Interview

Over the years, Edie Weinstein has written for mainstream and transformational publications. She has interviewed hundreds of notables in the transformational fields, including His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Debbie Ford, Leonard Peltier, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Beckwith, Jonathan Goldman, Gregg Braden, Neale Donald Walsch, Mary Manin Morrissey, Dan Millman, Alan Cohen, Ram Dass, Jack Canfield, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Patch Adams, Ben and Jerry, Donna DeLory, James Twyman, Elizabeth Lesser, Michael Franti and Jean Houston.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of co-creating an experience with a man whose intuitive healing work is profound. He shared information with me that he would have no way of knowing since we had not met until that moment. The first was that he noticed a symbolic Wonder Woman cape that I generally wore since I fancy myself a Super Sh/ero at times.  He told me about the ways in which my body was reacting to the stressors I had been facing and suggestions for remediating them. He used words that I would have to describe my present state. He spoke of relationship dynamics that had been present for ages that could use some change.

In the midst of a crowd of people, while attending the Mind, Body, Spirit Expo in the Philadelphia area, it seemed that my focus was internal and I noticed an intense re-energizing occurring when the day before, I had felt weighed down with lethargy. I found that during the session as I was able to step away from pre-conceived notions about what I might experience, the sense of literally and figuratively waking up intensified. For days afterward, there was a sense of upliftment; not quite ‘walking on sunshine,’ but close.

Robert Taub is a grounded Renaissance Man whose mainstream education and career was the foundation for a life that now, from this perspective has morphed from the mainstream to the metaphysical. He is the author of Awakening in America: An Adventure In Awareness.

Please describe the journey that led you to the work that you are doing now.

There is a clear demarcation for me between pre- and post-1987, which was the onset of the Harmonic Convergence. If you had asked me before that, I would have told you it was a complete privilege to have the life I was living at the time. I was an information systems specialist and project manager at United Airlines’ executive offices in Illinois, lived in Chicago’s upscale River North neighborhood, drove a great car and had an active social life that included unlimited first-class air travel.

Something started to change for me, though. I began to hear the word “spirituality” gently whispered into my mind. As an avid reader, I sought out spiritual texts and meditated to find the meaning of it all. In 1989, I left United to become a contract technology instructor, which gave me more time for spiritual pursuits.

It turned out that contracting was perfect for what happened next. In 1992, I became sick with a collection of challenging conditions, and by 1994, I was practically in a wheelchair. I was diagnosed with severe arthritis, psoriasis, exhaustion and alopecia. I tried allopathic remedies that didn’t work and eventually turned to alternative modalities for relief. Even then, it took me several years to discover what true healing really meant. As I became a more fully aware and present participant in my own healing, I began to recover.

As I emerged from my ordeal, it became apparent that what had really happened wasn’t just healing. It was a spiritual awakening. I felt more alive and conscious in my life than I ever had. And to ascend to that level of consciousness, it had been necessary for me to shed the outmoded beliefs and lifestyle choices that manifested such dis-ease in my body.

Later on, I read that small numbers of humans were awakening around the world, and I started to connect with them. It was an exciting time to be rediscovering exactly who I was.

Like me, many people I met were healing themselves and showing others what was possible. We were lightworkers, people who were creating healing to impact the world around us by bringing their own light to it. It was right around that time that we were approaching the year 2000, with all its Armageddon potentials as seen by Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Hopi Indians and in the Book of Revelations. Did the lightworking community make a difference? It obviously can’t be measured through our current scientific means, but I believe it was critical in paving the way for a new potential way of living life on Earth.

That experience showed me how much of an impact I could make in people’s lives. That stayed with me and inspired me. Although everything in my life has prepared me for becoming a healer in some way, including my corporate years and my MBA, my actual healing work on others began in 2000, after I experienced a several-day expansion in consciousness that was similar to a near-death experience but arrived at spontaneously, without trauma. It felt as if I had literally completed one lifetime but stayed on in the same body. And it changed my life completely.

My hands began to move with a knowingness I couldn’t have conjured on my own. And I felt called to use them to assist people with healing, first working with other healers to better understand what gifts I’d been given, and later on my own. In addition to moving energy through my hands, I also gained the gift of intuitive sight that lets me read people’s energy fields, receive communications from their high Self­—or soul—and channel Source energies for healing work. I honestly don’t know of other practitioners who apply this same combination of skills and gifts, and I have seen my particular approach, delivered with humility and compassionate intuitive counseling, successfully get to the root of some challenging issues and problems for people.

How would you describe your work? Would ‘medical intuitive’ be an appropriate term?

‘Medical intuitive’ is an aspect of what I do, but each session with a client is different and ends up being about quite a bit more than medical issues. I’ve worked with people experiencing challenges that range from cancer and other tough medical conditions to people who feel depressed, are frustrated by life or want to improve their relationships or family life. What connects all of my clients is that we work together—me with my intuitive sight and energy transfer and the client through their intention—to reach the root of their issue or problem, gain insights about it and heal it. Since physical problems have emotional and energetic causes, and usually start there, that’s where we do the work, and the effects transfer down to the physical body, too.

Since we’re working with energy versus linear space, it’s not hands-on. In fact, all of my one-on-one work is by phone, and I work with clients all over the U.S. and overseas, too. It works out well for clients, too, because after a session they can just relax and stay in their own space.

A session typically runs one to two hours, and it usually starts as a reading because the client seeks more clarity about their issue. I use intuitive sight to discern the areas of imbalance and to help the client understand what’s going on. Then we work to heal it. For my part, I become a conduit for a broad spectrum of energies and work with them to shift what I’m seeing with my intuitive sight. The client participates through their presence and receptivity to the energies.

As the energies work, clients and I often talk. They tell me what they are experiencing and I help them process their feelings. Other times, sessions have short or long periods of silence if the client enters a meditative state. Often they feel unstuck emotions, receive images, or experience a flow of cool or warm vibrations as the energies do their work. Since we’re working at such a deep level, I sometimes see some pretty personal or sensitive images. But for me, it’s an honor and privilege to be in such private space, and by now, I’ve seen it all. I use compassionate intuitive counseling to share with clients what their soul is allowing me to see. The fact that I’m seeing something at all is a signal from their high Self that they’re ready to work on those issues.

There are often healings or remissions during individual sessions and also among audiences who attend my workshops. But really, healing is a continuum. Smaller or singular issues can readily clear in a single session, while a deeper problem can contain multiple layers or facets, which I work through with clients over time. Sometimes healing is as simple as showing a client what responsibility they need to take about their situation to move forward. Sometimes the results are more curative. For example, I began weekly two-hour sessions with a severely depressed 40-year-old woman and after a month of addressing many of her painful memories during sessions, she felt about 50 percent better. She became a regular client and her depression went away for good.

What I do can also work as a treatment for more immediate concerns. One woman has called me twice after experiencing heart palpitations that she felt were energetic and emotional in origin. As we worked through the stress from her full-time job, part time writing, house maintenance, and relationship challenges, the symptoms subsided. I’m certainly no substitute for a doctor, but in her case, her physical heart was fine, although if she’d not addressed her energetic sensations, it might have affected her physical organ later.

Another client who also came to me initially for depression stayed on for three years of weekly sessions in order to progress spiritually. Initially, we worked through her painful, abused childhood, and in the second year we worked on the karma that was weighing her down from past lives. In the third year, she began to receive communication from departed loved ones and discovered the real meaning of the life they had agreed to create together. She then became able to read energy fields, including mine, and went on to do some amazingly compassionate social work with children. It really is amazing how much we can help others when we heal ourselves.

Where did the title Awakening in America originate?

I dreamed of a book cover featuring that title. And shortly after that, I ended up receiving thoughts, images and words that eventually became the first book of a series, Awakening in America®: An Adventure in Awareness, an e-book that’s available on Amazon. That information has become the foundation for Awakening in America® workshops, which I teach at expos around the country. The basis of the idea is that it’s incredibly difficult to do spiritual work in America. We have all the luxuries that come with being a leading first-world nation. Unlike many other places on earth, we don’t struggle to get clean water, food, electricity, personal safety, etc. And by all standards, that gives us a lot of energy we could be focusing on personal spiritual development, not to mention spiritual development that’s more community-based. But American culture makes it hard to take advantage of that higher-level space. It’s so easy to squander the opportunities we’ve been given to advance spiritually here. It’s tough to do in American life, even for people trying to stick to a path of personal growth. There’s a lot of pressure for individuals to get ahead in our culture, but where exactly are they going? Where are we going as individuals and a society?

So Awakening in America® gives people guidance on how to do it—some simple principles to live by, although they’re not always so simple to put into everyday practice. This process is important, though. It helps people lift out of the consumerism and superficial not-God bells and whistles of our society and take advantage of the opportunities it gives to live a life in more accord with their souls. And that provides the foundation for healing work by strengthening the body, mind and spirit. Besides, it feels good. Everyone should be doing this.

How do you bridge the mainstream with the metaphysical in ways that don’t seem to be what I call ‘cosmic foo foo’?

I have a very grounded approach, in part because of my business background. I used to train corporate executives as part of my job, which is as far from “foo foo” as you can get. Most people have a misperception that non-physical experiences happen someplace far, far away from us in some other dimension in outer space. But it’s not like that. There’s no need to go “out there.” Everything is inside. All of the potentials for your life—for accessing higher energy and healing—are inside you.

