Amy, Jamie’s assistant, sent me some photos from the Channeling Erik Weekend. Looking at them reminds me of how much fun it was and how fond I became of all the sweet souls there.

 

Now, the moment that many of you have been waiting for, I’d like to introduce you to my dear friend, blog member and medium, Robert. We both thought it would be a good idea for you to get to know him through and through sort of the whole boxers or briefs or what’s your social security number thing. Enjoy.

Me: Today, we’re going to introduce our new medium and resident blog member, Robert, who many of you already know. You guys are going to get to know him over time. I consider him to be my best friend and part of the family. So, Robert, tell the blog members whatever you can so that they can get to know you better.

Robert: Yeah. Well, I’ve always been connected to spirit. I didn’t necessarily know where spirit was. I often used to wonder when I was younger, “I feel these people, and I know that there’s an afterlife or whatever, and I know that when you die, you continue to exist,” but I didn’t know where they were. Later in life, I learned that they’re everywhere. They’re where we are and where they are at the same time all swirled together. There’s no separation between any dimension or plane. It’s just all interspersed throughout existence and within consciousness itself.

Me: Okay.

Robert: As far as how I would deliver messages from spirit, It tended to in a passive-aggressive way, I guess. (He chuckles). It wasn’t very open, right? I would come in contact with people or people would come into contact with me, and usually that would happen, because spirit would lead them to me, or I would be led to them. And I would begin hearing from spirits what that person might need to talk about. Then, through conversation, I help them bring that up either on their own or just in the course of the conversation.

Me: What kind of people? Family members and friends?

Robert: All different kinds of people. It could be family members; it could be friends; it could be strangers—coworkers, anyone. They wouldn’t be any specific kind of person, and those messages from spirit I would relay to the person as if they were my advice or I would put it into, “Well, this is what I experienced” and things like that.

Me: Mm hm. Otherwise it might freak them out a little bit, huh Robert?

Robert (laughing): Well, yeah, plus I wasn’t completely comfortable with it either! How do you tell a person, “Well, you know, on the other side there’s this person and they’re saying, “Well you need to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah””!

I chuckle.

Robert: And I’m a very shy persona by nature. I mean I’m extremely shy, so I have to do things in a way that I feel comfortable doing, and that was the way I felt most comfortable at that point in my life. Going back to spirit itself, I always knew, when people were alive, that they had what I called, “a shine.” When a person is alive and you look at them, they have this bit of a shine to them, a glow, and when the person passes away, they don’t have that, and like I said earlier, their consciousness doesn’t die, but I always wondered when they died where did they go?

Me: When you say the people who die don’t have a shine, are you talking about their spirit or their body when they’re dead?

Durrr.

Robert: When they’re dead. And even though I knew that their consciousness still existed, I always wondered where did their shine go? And like I said earlier, it doesn’t “go” anywhere. It’s just that we can’t see it anymore physically with our eyes. It’s everywhere. They go back to being in the fabric of everything. I guess that’s the simplest way I can put it.

Me: Mm hm.

Robert: Some other things that happened in my life: I kept coming into contact with people who, either the person I came in contact with or some person that person knew would pass away. Sometimes it’ll be within a few days; sometimes it might come a couple of years later. I used to think, for the longest time, that I was cursed, because when I think back on all the people who I’ve known throughout my life, there have been 30 people who I’ve come into contact with who passed away. In fact, over thirty people.

Me (joking): It makes me a little nervous being your friend now, Robert!

Robert burst out laughing.

Robert: And that’s the thing. Since I’ve come in contact with you, there’s been lots of death in your family! Aside from Erik there was your mother, your friend, Brian, and all your dogs.

Me: God, you’re knocking ‘em all off!

We both laugh.

Robert: And the thing I learned was that it wasn’t me causing people to die. It had to do with the fact that spirit just leads me to those situations because, usually, I can be a messenger for the family or for the one who’s departing to make them feel a little more centered or whatever. So, there’s that aspect of things. Now the reason I’m open to doing this, I don’t know, medium, psychic, whatever you want to call it—

Me: Channeling?

