Leaving the Church to Find God
Leaving the Church to Find God delves into the shadows of organized religion, guiding you past indoctrination and towards authentic spirituality. Join solo reflections, insightful interviews, and a supportive community on this transformative journey beyond the pews.
Leaving the Church to Find God
Part 1- Rich Ralston's Journey from Evangelist to Medium, and the Power of Unconditional Love
You can contact Rich Ralston at www.subtleenergyhealing.com.
Have you ever witnessed the metamorphosis of belief, where deep-seated convictions are shed in the light of new truths? Our latest episode features Rich Rostin, an individual who traversed from the role of a Pentecostal evangelist to that of a spiritual medium and healer. His narrative takes us through the alleyways of human experience—from the streets where he aided the homeless to the sacred spaces of India—unraveling a tale of divine love and spiritual awakening. Rich's encounters with angelic presences and his challenge to evangelical doctrines pave the way for a discussion that dares to question the boundaries of conventional faith and opens the door to a realm where energy and intuition intertwine with the divine.
As we peer further into the mysterious, we turn our gaze inward, examining the psychic abilities inherent in each of us—abilities often dimmed by the societal norms we're steeped in. Rich and I reflect on the transformative effects of energy work, the soul's multilayered existence, and the afterlife, setting the stage for an understanding that transcends physicality. Throughout this chapter, we recognize the significance of shedding old skins of dogma, allowing for a rebirth of perception and a more profound connection to our spiritual core.
Yet, what anchors this episode's voyage is the compelling topic of self-love and its immeasurable impact on spiritual evolution. We explore the cathartic practices of meditation, breathwork, and past life healing as tools to foster self-acceptance and to cultivate unconditional love for others. Rich imparts his insight on recognizing the divine in each person, echoing the compassionate gaze with which Jesus viewed humanity. Join us on this heartfelt expedition as we unravel the threads of unconditional love, the power of energy work, and the community that awaits those ready to embrace the essence of life's greater mysteries.
If you would like to be a guest on this podcast or would like to support this work, visit www.leavingthechurchtofindgod.com where you can contact Melissa and or make a donation. Follow along my journey on IG at @authenticallymeli and find more in depth content on YouTube at Diary of an Authentic Life.
Aloha and welcome back to Leaving the Church to Find God, your safe space for exploring faith beyond traditional walls. I'm your host, Melissa, and whether you grew up in the Evangelical Church, like I did, or any other system, seeking answers, you're in the right place. This podcast isn't about judgment or attacking institutions. It's about honest conversations, diverse spiritual paths and celebrating the unique journeys that we all take in search of meaning. We've all experienced induction.
Speaker 1:Buckle up for Rich Rostin's incredible journey, starting in the vibrant world of Pentecostal Evangelism. Witness a life-altering awakening that unlocks his clairvoyance and opens his eyes to the unseen realm of subtle energy. Join Rich as he delves deep into energy practices like chakra balancing and past life clearing, transforming into a skilled healer who guides others through the unseen forces shaping their lives. Across this two-part episode, explore fascinating insights from Rich's acclaimed books subtle energy and the world we experience afterlife in Hawaii, stories and experiences from a spiritual medium and awakening the energetic. You Witness how Rich, the former evangelist, became a modern-day guide, learning how you too can unlock hidden potential and navigate the unseen currents of life. So welcome, Rich. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here and being my first guest.
Speaker 2:So I was the first for everything.
Speaker 1:That's right. So where do you want to get started? I really I know a little bit about you, but everybody here is starting fresh. So I know that you started in the Pentecostal church, correct? Which, as did I, which has sparked this work that I'm getting into and have been deepening in our group together. But tell me about it.
Speaker 2:Well, I lived in Idaho, Boise, idaho, which is a very conservative religious community, and I was in a full gospel evangelical church and I was promoted to by the elders to be a evangelist and I started preaching at homeless shelters. I wasn't responsible for working on the board building a homeless shelter, working with men and women, so I had a lot of experience standing in front of people, talking to them about various things. I did that for about 10 years and then I I said I went to over to India on missionary. I started a group called International Missionary Network where I had some friends from India and we connected with pastors in the United States who wanted to have some sort of a missionary experience. So we went over to India and we did exploits, I should say, and I had been in, I've been a Christian for like 25 years, I had experienced the gift of healing and I understand. I was in a full gospel church. We laid hands on people, cast demons out of people, spoken tongues, we did all the radical stuff that you would consider pretty crazy in evangelical circles. But I had, I had psychic gifts and I really didn't understand. But I could see things and I could see, like I could feel demons and people and talk to angels and stuff like that, and it all became somewhat pretty real to me as being the authentic thing I was doing, because when we're in a culture we always kind of adapt into the society that we're into and we don't really have any basis for questioning a lot of beliefs, since most everybody around us believes that anyway to a certain margin. Of course.
