For as long as I can remember, especially after I discovered my spiritual journey in the mid-nineties (I was still on Wall Street but it would be a few years later I would receive the divine calling to pursue my dreams of becoming an inspirational speaker, author and eventually pilot), I’ve been fascinated with the concept of guardian angels.

Eventually I became aware of those who are in tune with their psychic abilities; not because they are any more special or singled out by God but because they, like me, “heard” the calling to serve and worked on honing their respective skills.  Truth of the matter is we all have this ability but some do it better than others.

I lost count how many books I’ve read by psychics but one I remember most vividly is the biography of Edgar Cayce, the most famous intuitive psychic in the world.   His work was phenomenal.  He remained humble yet helped many people, especially those with medical problems.  He had no prior knowledge of medicine; yet he was able to accurately diagnose and then recommend treatment, most of which turned out to be correct.  Fascinating.

Before I introduce you to Slade Roberson, I wanted to tell you about an ironic experience I had today at the poolside.  I was praying and when I opened my eyes, I saw to my astonishment the shape of a cross in the sky (see photo)!  It was a good thing I had my Blackberry to snap a photo of it because otherwise it would have been gone forever.  I took it as a divine confirmation that all is well and I’ll be okay, no matter what happens.   How very reassuring!

I’m so incredibly excited to introduce you to our next guest, Slade Roberson.  Let’s call him out from backstage, shall we?

SLADE, COME ON OUT, WE’RE ALL WAITING FOR YOU!

(Sounds of thunderous applause).

1.  One of my favorite questions when I want to learn about someone is by asking them to give me their 5 second introduction when I pose the question:  “What do you do for a living?”

I’m a professional intuitive consultant. I provide life coaching services with a psychic element - I communicate with spirit guides and angels.

Stephen’s Response:  I love it!  Coaching service with a psychic element.  Make sure I get first dibs with an appointment before everybody starts calling you after this interview!

2.  Tell me in 3 to 5 sentences something we can’t read in your bio or at the “About Page” at your blog “Shift Your Spirits.”

I am technically a Reverend, with a Master’s in Holistic Ministry, and ordinations in multiple faiths — a Wiccan priest for twenty years and a Unitarian minister since 2005.

Few people know that I also have an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing, have written fiction nearly all my life, and I still identify most with being an (as yet unpublished) novelist.

I am a news and talk radio junkie.

Most of my spiritual inspiration comes from studying futurist topics, primarily technology.

Stephen’s Response:  Fascinating!  I had no idea you were a Reverend.  How cool is that?  No wonder I enjoy your writing so much - you have a degree in Creative Writing!

The way I look at it, when you were studying Creative Writing, the universe was preparing you for your future as a blogger, do you see?  My favorite saying of all time is that we are “life’s perpetual trainees,” being prepared for our role in the future, whatever it might be.

3.  What is the real reason you started “Shift Your Spirits“?

I started Shift Your Spirits for many, intersecting reasons:

My guides presented me with an ultimatum to come out of the psychic closet — “How long do you intend to keep what you know to yourself, when it could benefit so many other people?”

An agent told me that the non-fiction story behind my stories was more interesting than my fiction (ouch!) and challenged me to pursue writing a column of some kind.

I had been ghost-blogging, Internet marketing, and web designing for other people for years; I adored the work and the skills involved, but those projects lacked the full power of personal interest and passion.

Shift Your Spirits began as an experiment, with very little expectations beyond self-expression.

Stephen’s Response:  Ouch!  An agent told you that?!?  Well, maybe it’s just as well, for now.  I, for one, am glad the agent told you what he thought because I’m a fan of yours.  It sounds like while you were “ghost-blogging, delving into Internet marketing and designing websites that your heart was always in the psychic realm.  I, for one, am so glad you “came out”!

4.  One of the reasons why you’re being interviewed, Slade, is because you come across as someone who I’d most definitely like to meet in person.  Your writings reflect a source of inner wisdom.  That means I perceive you as an authentic blogger, an important prerequisite for this interview.  How did you become like this?

I’m glad I come across that way — that’s a humbling compliment!

I’m greatly motivated by the exhaustion that comes from striving to be anything other than me. I’m rebellious and lazy when it comes to social conformity. Authenticity is an incredibly liberating metric because it simplifies everything.