Robert: Channeling, yeah. I don’t know. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t usually like to use labels a lot, but I know people need them. I started doing them openly when I came in contact with Erik. I don’t think I mentioned this yet, but I’ve experienced a lot of trauma in my life as well. Personal trauma. Emotional and physical trauma that have played out in different ways. Sometimes with relationships, sometimes with the trauma of losing someone, for instance. Health issues, whatever.

Robert was raised in extreme poverty, living in the projects, sometimes in shacks that had dirt floors and a wooden roof with wide gaps between the planks. Not easy. Also, his family has not been a very strong source of support.

Robert: Throughout the process of going through those things, I ended up losing all connection to faith. When that happened, when I lost all sense of faith and hope, I really didn’t hear from spirit anymore. It’s like it was completely quiet, and boy, let me tell you what, that is not a pleasant feeling to feel nothing at all, to hear nothing. Talk about isolation! That’s how it felt.

Me: Was that because of the trauma and lack of hope?

Robert: Yes. Absolutely. I had just completely closed down, shut myself off.

Me: Mm hm.

Robert: So, honestly, just prior to meeting you and coming into contact with Erik, I was resigned to pass away. I was ready to go. I really was.

Me: Aww.

Robert: I ended up retiring from my job, because I just couldn’t physically or emotionally do it anymore. I guess I, let’s see, met you in June of 2010. It would have been around that time or maybe a month or two prior to that that I started hearing them again. In particular, I started hearing this one spirit who—honestly a lot of spirits don’t like to identify themselves by name or anything, and I don’t usually ask them, but I usually recognize them by their personality or the kinds of words they use or whatever, or just the feeling that they give me. So, I came into contact with this one spirit that I didn’t recognize at all! He sounded so different from everyone else, and I couldn’t see him at the beginning. I could just hear him. He’s the one, it turned out later that was your son, Erik, who led me to the blog.

Me: Tell us how that happened.

Robert (giggling): Well, it was interesting, because spirit doesn’t necessarily verbally say, “You need to go to ChannelingErik.com.” They don’t tend to do it that way. They’ll kind of guide you to take certain actions. So, for me, the way it played out with Erik, there was a particular website that I used to visit daily. It was a science based website called physorg.com, and I heard him say, “Hey dude, go to your nerd site, and check out the third link on the page.” It was a link about how science and religion are starting to merge and that scientists are starting to believe that quantum physics is the thing that will connect those two.

Me: Mm hm.

Robert: And I thought, “Oh!” That kind of perked me up a little bit. You could say, in a sense, that was the first time I started to recognize that my faith and hope were coming back. The reason that was happening was because in the absence of hope and faith, you lose that connection to the heart, and so then you start relying on the mind. Well, in my mind, despite everything that I had experienced in life [with my connection to spirit] that maybe, just maybe all of these things that happened were coincidence and that there is nothing after. That crossed my mind a few times!

Me: That was before you met Erik, right?

Robert: That was before I met Erik, and it started to happen after I completely lost all faith and hope, and I disconnected from my heart. So I started relying purely on my mind, more logic-based. So, when I read that article, Erik—this is why he’s such a genius—he knew that my mind needed to see that first in order to open up the pathways to my heart and to reinvigorate my health. I had to go that route first. If the heart closes off, then there’s no point in appealing to it, right?

Me: Yeah.

Robert: You have to go with what’s open. So, after seeing that article, then he told me, “Okay, now go to this other site,” which was a news-based website. It’s the one where you’d written an article a couple of times, The Huffington Post, and he said, “Hey, go to that one.” So, I said, “Okay.” So, I went to The Huffington Post, but usually when I visit it I go to the homepage, but this time he says, “No, no. You need to go to the Living Section.” I’m pretty sure it was the Living Section. So, I was like, “The Living Section?” and he said, “Don’t question me!” (Robert laughs).

Me: What a bossy guy!

Robert: Well, he’s bossy with me, because he knows that I’ll be like, “Well, I don’t know…” So, I went to the Living Section and the very first article was the one you had written. It caught my eye right away, about talking to your son in the afterlife and stuff. By the way, at this point I had no idea that I was talking to your son!

Me: Oh, cool!

Robert: I didn’t know! I just thought, ‘Okay. This is a spirit. I’ve reconnected with spirit, and they’ve guided me to help me reestablish my faith and all that kind of stuff.’ So, I read the article, and that’s when I came across the link to your blog. Then I started reading the blog, and as I started reading the entries, I started thinking, ‘You know, these words sound a little like someone I’m talking to!’ And so I started thinking to myself, ‘Hmm.’ Erik didn’t say anything, but I could see him watching me, you know?