What are important questions that we can ask ourselves as we awaken?

What is your true authentic path? Why are you here? What have you come to accomplish in this lifetime? What can you do to achieve the life and state of health that you want?

There is always a way through challenges, or they wouldn’t be presenting themselves. But finding the answers can be tough. Especially when there’s a glut of spiritual books, workshops, teachers, gurus, events and healing methods—many of them promising instant relief. This appeals to our cultural desire for quick and effortless fix-its. But it’s important to use discernment since, of course, true healing requires your full presence and effort. There needs to be more focus on what really drives true healing and awakening, which is being willing to surrender to the process and listen to what your soul is telling you, and integrating that into your life.

Follow your heart – not your head or what someone else tells you that you need. While there are similarities across spiritual disciplines, such as study and meditation, everyone’s path is different. I took the path of the turtle, slow and steady, enjoying each revelation. Much of the work of awakening and healing that I did following the Harmonic Convergence was difficult, and I don’t think I would have been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the human experience at that time. But now, on the other side of that, I can see with much more clarity what the value of human life is.

True healing can mean making lifestyle changes, getting rid of toxic people or projects in your life, or changing unhealthy behaviors you might use as a salve for inner pain. What I do is help people lose that pain so they don’t need the salve anymore. And heal their relationships, so they can either become healthier or dissolve. And connect them to the deeper reasons for lifestyle changes so those become more appealing and easier to make. A person just needs to be willing and ready to do the real work, and healing will come. With it, more of an awakening to who they are and what their lives are about. It’s very satisfying and worth the effort. Pain is part of the journey, and helpful to remind us when we drift off course, but my journey of awakening—and helping others to do so—has been much more than I would have ever thought possible.

How do you prepare for sessions?

My connection to Source and the higher aspects of myself are always in place now, so I don’t do anything special before a session. Initially, I would sit still with my hands in a certain position, but now I get up, walk around and even lie down on the couch in my office with my headset on. When I’m comfortable during a session, it somehow seems to make my clients more comfortable, too.

Do you step aside or do you feel as if it is ‘you’ doing the work with the person as co-creator?

It’s very heart-based for me now, so I while I am aware of my lower self, or personality-me, during sessions and also my higher Self, or that which is the core of me, it’s very much one unified whole. At times I’m reading and channeling higher energies, and at other times assisting from personal experience.

But like I mentioned earlier, the client is also the co-creator. While I use my intuitive sight, their soul is always choosing what I’m able to see. So in this way, their own soul presents what we are to work on. This doesn’t always happen in as linear a fashion as we might want. For instance, if someone comes to me because they’re struggling with a certain physical issue, their soul might actually present other issues that need to be healed first. Our energetic bodies are made up of intricately interconnected layers, and conditions and experiences that seem unrelated at first can be stemming from the same cause. So what someone brings to the session ultimately gets addressed, but through whichever route is chosen by the soul.

Do people need to believe that it will work, for healing to take place?

Yes, belief is an important aspect, equally important though is participation in the process. Belief quickly turns into certainty as clients achieve results.

A man with addiction challenges called me and started out by telling me that he wanted help but was also, in his own words, “very skeptical.” He wanted to be cured – to have his addiction “taken away” – but argued with me throughout the process as the emotional underpinnings of his disease showed themselves. He ultimately refused to accept any responsibility for his situation, and after several sessions we both agreed to stop.

The desire to heal at the deepest level is also vital because it liberates clients to face and work through whatever presents itself during the sessions. The ability of the body to heal itself is well known. In my experience, healing happens when three things are in place: first is God, or really intention, meaning a complete surrender into the wholeness of being within which all is healed; second we must remove the obstacles presented by the lower self, or resistance; and third is alignment with the soul or higher Self, which is the interdimensional portion of us that knows who we are, why we are here, how we have set up each life lesson and how best to bring that lesson to completion.

What is the difference between healing and curing?

Healing to me is a more all-encompassing term. Healing for me in the mid 90s was both a journey of discovery about holistic methodologies and actual work with practitioners. I see now that although this process took me several years, I can say with certainty to clients, “I’ve tried all of this. Here is how it worked for me, and here is how it can work for you.”

The peaceful transition after a long illness can also be considered a healing of sorts, where the soul becomes prepared to leave the Earth plane and moves on to the next realm of its journey. Of course, that likely involves coming back again to continue working life lessons that were left undone from this lifetime. So we always get another chance to awaken and achieve further healing.

Curing seems to be more of a medical and marketing term. Many people are cure-seeking—as in, “Tell me what’s wrong and take it away forever”—and sometimes this does happen by either medical or holistic means. When there is a life lesson to be learned, though, or a puzzle to be solved, as was my journey of discovery in the mid 90s, I help clients to discover and complete this process – and reap the benefits.