Here is the second of three installments! In this one, you’ll more about the relationship between Robert and Erik. I’d also like to announce that not only are the YouTubes of the celebrity interviews now public, I’ve also changed all the celebrity interview posts to public as well. 

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Me: Share some of the things like how he communicates with you on a daily basis and what little pranks he pulls and all that.

Robert: Spirit, in general, tends to communicate with me in a whole lot of different ways. Sometimes it’s through a feeling. Sometimes I just “know” something, and I don’t know why I know it. I just know it. Sometimes it will be something visual. It’s just flash really quick in my mind’s eye, and sometimes I’ll literally hear them. Erik communicates mostly with me hearing him and a lot through visuals. Um, he’s telling me now that he communicates with me in all the other ways, too, but those two are the ones that I’m more conscious of. So, there are times when he’s communicated with me through other people, and I’m not aware that it’s him.

Me: Interesting.

Robert: And one other thing about spirit that I’ve noticed is that when people are mediums, people immediately think, “Oh well, this is the person that can contact my dead loved one.” For me, sometimes that plays out. I find, though, that when it comes to communicating with a deceased loved one, I tend to—I guess because I’ve gone through so many experiences of losing people, so obviously there’s some work I need to do to become comfortable or, I guess you can say, letting go of some of the baggage that gets me to already attach myself to those people who’ve passed over. What I mean by that is that I understand how I felt when someone died, and I went through that dance with faith and doubt, and I also went through that process of grief. You know that extremely well.

Me (solemnly): Oh gosh. Yes.

Robert: So, sometimes when it comes to speaking with people’s departed loved ones, I will freeze up, because then I will think to myself, ‘Oh my god. I want to make sure that this is accurate” I put all the responsibility on my own shoulders, because I’m afraid that if I don’t accurately interpret what they’re telling me, then that person might lose their faith.

Me: Oh, yeah. You don’t want them to not believe that their loved one is still here.

Robert: Oh my gosh, no, but I’m working on that, and that boils down to trust.  Erik’s been saying that a lot lately, “You gotta trust. You gotta trust.”

Me: And you’re very good at it now!

Robert: Yeah, because I’ve learned that I have to completely separate my mind from what it is that they’re trying to say to me. I can’t let my mind interfere.

Me: Exactly.

Robert: So, that being said, a lot of the times what I end up finding is that the message is not about proving that the loved one still exists but more about helping people find their emotional center and heal in the way that they need to heal or to allow the messages to guide them in way that allows them to continue in this life some way. That’s the most obvious pattern that I can think of.

At this point, we had to stop so I could fuss at my daughter’s puppy for peeing on the rug in front of the door. Sigh.

Me: Sorry. Go ahead.

Robert: It’s all right. Sometimes these messages come from the loves ones, and I know I’m not supposed to resist relying the information that they give me. The easiest things that comes to me is more about guiding people to find their emotional center and helping them heal in some way so that they can continue on in this life.

Me: Well, I think you sell yourself short, and I see when you channel during our get-togethers it just pours out of you. It’s like it goes right into you and out of your mouth! It seems like it’s not really coming from you, and it seems absolutely effortless.

Robert: Yeah, well you’re right about that. I guess maybe to make it a little clearer is a lot of what I’m verbalizing, I feel internally. So, externally to the person it seems like this effortless thing, but internally, sometimes I can go through that internal struggle, and I know that I need to let that go in order for it to become a comfortable experience for me. Otherwise, I keep resisting, and like they say, “What you resists persists.” So, when it comes to those messages where I don’t feel that internal struggle, it feels more like messages that are for guiding in some way to help someone heal, emotionally, getting messages from spirit that that person needs to hear in order for them to, I don’t want to use the word, “cope” because that implies that you just have a Band-Aid on it. I guess you can say to heal. That’s the most appropriate word.

Me: I know that the first pranks he pulled on you—I won’t call them “pranks”. They’re more like annoyances—would be him bugging you over movie choices.

Robert (laughing): Yeah, he still does that! Oh my gosh. He still does that! It’s like if I’m on the computer, he’ll nag me and say, “Let’s go watch TV. Let’s go watch TV!” and I’m like, ‘Well, hold on a minute,’ and he’s like, (Insert a sound of frustration here.) He gets impatient and you can see him cross his arms and be like, (Insert same sound here.) He gets aggravated.

I giggle. He used to beg me, too wanting me to install a “cherry bomb” on my car so it would make a loud roar as it goes along the road, begging me to take him to Chick Fil-A and other places. You name it; the guy was a professional beggar. Obviously, he still is.

Robert: So, I’ll ignore him for a little while, and then he’ll start doing that again. And yeah, he’ll suggest movies that most of the time I don’t want to watch. I can’t really think of any specific examples, because he used to do that more at the beginning. He just prods me to watch ones that I don’t like.

Me: Mm hm.

Robert: In the beginning, it was a lot of action movies and things like that.

Me: Oh, yeah.

Some of his favorite movies were Tombstone, The Professional and, sadly, The Shooter.

Robert: Sometimes I like them, and sometimes I don’t. One of the other things he used to do at the beginning: there’d be times when I’d be at the grocery store, and my mind would be completely disconnected. I could be in the bread aisle, for instance, and then all of a sudden I’m standing in front of the cereal, and I don’t even remember how I got there!

Me: Wow!

Robert: And there was one instance when I was in the cereal aisle, and I was looking at the Cookie Crisp, and he kept saying, “Buy the Cookie Crisp. Buy the Cookie Crisp!”

Me: He used to love that cereal!

Robert: The Cookie Crisp?

Me: Uh huh.

Robert: There was Cookie Crisp, and I think the other one was Chocolate Pebbles or something like that.

Me: Cocoa Pebbles! He LOVED those!

(Is it Kocoa or Cocoa?)

Robert: Yeah, that’s it. Cocoa Pebbles, and then one time, I was walking down the aisle and a package of Twizzlers flew off the shelf!

Me: I remember that!

Robert: It was Erik, and I was like, ‘M’kay.’ It just like FLEW off the shelf.

Me: Wow!

Robert: And then another time, I was sitting in the house—oh, this was probably 3 or 4 months after I had started hanging around with you all. I was sitting in the living room when, out of nowhere, I saw what looked like cigarette smoke, like the kind of cigarette smoke like someone just blew it out of their mouth, and it was jut hovering there in the room. Then it went from right to left and finally disappeared in thin air.

Me: Hmm! Did you smell it, too?

Robert: No, I couldn’t smell anything. I jut saw it. It looked exactly like cigarette smoke, and I’m familiar with how that looks, because when I was growing up, my dad’s mother and my dad himself smoked all the time. Erik didn’t say anything, but I asked you later if Erik was a smoker, and you said, “Yes, he was.”

Me: Yeah. We buried him with the nicotine stains on his fingers.

Robert: So, those are the big ones.

Me: What about him playing with the toilet?

Robert: Oh Lord. Yeah. There was one instance where I was in the—I can’t remember how this played out exactly. I just remember that the light above the toilet flickered a couple of times. Actually, let me go back a little bit. First I heard Erik say, “Hey Dude, watch this. I got something cool to show you,” and I was like, ‘Whatever!’ I just kind of, uh, after a while he gets to be like that little brother that keeps talking all the time, so I have to tune him out. (Sighing sound.) So that’s what I did with him sometimes. I just like, ‘Whatever.” You’re going to show me something cool. Whatever.’ Then all of a sudden the light flickered, and a few seconds later the toilet flushed.

Me: Wow.

Robert (laughing): I know. So, I just sort of stood there and went, ‘Okay, well that’s pretty cool, Erik.’

Me: It has to be scatological with that guy.

Robert: Oh, and Lord, let me tell you this, because I’m not really particularly—and I know this sounds contradictory because what I said earlier, but even though I’m a shy person, at the same time I’m not really shy in some ways like with spirits. For instance, one of the things that Erik will do –I don’t know if this is even appropriate for the blog, but this is in line with Erik’s sense of humor. I could be sitting on the toilet going to the bathroom, and he will sit there in the beginning and try to get me to get embarrassed, but I won’t.

Me: All right! You show him!

Robert: One of the things that I started learning with him is that you have to set your boundaries with him, right?

Me: Oh, yeah!

Robert: It’s not like doing that because he’s some evil entity or anything like that. It’s just because, uh, you can think of it like an indirect way of teaching.

Me: Teaching what?

Robert: In that particular instance, it’s an indirect way of teaching you about boundaries, right?

Me: Okay.

Robert: Boundaries can have a lot of different meanings. One type is grounding. If you have your grounding boundary set well, then you’re going to feel safe no matter where you are. So, if you feel safe, you’re not going to feel embarrassed in certain situations like that situation. I wasn’t embarrassed.

Me: What about the shower scene? (not the one from Psycho, don’t worry) I can’t remember. Maybe I’m making this up, but didn’t he tease you while you were in the shower?

Robert: Yeah, he’s done that kind of thing, but I don’t remember anything specific except hearing him tease me, but I do remember one thing he used to tease me about in the beginning—he used to do this pretty regularly—he used to call me a girl all the time!

Me: Aww!

Robert: This is not like a sexist thing. He just says, you know, because I’m gay, right? So, he would say, “You’re such a girl!” I know it might come off to some blog members as sexist or chauvinistic, but he’s not that way! What’s he’s referring to in those remarks is that I tend to be much more aligned with my feminine side. I’m very drawn to femininity, just like Erik is.

Me: Yes, he is.

Robert: But, for me, that femininity is more of an appreciation of it. I enjoy the complexity and things like that. It’s just not sexual in nature. For Erik, it’s those things and the sexual.

Me: Oh, yeah. Of course. Well, he didn’t get much while he was alive, poor guy! I guess he’s making up for lost time.

Erik chimes in with “Hell no.”

Robert: Oh, and you know another thing he wanted me to mention was, it was mentioned in the book, but he was telling me to bring up that story about when you all went to Norway, and he asked me to ask you if the floors were warm enough. Remember that?

Me: Oh, yeah.

Robert (giggling): And y’all ended up telling me later that the floors were heated and that they weren’t working correctly until Rune reset them.

Me: Yeah, you wouldn’t have known that the floors were heated. The cabin is way up above the tree line in the tundra. Very cold! We have to have heated floors, and they got so hot we could barely step on them! It was the oddest thing, and, yes, Rune had to reset them.

Robert: Yeah, and the thing is, when you told me that, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a heated floor! That was one of the few instances where, when I relay a message from spirit, I’ve actually gotten completely thrown off. I don’t know why that threw me off so much, but it did!

Robert and I laugh hard.

Robert: I guess it was because I was so shocked!

Me: Yeah!

Robert: I don’t know. I guess you could say surprised, and I love to be surprised!

Me: You’re teamed up with the right guy, then! So, beside the pranking and the teasing, are their any other sides or facets to your relationship with him?

Robert: Oh my gosh, yes! Even though he can be kind of annoying and a little pushy sometimes, he is the most compassionate person. When he knows you need him, he will be there. He’s the perfect example of what people might call, “a rock.” (He says all this very emphatically.)

Me (sweetly): Mm.

Robert: He will listen. He’s completely aware of what it is that you need to hear, and he just helps you through it. That, to me, is amazing.

Me: Aww. My sweet boy. I remember you told me that every once in a while Erik will pop in and say, “Hey Dude, I love you.”

Robert: Yeah. Yeah. As the years have gone on, and like I told you it’s been going on for four years now, he’s one of the few spirits that I talk to on a consistent basis. At the same time, when I get busy with my life, I won’t hear him constantly like I used to, and he’ll just pop in at the oddest moments and say, “Hey Dude, I love you,” and then I’d say, ‘I love you,’ and he’d say, “Yeah. I know,” and then he’ll disappear.

Me: Aww, that’s so sweet! It’s like a drive-by!

Robert laughs.