Me: Yeah.

Robert: So, I read 4 or 5 posts, I guess, and so finally I say, ‘Is this Erik I’m talking to?’ And he says, “Bingo,” and I just started laughing!

We both laugh.

Robert: So, I go, ‘Oh. Okay. This is all interesting.’ I got very excited, because the entries that I read were like spiritual crack! I just became hooked on it.

Me: Boy, he sure did make you work for it, though, didn’t he?

Robert: Oh, he did. He was mentioning something about that earlier. He said, “The reason things play out the way they do is because if we tell you everything and you don’t do something on your own, then you have no say in the matter. You’re just being led. Our purpose is to help guide you and to let you be the one driving the ship, because ultimately that’s who the captain is.”

Me: Yeah.

Robert: Then Erik said something else that I was very uncomfortable with. This may come across funny to people who read this, but he mentioned that I needed to contact you, and I was totally not up for that, because I was like, ‘She doesn’t even know me from Adam, and here I am, I’m just going to contact her out of the blue with, ‘I know your son, and he wanted me to contact you.’

I giggle.

Robert: I would sound like a crazy person or a flake or some stalker or whatever, but you know, I’ve said this to you before, because this is the way it’s been with Erik since I’ve known him. He’s relentless. He will never stop nagging the shit out of me.

Me: I know. He did that while he was here, too!

Robert: He nagged and he nagged and he wouldn’t shut up! It’s not just the nagging. In between, he would start throwing out little breadcrumbs, like, “Well, look. Look. This is the reason I’m nagging.” One of the breadcrumbs he threw out while I was reading a post, he said, “Look dude. Check in the comments section,” and so I checked in the comments section and saw that you had volunteered your email address and encouraged people to contact you and that you were open to it. He said, “See dude? I told you! She’s not going to bite. Contact her! It’s really important that you contact her.” I still wasn’t totally convinced. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ So, after, I don’t know, maybe a week or two later, I finally broke down, and I think I saw, in one of your posts, your Facebook address, so then I finally messaged you. I don’t even think I mentioned at the get-go that I had met your son. I think that kind of came out later, but eventually I mentioned that, and then you and I decided to meet. Even then, it required you convincing me!

Where do you think Erik gets his nagging skills?

Me: First of all, I convinced you to give m a call on the phone, and my god, that was like pulling eyeteeth!

Robert: Right!

Me: And then when we spoke on the phone, we ended up talking for a couple of hours! Then I convinced you, ‘Let’s meet for lunch,’ cuz you live pretty close. Finally you agreed. I’ll tell you guys a story about this. My family heard that I was going to meet this complete stranger for lunch, and I had to meet him at a Chevron station, because the main road into my neighborhood was all torn up during construction, and the detours were complicated. So, I met him there, but before I did, my family was freaking out. “Oh my god! He could be an ax murderer! Oh, no!” Then, when I met him, he clearly was not. I saw that he was this sweet, gentle soul. Now we laugh about that whole story when Robert comes over for our weekly family get-togethers. Those days, he comes to be with our family, and he’s become part of our family.

Robert: And that’s the thing that’s so amazing. Erik had mentioned before I even knew you all, that y’all were exactly what I needed. He had said that before. He said, “You need to feel that connection again. You’ve completely disconnected from everything, and you need to have a connection, and that’s what my family can give you. They’re completely unconditional, and you can be exactly who you are, and you don’t even have to worry about anything.” And everything he had ever said to me in regards to his family has always ended up being accurate. They’ve always come true. I’ve been amazed by that.

Me: That’s true!

Robert: I mean everything!

Me: Now, in your past lives with him, you were his teacher. Isn’t’ that right?

(Pause)

Me: And he was your unruly student.

Robert: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, I had to ask [spirit], because I don’t necessarily remember all that, so I have to get them to pull that up for me, and they said, “Yeah, that’s absolutely the truth.”

We got that information from Kim O’Neill, too.

Robert: He’s always been a mischief-maker, and, yeah, he was that way in those lives, too.

I giggle.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO.