, because I think that's part of the reason why we're here. And what you just said is really profound. The answers are probably different for all of us. There. We don't. There's a guy I study with his name is Kelvin chin, and he's an afterlife expert. He has memories of past lives and stuff. I know Kelvin. Okay, so yeah, you know, Kelvin. So we know we all got a covenant, we asked Kelvin questions. And it's funny, because he's really practical. He's really down to earth. And there's this idea that we all come here to learn. And the earth is just a big school. And we're here to learn our lessons. And if we don't learn the lessons, we're set back to do it over again. And kelvins. Like, that's not the answer for everybody. Not everybody is here to learn. You said you might be here to learn. And I might be here to learn, but there's some people here just to mess around. So people are just to have experiences. It's not one answer for everybody. And he's one of the first people I've heard actually, you know, say it that way because we all think, well, it's got to be this way. It's got to be we're all here for the same thing. Now some of us come here just because we like it. Some of us come makers will like ice cream. It's like we just want to taste ice cream.

Brooke Grove  1:05:00  
Definitely, if you think about it, we're all fractals of source or the creator, then it's really God just choosing to have these experiences and all these vast multitudes, I wouldn't want to have the same experience over and over again, if I were expressing myself through a different consciousness. So it just to me, it intrinsically makes sense that we're all going to be very, very expressions, even the light when I see it, moving through the field, the light is constantly shifting how it expresses itself, is never consistent,

Brian Smith  1:05:30  
right? We I don't think we can even comprehend the vastness of, of source or whatever it is that we come from, and, you know, to think about what are the almost eight billions expressions on earth at this moment, not to mention how many souls there have been, and however many lifetimes and whatever dimensions and other planets there might be. It's just beyond, it's beyond my comprehension. Anyway.

Brooke Grove  1:05:55  
I concur. And that's the thing I love when people like, like, as you said, was Calvin as you are yourself and as I strive to be when they're just open about that, because again, every single person is gifted with these nuggets of wisdom. It's just whether we choose to reveal them and run with them. Or we kind of hold them in our heart space or in our, you know, sacral or wherever and not express them. But the truth is, we all have psychic and spiritual potential, we all come from the same place. We all have access to this if we choose to nurture it, but so much of who we are what we become, it comes by where we do give the attention.

Brian Smith  1:06:34  
Yeah, and it's, it's okay, it's whatever, whatever we're here to do. I think it's okay. People can people can choose, you know, what, what works for them reject what doesn't work for them. We all grow. It's, it's funny, because I think about myself now, where I was 30 years ago, where I was 10 years ago, the things that I've learned, and that's okay, we shouldn't we should never judge our earlier versions of ourselves, either, because we're all we're all changing. We're all growing as we go through this process. Yes, definitely. So I know, Brooke, I think you're working on your first book. Now, can you tell us what that's about?

Brooke Grove  1:07:11  
I'm working on two at the same time. What is more, it's memoir. I really, I knew when I came back, I didn't want to write an NDA II story. And that's no, like offense to anyone that wrote in Hindi story. It's because for me, trauma has been the teacher. Okay. And when I first started speaking out about my nd E, we were in a very different culture. And just trying to talk about the transcendent and trauma in one sentence, got me denied over and over in certain rooms and certain types of events. And so I kept, I kept sticking with it. I'm like, There's something here about the end and trauma, the end and trauma, I'm sticking with it, okay. And ultimately, my perseverance worked in my favor. And at the same time, the world shifted, and trauma became a collective experience. And so it was something that had to be talked about in conjunction to spirituality. Well, I've been very blessed. Despite all the challenges I've been through, I've had this uncanny ability to call in support, both in embodied human form, and from the other side. And I've also had a great education, and I was able to learn techniques and things to assist me. And then when I walked away from them, I was able to really discern and say, Hey, this is what really works for complex trauma. This is what does it this is the stuff that I'm learning from spirit. This is what doesn't. And so I really want to tell the story more in a sense that you can see how the NT e ticket fix it. I don't want to offer some story of like she had this experience and everything ball holy and perfect now, no, I want them to see, hey, I came back. And for 10 years, I was brought to my knees by this growth oriented process. And even when I thought I just figured it out, I went through this other awful experience with domestic violence. And it was spirit. And it was my intuitive gifts from childhood that guided me out. So I want to tell is really a bigger picture of it to help the people that are going through it. And fundamentally, as I've been talking to so many people in our community about I want to take the stigma away from calling out your abusers. Like we just live in a culture where it's so much of this is being swept under the rug, because unless they kept someone red handed, there's not much the law can really do. So instead of telling women that it's a story that always ends up in these awful statistics and that they can't get out. I want to really say here my system was hardwired not to succeed and And yet I did, this is why you can do

Brian Smith  1:10:02  
so.

Brooke Grove  1:10:05  
And then this the second project is really poetry. And that's been because writing a memoir, when you are a poly trauma survivor in your central nervous system still wants to tell that story over and over has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life, it triggers my system more than anything else, because I have to go through the somatic experience of it. And so poetry became a flow state practice that taught me how to use creativity with trauma, I was trained as an art therapist, but that is more visual art, and finding how powerful it is even for persons who don't identify as writers to find a way to tap into this flow state of creativity and use that for personal healing. So the poetry is more for people that aren't really don't really care about the story, but want to really learn this technique, which to me has been radical in allowing me to ultimately alchemize excuse me the trauma a little by little without being overcome by it.

Brian Smith  1:11:02  
Yeah. Wow. That's, that's amazing. Fascinating. Look, I look forward to that. And I think, you know, I love studying in the ease. Ken ring has talked about how we can all you know, experience some of the good parts of Indies without going through the trauma by studying them. So I appreciate you sharing your story. I still I'll never get tired of reading them. But it's, it's really, as you said, another thing you said, I don't think I covered this yet. You said awaking is not the destination, it is the beginning. Radical embodiment is the journey. So the MBE a lot of us, you know, we hear the stories like oh, it's really cool. They went to heaven, and they came back. But and then they don't want to hear the rest of the story. What happened after that for seven or 10 years when that person was trying to integrate that experience?

Brooke Grove  1:11:50  
Definitely, definitely. And I feel like, you know, there's a big emphasis in spiritual communities on awakening, whether it's plant medicine, or go to on this trip and learn this technique, or this type of breathwork. You know, there's so many different ways it's marketed to it. But the reality is, you could have a plethora of awakening experiences, but if you not, are not embodying them, you are missing the point of the whole journey. Yeah, I feel that like these types.

Brian Smith  1:12:15  
Okay. No, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Brooke Grove  1:12:18  
These types of discussions that you and I are having no, I feel there's so important to shifting that narrative because it is we're not seeking, you know, a new technique of yoga, or meditation or whatever, to hit this plateau, and then just stay there. Because that's not what the humans capable of the human gets there, learns from it, and then has to bring it back down to the ground and integrate it. And that's the when the authenticity of the awakening becomes to me most quantifiable in any story I hear. It's not what beautiful thing happened on the other side, because to me, no matter what the experience, they all contain beauty. It's what did you make beauty out of when you returned

Brian Smith  1:12:59  
from it? Yeah, well, the nd for me, it has a couple of different things. That one is for me, who hasn't had one, it gives me hope in that. So it's like, I It's like, I know someone that's been there. So it gives me hope. But the lessons of it is, is that what you just said? I'm just kind of reiterating it. It's integrating those lessons. It's really important. I mean, I'm putting together a course now I'm teaching people about like the lessons from Indies and to believe in the afterlife, stuff like that. And and one of the things I'm like, I always ask the question, so what so someone had this experience? What does it mean? Well, first of all, it means we all have hope that we can live beyond just life. Okay, great. But what does it mean about living this life right now? And that's what that integration experience is like that you've had? And it's like, how does that how does it play into the rest of your time here because people that have had in the East have to come back and live on this plane, just like the rest of us do? And this is where the this was where that that? Will you take that lesson and you apply it that's the important thing.

Brooke Grove  1:13:58  
Exactly, like applied spirituality. And that's what we need more of.

Brian Smith  1:14:02  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or Brooke, thanks so much for being here. I'm glad we were able to do this today.

Brooke Grove  1:14:09  
Yes, me too. Thank you so much for your questions.

Brian Smith  1:14:12  
Yeah. Let people know how they can reach out to you.

Brooke Grove  1:14:15  
Okay, so my website is www dot Brooke grove. healing.com. One word Brooke does contain an E so b r o ke Grove gr o v e healing.com. That is my website. There's a contact page. You may reach out to me from there. On Instagram you can find me at Brook Grove writing also all in Word or at for growth healing, which typically is just clients, but I do occasionally take some persons from interviews. If you DM me, and we connect. And yeah, those are the primary ways to reach me. I am on YouTube for interviews quite often. So you can just check Birchgrove and the E. There's other reasons Rex is on there for interviews.

Brian Smith  1:15:02  
Awesome. Well, thanks for being here, Brooke, have a great rest of your day.

Brooke Grove  1:15:05  
Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Smith  1:15:07  
I'm excited to nots, I have a great new resource. It's called gems, four steps to move from grief to joy. And what it is, it's four things that I've found that I do on a daily basis to help me to navigate my grief. And I'm offering it to you free of charge. It's a free download, just go to my website, www dot grief to growth.com/gems G m s, and grab it there for free. I hope you enjoy it. Hi there. I want to tell you about my Facebook group for grief to growth. I'm very excited about it. It's a few 100 people at this point. It's growing rapidly. It's very active. And I'd love to have you join us. When I do there. As I post on a regular basis, you'll see short videos from me, they'll probably see some Facebook Lives, I introduced new resources that you might be interested in. And it's a group where we can support each other. I love the saying by rom das that we're all just walking each other home. I like having a place where we can share our burdens and we can help each other out. So if you're interested in joining, it's www.facebook.com/groups/grief to growth, so www.facebook.com/groups/grief to growth, the number to like it is everywhere for grief to grow. I do hope to see you there

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