Speaker 2:With working with the homeless mission, I was working with a lot of different people from different denominations, so I didn't care what denominations they were, we just all worked together to help people. But so when I was in India let's go over to India, because that was like a turning point in my life where I stood in front of a bunch of Indian pastors and talked to them about Jesus and tried to inspire them to be godly people, and those people were completely poor, they had nothing. It was a whole different society and I worked with what they called the no-name, the caste-less group of people in India, their caste systems, and it's really hard to get out of a caste system. So if you're a no-caste, it means you live on the streets, you're homeless, you're a beggar, you pick up plastic bags every day and sell them for a rupee so you can eat something. I mean, that's kind of the lifestyle, the contrast between the guy with the camel going down the street with straw next to a Mercedes Benz. That's the kind of contrast over there you'll find in third world countries. So I was working with these, the really poor people. But it was really amazing for me because I would go into a village and we would call sick people to us and we would lay hands on them and heal them and they were actually healed and I was kind of like flabbergasted because all this stuff I've been practicing in the United States really never materialized until I was over there. So this was all new. It was kind of new to me.
Speaker 2:In the United States a lot of Christianity is just all it's like a show. People say they proclaim this and proclaim that, but you don't really see a lot of the evidence. You go over to some place like that and all of a sudden it really happens for you. Then it was quite an awakening for me because I actually saw people getting healed and their lives changing. But in India they're Hindus, so they're not going to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior and convert to Christianity. They're going to put another little statue of Jesus next to their monkey, god, hanuman or somebody else. So that was kind of a perplexing thing to me. Why would God heal some heathen that was smoking opium, that was dying, and I laid hands and they were healed, when they're not really going to follow Jesus? You know what I'm saying? This is contradictory to American evangelicality, so it's like what's the point? So then you have to understand that the time zone is completely different.
Speaker 2:So there was a lot of nights where I didn't really sleep much and I would later wake and I started having these I guess you would call it visitations from angels and the spirit showing me that this God was really basically unconditional love and it had nothing to do with religion. It was all about the Creator created everybody for a purpose and I was to love them, to help them. So that is through my whole theological understanding out the window, so to speak. So after a couple of trips like that and experiences, I started to question religion in America my church I was in because people were on power trips. They were always trying to dominate other people by being just stuff like that. So it's not me got me questioning. Am I really doing the right thing? Am I really following God or what is this? So it took a while, but through a bunch of process of pastors arguing with each other over who's going to gain what and who's going to control what, and a bunch of stuff like that, I just left the church. I finally left the church.
Speaker 2:But I had a visitation, I had a dream, and sometimes it takes really traumatic things for people to change because they're in this group consciousness and their belief system is based on fear, fear of the unknown, fear of judgment. And when you've studied the Bible as long as I had, you know, I knew the Bible pretty well, I was pretty well programmed to believe that. You know, if I swayed away from Jesus I was going to go to hell and that kind of stuff. So you can see how people get entrapped into a mindset of thinking which prohibits them from moving on to other spiritual endeavors. So, but I had this dream and it was incredible. And this angel comes and says you've got to leave.
Speaker 2:And I woke up one morning and told my wife I said we're leaving the church and she goes what? Yeah, we're leaving. We're not supposed to be here anymore. Something's wrong here. We've got to find what's going on. So anyway, my wife is glad to leave because she didn't really enjoy it there.
Speaker 2:So we went to another church. You know, because you got to understand, when you're coming out of something you're programmed to believe that you still have to be part of it because of the fear based. So I go to another church and got involved with all the men's ministries and everything, the mission and everything. But then again I came back to square one, questioning what I was really believing. Now this took a process of a couple of years. This wasn't just overnight.
Speaker 2:So then I went from another that church to another church that was real small and then at that particular time my wife was involved in watching TV programs about the afterlife and I really wasn't interested in it that much. But we had some experiences at our house. We had people knocking on the doors, nobody's there, fossage running, nobody's there, you know polo guy stuff. And finally my wife and I we started questioning things. What's really going on? So I went and saw.
Speaker 2:I went to another church that had a pastor who was a psychic and I never had an experience being around a person like that and I had a session with him. I walked into a room and he goes oh, your father's standing here, my wife's standing there, your father's standing there and he wants to talk to you. It was like what. And this pastor looks at me and he goes you have the same gifts that I do. And I go oh, I do, that's why I can see stuff. He says yeah, you can talk to angels just like I can. But you just never knew it because you were brainwashed into this religious stuff and of course he didn't want me to. He didn't call brainwashing.
Speaker 1:He just says you're involved in this, you know religious, spiritual experience whatever, what time of church was that you found him at?
Speaker 2:Well, he had his own church. It was in Napa. It was in Napa, idaho. I don't know if he's still there or not, but he had about 150, 200 people in his church and he was a really nice guy. He was kind of an extrovert, you know. He had real long hair and he was kind of like outspoken type of a person that would be not considered. You know, according to the assembly of God church, they would say he's pretty radical, but me it didn't really make any difference.
Speaker 2:I was just looking for people that had answers and I went to his Bible studies for a while. I got really bored with the whole thing because I thought this isn't showing me what I want to know. So I even studied the Kabbalah and went through all that process, you know the Jewish thing I come out with. In the end they put me in front of some rabbi and rabbi didn't? He couldn't answer any of my questions. I said okay, I'm sorry, you know this isn't really helping me on my spiritual journey because you're really basically back in the Old Testament, which I understand. So thanks anyway.
Speaker 2:So then I met another guy who was a psychic. He became my mentor and he really had the answers he had he was, his name was Frank Jordan. He was incredible psychic and his wife was, and they would sit down with me. Explain to me, okay, your mother's in the room. She died five years ago. You want to talk to her? I said yeah, okay, and he taught me how to connect.
Speaker 2:The same stuff that I teach today is what he taught me. Basically, he showed me how to get into the other dimensions and we were on a same radio program for five or six years every week and we would work on people and do healings with them. So I had a lot of experience working with a group of psychics around the world. But when I got out of the church I started writing a book. It was called Subtle Energy and the World we Experience, because I figured out how religion works through group consciousness. So once you understand how energy works, then you can have an understanding of how religion controls people's thinking not just religion, but anything any kind of group consciousness. So when I wrote my book, it was like how to get your power back to people, give their power away to an entity of religion or military education, or even your own family or your culture. You live in right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought that something I was just thinking about recently, like because I've really been untangling my own indoctrination being from a Pentecostal church and I'm very deeply raised in that and I had found that, you know, because I try to ask myself at what point did I accept that as truth? And I found it's like these little moments when you override your inner voice to accept what somebody else is saying, and I think that those moments just compound until you're not even connecting with your inner voice anymore because you've just given over that power to someone else. So exactly what you're saying, like I'm really starting to see that being uncovered in my own psyche.
Speaker 2:And your subconscious mind records all this stuff and if you tell your subconscious mind enough times, it becomes the truth. So you can't differentiate between the truth and not the truth, you see. So you get people that are just so adamant about certain things. It's because you know. That's what brainwashing is. It's repetitive energy, you know, and people, just their subconscious mind, finally says okay, this must be truth, because I've heard it so many times. It could be anything. So that's really, basically.
Speaker 2:But I learned how to dissolve that. I learned how to get rid of that pattern, you see, and I put that in the book because I was able to really basically erase in my mind all my belief systems. So when I sat down to read the Bible again, it didn't make any sense to me. Here I'd read the Bible 30 years and I would read John 3.16,. You know God's love, the world he gave us only be gotten son, and I would sit there and go wait a minute. God only has one son, right? It was kind of like this whole thing doesn't make sense to me, whereas before it was that's what I preached.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I had experience.
Speaker 1:Recently a family member was posting a scripture about God taking out his wrath on these people because they didn't obey him and killed his children, and the famine and all this stuff, and I was like this is garbage, like this book that was so holy and sacred to me for so long just completely lost its power. I was like this is trash, this is not God.