More than anything, I am a conversationalist. I aspire to create posts that are prompts instead of lectures. So, I have to give props to my audience, who I consider my collaborative partners — some of the best material on Shift Your Spirits, in my opinion, is found in the comments.

Stephen’s Response:  You bet - authencity in its true form is quite liberating.  I long for the day I can be completely free with no holds barred.  Not quite there yet.  Still working on it.

My dream is to be a speaker known for 100 percent spiritual topics.  I want to share the miracles I’ve experienced through God and inspire people to have faith in the unseen.  I want to talk all about God and how He can help people if they allow Him to.  But, like you were at one time, I’m still in the spiritual closet, at least on the professional front.  There’s nothing on my speaking website about God.  I want to change that and talk about Christ, our guardian angels and the like.  I don’t consider myself “religious” but spiritual.  Big difference.   There you have it, the truth about my inner desires.

I can tell you are a conversationalist.  Me too.  That’s why I like to write stories as much as I can here at Adversity University.  I believe storytelling is incredibly powerful, drawing people into the fold because it touches on their emotions.   I rarely read bullet-point type blogs because there’s no real conversation going on.  No stories.  No emotions.  Just plain and dry.  No thanks!

5.  If I were to ask you to dig a little further, how would you define who you really are from a spiritual, cosmic point of view?

I view Universal Consciousness as an organism, of which I am a cell. Like a hologram, I embody the Blueprint of the Whole, along with a bazillion others. Simultaneously individual, unique, common, divine, and miraculous.

Stephen’s Response:  My interpretation of that is we are but a speck in the universe.  People with huge egos would not understand that because they think they are the center of the universe - like Bill Clinton (sorry, I had to say that).

6.  For as long as I’ve been on a spiritual journey, I’ve been utterly fascinated with the world of spirits, spirit guides, guardian angels and the like.  Let’s start with your ability to communicate with them.  What’s that like and how did you learn how to do it?  Do you hear voices?  Or do you see images?  How can we tell the difference between a genuine medium and a fake one?

I’m honestly not sure what it’s “like” because I don’t really know what it feels like NOT to.

I primarily experience clairaudience — I hear voices. I don’t have visions so much; although I do perceive auras and energy fields around everything.

I have memories from very early childhood of playing with toys to “entertain” the angels that were constantly with me. I never feel “alone,” which is mostly a positive experience, but it has its negatives — the chatter can be hard to tune out, which causes insomnia, distracts me when I read, and can be extremely startling sometimes. Really, the biggest challenge is ego-driven fear of being judged or misunderstood by other people.

I am constantly learning to refine my abilities and to manage them, with the help of other psychics and with the feedback I receive from clients.

As far as the subject of psychics in general, it’s important to understand that all mediums are psychics, but not all psychics are mediums. A medium is technically someone who communicates with individuals you’ve known in this lifetime who have died or crossed over.

There are many different kinds of psychic abilities, and professionals have unique specialties, processes, or ways of working. For example, what I do is more closely related to channeling, than to mediumship.

As with any professional service, a personal referral from someone who has received a reading is probably your best “guarantee.” I generally think that a successful reading is one where the information resonates with you as true — you recognize it. Not all psychics and clients are a perfect fit, there are a lot of human factors involved and results can vary. Many professional intuitives have blogs as I do, where you can educate yourself about the psychic, the way he works, the kind of information he can retrieve for you, the general energy of the individual and the community that surrounds him.

Stephen’s Response:  Bravo to you for “coming out of the psychic closet” and revealing your skills to the general public.  Our inner driven fear of being judged by others can be a powerful deterrent.  Trust me, I know.  I’ve been there.

While I’ve achieved “the impossible” and purposefully went out of my way to defy the naysayers, a small part of my insecurity does care about what other people say about me.  Having said that, I’m happy that I’ve moved past that (by and large) because I have even bigger dreams to achieve (like flying the HondaJet and speaking around the world).

Like you, I’m here to do God’s work and this blog is just the beginning.  Not a day goes by that I’m not aware of the invisible forces that surround and guide me.   Seeing that cross up in the sky this afternoon was a great example of that.  Had I been ignorant, I would never have recognized it as a divine sign.  I might have dismissed it as a “coincidence” and shrugged my shoulders.

7.  What is the best advice you’ve ever received from a spirit?  Given (to anyone)?

I call the more universal pearls of wisdom shining sentences – they are more like mantras or affirmations that come from my own guides but also appear when I read for other people.

Some of my favorites are:

Joy only happens in the present.

You are already everything you’ve ever wanted to become.

Your life purpose is not a job. You fulfill the purpose of life with every breath you take.

Your creativity is your divinity.

Stephen’s Response:  “Shining sentences” - hey, I like that!  What’s most amazing is the thought that we are already everything we’ve ever wanted to become.  A lot of people have a hard time grappling with that probably because they’re either living in the past or the future.

I totally get that ‘your life purpose is not a job.”  If we’re fortunate enough to discover our life’s purpose, it’s like magic.  Nothing associated with it feels like work.  It just flows.  Like when I’m on stage speaking - I’ve been feeling more and more like I’m “in the zone.”  Words tumble out of my mouth without use of any notes.  It just flows.  Same thing with my writing.  I’m so grateful for that.

Excuse me for a minute while I privately thank God for a minute here.  (Thank you God).  Okay, I’m done.

8.  Do we have past lives?  If so, do you know what yours was?  What about mine? (Okay, that was a cheap shot to get myself a free reading - sheeesh - how dare I! Right?  LOL).

Can’t hurt to ask! But, I’m afraid you’d be disappointed if you’re looking for past life reading from me. I don’t retrieve that type of information much at all.

I feel that past lives are a reality, but I don’t know that I believe in the concept in a popular or mainstream way. It’s simply not an area in which I consider myself an “expert,” nor do I find it particular relevant. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe it is a valid frame of reference. I have never had a past life regression, although I know people who have and have benefited from the experience. My understanding is that past life regressions can have a healing impact on deep mysterious personal blocks that are untreatable through other frames of reference.

During a client reading, a person’s spirit guides may present me with information that seems to indicate past lives — most commonly the details seem related to the guides themselves, but sometimes in readings that are focused on relationships, I will pick up some kind of karmic connection between two people that could originate in past lives.

At a very early age, without any exposure to religion and definitely not to Catholicism, I nevertheless was obsessed with wanting to dress up like a priest or a monk for Halloween. Of course, these are roles that I identify with very much in this life, and really that’s the only life that I pay much attention to.

Is this coming from past life memory or is it coming from the collective consciousness? I tend to feel it could even be cellular memory — that these impressions are stored in our DNA. I honestly don’t think I have much more than a fleeting curiosity about the subject.

Stephen’s Response:  Well, I most definitely have a huge amount of curiosity with this subject.  I had a reading done quite some time ago and I was told I was a priest in a previous life.  Go figure!  I was also told by yet another that I was a very wealthy merchant and that I was unkind to the deaf.  Who knows?  Utterly fascinating!

9.  What is the role of guardian angels?  How are they assigned to us?  How many do we normally get?

I would simplify the roles like this — angels have the ability to manifest in physical ways; angels heal, guard, and protect. Spirit guides counsel and advise. You might think of your spirit guides as your personal assistants in the realms of information, your angels as a kind of secret service or body guard.

In addition to Archangels and the named angels that are known from human history and are shared by many different people, as an individual you have personal guardian angels that are unique to you and only you. They are assigned to you at or prior to your birth and never leave you. Generally, the vast majority of people I do readings for have a pair of the entities we would call personal guardian angels.

You have a varying team of supporting entities around you, depending on your present circumstances. Most people have dozens of identifiable spirit guides, guardian angels, and ascended masters.

Stephen’s Response:  My angels as secret service agents?  I love it!  I have to fess up that I’m fascinated with earth-bound secret service agents who protect the president and other VIP government officials.  I once saw Obama at a convention last year and he had scores of secret service agents around him.  Their presence gave the air incredible electricity.

But really, I understand.  I’ve had numerous situations in which I could have been seriously hurt or even killed but felt a nudge to pull back.  Years ago, I was riding my bike in NYC, speeding downtown when I had an urge to put on the brakes as I was approaching an intersection.  The light was green but I stopped.  Just as I did that, a car sped out of nowhere from the other side.  Close call!

Another time, I was about to step off the curb (also in New York City) but pulled back when a speeding cab whooshed past me.  I was only hair length away from it. Sheesh.

I have many more stories of that nature (Is There a Such a Thing as Divine Intervention?  You Tell Me!) but those two will suffice.  When I do my reading with you, I’d be very interested in knowing more about my spirit guides and angels!

10.  How can I communicate with the spirit world?

I advise you to approach communicating with the spirit guides and angels around you as you would any relationship. The best way to begin a conversation is to say hello and ask questions. Acknowledge them and talk to them. Release your expectations of what you think their responses should look, feel, and sound like and observe the patterns that result from the conversations.

I offer a free ebook to Shift Your Spirits subscribers called Contacting Your Spirit Guides 101 which answers this question in more detail, from a beginner’s perspective. I’m also putting out a series of lessons Communicating with Spirit (starting August 30, 2008) in which I share the techniques I personally use to talk to my spirit guides.

Stephen’s Response:  You have an e-book called Contacting Your Spirit Guides 101?!?? I had no idea!  I do subscribe to your blog (via RSS) but don’t recall seeing anything about an e-book?  I’d love to download it, no question about it.  I guess I better go back to your blog and look again.  My bad!

11.  How do you deal with people who might call you a fraud, a fake or whatever else they throw at you because of the kind of work you do?

I have never been directly confronted with someone calling me a “fraud.” I attract people who generally share my attitudes on these subjects, how else would they find me? I am not likely to even appear of the radar of someone who is not interested in my work.

I do receive flame comments sometimes — but these are generally random, juvenile, unspecific, not especially personal. I report them as spam and move on. This kind of thing does not happen nearly as much as I might have feared.

My guardians are also under very strict instructions to block that kind of energy so completely that I need not know about it. If a hateful email makes it through and gets to me, then I have an enormous collection of loving testimonials that I can read at any time as a healing salve.

I have a favorite Dr. Seuss quote that sums up this issue quite nicely:

Those who mind don’t matter; those who matter don’t mind.

Stephen’s Response:  You know something?  I identify with you on the rarity of “flaming comments.”  Like you, I attract like-minded people here and all of them (save for the rare flamers) have been positive, supportive and pretty much on the same wavelength.

I believe, like you do, that they are attracted to me and Adversity University for a divine reason.  The only time I received juvenile comments was when a group of pilots from Michigan somehow discovered a long-ago posted story (A Never Again Aviation Experience) about how I got caught in instrument conditions in a small plane I was piloting (bad weather like fog at night - imagine that!).  I should have landed at the first sign of bad weather but I ignored it.   These people called me every name in the book.  Like you, I reported them as spam and moved on but not without first licking my wounds.

I love the Dr. Seuss quote!  It’s so true.

12.  What do you consider your proudest achievement in life?

My relationships. My friendships, my relationships with family, my pets, my connection with clients — who I’ve become in regard to other people.

Stephen’s Response:  It sounds like you value intimate, close relationships with people who matter to you.  Same here.  There’s nothing like it.

13.  We all have a dark side, what’s yours?

Outrage. Righteous Anger. Hating the haters. The moral trap of the lightworkers and the pious — perpetuating hate in general by behaving as a Right Fighter, believing it’s Okay to make war as long as you’re on the “Right” side. For the first 30 years of my life, I seethed and fought against injustice, from the perspective of protecting people who could not stand up for themselves. I used my ability to “read” people in the most hateful sense of the word. Nothing pisses me off like passive-aggressive communication.

Stephen’s Response:  WOW.  So revealing.  So honest.  Yet so deep.  Hate, even for the “common good,” can end up hurting those of us who harbor it.

I can identify with this to a degree.  When I see injustice or huge egos, I get angry.  When I watch movies where the little guy is getting trumped, I literally want to jump in the scene and somehow protect the “innocent.”

A case in point:  Every time I read news accounts of Hillary’s supporters whining and getting all upset at Hillary’s loss, I get pissed off at them.  I literally want to smack them awake and scream “GROW UP.”

Then I see Bill Clinton with huge resentments and it makes me angry because I see him as an emotionally immature man who can’t get over the fact that his wife lost fair and square.  The funny thing is I love his eloquent way of speaking and actually would love to share the stage with him one day but I truly detest his ego.

Now, the funny thing is I know whatever I hate or detest something about someone else, they’re just mirroring back some aspect of myself!  Yes, I know.  I sometimes wish I wasn’t so “aware” but there you have it.

OH MY GOD! - The first half is already over!  I did not want this to end.  You had me riveted all the way through!  Thank you so much for coming to the university.  I cannot wait to have you back again next week for the second part!

Until next time, enjoy!  Please visit Slade at Shift Your Spirits for more information about his e-book and read some of his wonderfully written articles!

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