Speaker 2:It's always the contradiction that God is supposed to be love but he's willing to wipe out a whole race of people if they disagree with him. You know, I still see that today. And so, getting back to the energy work, part of this was when you realize that every single person on this planet has abilities. But they've been. They've just been hindered so much that they can't find themselves Right. And look at the children today, children are being born and they have so much intuition until they get programmed into something where they're shut down, where they're not given the freedom, you know, to explore their, their psychic abilities, their intuition.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people go around and they go. Well, I have intuition, you know well, yeah, I believe you have intuition, but how are you using it Right? Are you using it to take advantage of other people or are you using it for your development of your higher consciousness? So that's kind of in religion, it was all about conforming to a standard set by someone else. So you end up being a little puppet running around in a circle wondering whether you're worthy enough to obtain a standing of credibility or acceptance. Right? So a lot of people running around.
Speaker 1:The premise the minute that we're born, we're born into sin and that just being in human body makes us sinful by its nature. So it's just in the, from the very beginning of the thought process is that we're unworthy.
Speaker 2:Exactly, which is a complete lie. And it's like the other aspect is the afterlife? Okay, because Bible doesn't really talk about the. He talks about heaven. Well, what is that? Okay, you can be I, I.
Speaker 2:I sat next to pastors that were dying, praying with them, and they didn't know what was going to happen next. And I kept thinking you don't even know what's going to happen when you were a pastor, like I was an evangelist. So there's got to be more to this whole story about why we're here on earth. So when I was able to finally learn how to define energy the key in psychic work is to learn how to control energy. Okay, and how to define energy. Now, you take yoga for an example. You know the yogis from the very beginning. They understood this chakra system and how we have all these different levels of energy fields and each energy field vibrates at a different frequency level and that's in tune with certain emotions.
Speaker 2:And I wrote my last book about you. I wrote it and I have all those, all that information in there, because I was crossing over thousands of people that died of COVID and they would come to me and they had no idea who they were. They were still in a state of shock, because when you die, your consciousness remains the same. Now, can you imagine? Now I really feel bad for all the people that died of COVID, because they were isolated in a ward away from their families. They couldn't even talk to anybody and they were dying and they were helpless. Could you imagine how that must have been for people? I mean, I just felt so bad for them and then when they came to me, they were in this state of trauma. Now, in learning how to do energy work, I've learned how to release trauma from people and souls, and I would bring them back to a neutral point where they could go and cross over to their soul group.
Speaker 2:So what's not explained to our society is how energy is divided into dimensions. There are certain dimensions, or frequency layers. Now physics the physicists understand this because just look at the atomic chart. Everything has an atomic weight to it. That's all based on physics. So we are in what we call the third dimension, where physical matter is brought into form, but there's like 10 other dimensions higher than us that are simply frequency layers of thought and energy.
Speaker 2:So where is this? This is what's perplexing about religion is they don't explain the fact that we're supposed to have a soul. Where does our soul go? What is our soul? You know, they can't even define that much, which leaves people in a total state of confusion. So the soul is the consciousness that we have that carries on after we physically die. Because our souls don't die, they're eternal. They live on and on and on, because it's an energy field of consciousness.
Speaker 2:So where does that energy field have to go? Where does it go? You say, well, it goes to heaven. So people go. Well, I want to go to heaven. Okay, where's heaven? Well, I don't have any idea. It's just there's many mansions, jesus said okay, well, that means that there are soul groups. How many millions of people on this earth die and are born every day? Their souls have to go someplace, or, unless they're just wandering around in the state of bliss forever.
Speaker 2:So in my working with energy fields, I learned how to see and get into these different dimensions. And the fifth dimension is what we were. Our souls go to be with our loved ones who died before, right, okay, so we would call that heaven. I mean, if you want to use religious terms, where people can relate, because when you're doing energy work, you pretty much have to make up your own terminology, right, because there isn't really anything out there to define what you really see. So you have to come up with explanations. So you hear, you know, you read one book and they have an explanation. You read another book, they have a different explanation. But through all of this I practiced. Just.
Speaker 2:There's all kinds of different ways to use psychic abilities. When somebody says they're a psychic, you know what does that really mean? It can be a shaman. So what is a shaman? Shaman works with earth energies.
Speaker 2:Native Americans I studied the medicine wheel with the Native Americans. So what does that mean? It means that animals have souls, everything has an energy field of consciousness that it's connected with. Because everything is created through thought. We call it subtle energy. Subtle energy is in what we, the physicists, would call standing waves of energy, and those standing waves, when consolidated enough, will create something, create a thought, create a soul, create a stone or a crystal, or the ocean, water, everything's. They'll create molecules, right? So in shamanism, what you're doing is you're connecting with the earth, part of this third dimension.
Speaker 2:So, like the Native Americans, they learned how to beat a drum to a certain rhythm which would connect their lower chakras to the animal energy fields and they could communicate with certain plants and animals. Okay, and they were very effective with it. And a lot of Native Americans were telepathic. They could just talk to each other telepathically. They learned how to communicate in those vibrational frequencies. That's one aspect of being psychic, right. But then you've got other people that can look into other people's lives, like I could look into you and feel your emotions and say, well, I can feel fear in you. You're worried about money or you're worried about this or you're worried. That's a whole nother aspect of being a psychic. So, and there's then you can some people have the ability to look into other people's futures.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's a that's another whole, completely different field. Then there's what they call spiritual mediums, which I am, to which I can talk to souls that have died physically but a different frequency range, that either have crossed from the third dimension through the fourth to the fifth, or I can find I can learn from their stories. That's how I wrote my second book, after Life in Hawaii. Okay, my wife and I spent five or six years, almost every night on the beach different beaches, taking pictures of orbs. We went to different islands, we would walls, of orbs would come to us and those orbs were souls and we I learned how to communicate with them and I used dousing and my angels to talk to them and I learned their history and I wrote it down in a book and I crossed them over back to their soul groups. So all the stuff that I wrote in my book called After Life in Hawaii are stories that were told to me by souls that had died. Pretty crazy, yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I have a question real quick. You were talking about when you're clearing out the trauma from the soul, and so with past life regression and experiences, that's what a lot of people are carrying around right is trauma from past lives. So would that keep them from bringing that trauma into their next life, or, at that point, would they not need to reincarnate because the trauma has been healed? Do you know how that works?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, one of the things that we do when we're working with people is we try to clear the trauma from past lives, because all that past life experience is connected into our lower consciousness. So when you clear that, it allows you to have freedom to. I've always looked at it okay. I don't have any baggage down below, so I'm free to go as high as I want. So when I go up into the quantum field, I don't have any baggage holding me back. I don't have anybody telling me that you need to forgive your. You know, in a past life you killed somebody. I had to do that. I'll give you a story.
Speaker 2:I was in a past life. I lived on heat in the big island and I had lived on the Kilo side and I had had an affair with a woman and back then they really didn't have marriage ceremonies. They just when you had got somebody pregnant. You were supposed to take care of that. It was a commune thing. Well, I was very irresponsible. I didn't want to take authority, I didn't want to do anything. So they told me to go to the other side of the island, to the Kona side, and stay there for a year and contemplate what I'd done. So when I'm over there I was pretty much isolated away from a lot of other Hawaiian people. But there was a group of Hawaiian that was approaching me and I killed one of them with a spear and that created karma for me. Now I didn't realize this, but it was like 10 years ago my daughter went to school in Hilo. She went to college in Hilo and I'm over.
Speaker 2:I just did not feel welcome on that island. I couldn't figure out why until I sat down with a friend of mine and we did a past life regression thing and I had found myself in a hut surrounded by a bunch of elders, kuhunas, and I said you know, you're guilty of killing this person. So I did what they call ho-po-no-po-no, which is forgive me and I'm sorry. I apologized, I didn't realize that, karma lifted off and from that point on I was able to go back over to the big island and do energy work and crossover souls. So that just gives you an example of how powerful our past life karma can be. You see, and you and I we'll work with people and we'll release their karma and sometimes their physical bodies will heal, because maybe there was an attachment and they call it earth entities.
Speaker 2:It took me a long time to figure this one out, but it was like people come to me and I've got this chronic back problem and they find out that they have an earth entity which means it's one of their ancestors, is trying to get their attention and tell them that you need to ask forgiveness from the past. Once they do that, it's gone, it's over with. That energy field's gone. Now this is how it's really crazy stuff. But my wife has had issues with things and I cleared her karma and it was gone. It was like, instantly she's, I don't have that anymore. So I've done that with a lot of different people, including myself. Did I answer your question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, very much, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I've gone on, and, on, and on, but there is a truth to that, because we're all connected energetically with a lot of things.
Speaker 1:That was something I had a realization about recently, I know, since we've been doing I do a meditation group with Branch I call it psychic class. It's where we're all coming to really learn how to tune in and open up our channels and all that good stuff. Since I've been doing the group, I've noticed that I'm accelerating Everything, that all of the growth and learning and opening up of my intuition and stuff has accelerated tremendously. Between doing that and breathwork I can feel past life stuff coming out and being cleared. I just feel that every time I feel like, oh, there's a layer that's gone, that I don't need anymore.
Speaker 1:But after we had a recent session that was really powerful and then the next day I went to breathwork and then I had this realization about forgiveness and about how so much of my resentment of so much of what was blocking me financially was my resentment of the systems that exist, but not just the systems that exist, but my own participation in them, the fact that I've been them in a life and they've been me in a life and that we're all connected. I just realized that the work that I needed to do was in my own soul, my own resistance to the powers that be as they are, and that that was really the only access that I have to make a change is by clearing my own karma from that and clearing my own participations that have led up to the systems to begin with. And I don't know what that participation has been, but I know that it has been because it was spoken to me very clearly Like, really, at the core of this, you need to forgive yourself, you need to forgive your soul.
Speaker 2:It's wonderful, yeah, so that's what that made me think of is just that's one of the most interesting parts of this is when you start to learn how to get into your own chakra system and listen to yourself. I always ask people do you love yourself? And if they hesitate, then I know that we got some work to do, because they've been told if they come out of religion or extreme family situation, they're not worthy of being loved, right? So that's in your solar plex chakra. So now you've got to go in here and work on that issue and clear that, because how are you going to work on other people and heal them if you don't feel you're worthy?
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, I recently started, a few months ago, just every day, looking myself in the eye and just saying I love you, I love you in every tone and every way until I feel it, feel the love for myself, and I can't tell you how life changing that's been Like immediately, my actions that I was taking without having to motivate myself, just like my divine actions, just became so aligned and every day I do that I just tell myself I love you, I love you and it's I feel like it's really important work to realize, like let the God in us tell us how much we're loved, because we have been programmed by so many voices in the world that we're not worthy of it.
Speaker 2:Look at how our whole society is based on competition. If you lose, you're a loser. You don't give anything. You got to be a winner. So how many you know? Only 50% of the people can win. The other 50 are losers, right? So think about our society and how people have been shaped. And it's so ridiculous, but it's so powerful. So that's part of that whole little chapter I wrote about getting your power back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, we don't have to answer to other people. We don't have to answer to God himself. Or if you even believe there is a God, okay, we are part of the creation. So if we start to love ourselves, then we can start loving other people and helping other people, and that's called unconditional love. That's what all of the teachings of Jesus was trying to get across, but it didn't work out too well for him because it all became political. But it was like the unconditional love thing is what I accept you for who you are. You accept me for who I am.
Speaker 2:Okay, we allow each other to coexist, but we don't step on each other's toes. Okay, and we have that mutual respect. Why? Because of the law of cause and effect, whatever you do to me is going to come back to you, and that's why our society doesn't understand. Everybody's pissed off at everybody else over something and they want to get even. So it's a pendulum, it goes back and forth and back. I'm going to get even with you.
Speaker 2:People come to a realization that why don't we just let that? If that person wants to be Jewish or whatever religion, okay, let them go their course until they come to a realization for themselves If they want to continue to do that or not. Okay, so not to enforce it upon other people. Right, it's kind of like our psychic work. We're introducing ideas and concepts about how we can change our lives through opening up our pineal gland and feeling and seeing and hearing aspects of energy that most people have no idea about.
Speaker 2:Okay, but you have to be ready to accept that idea. You just go out there in public and tell somebody you know you need to learn how to be a psychic, you need to get rid of all your religious or military beliefs or whatever, and you just need to learn how to become one with the spirit. Okay, they're going to think you're nuts. So I guess what I'm trying to make is unconditional love, is helping people become who they're supposed to be. Maybe sometimes people have to go through a whole lifetime of experiencing something. Maybe it's not true, but they need to experience it. So in their next lifetime they don't have to do that, right?
Speaker 1:And by trying to get them to take a different path, you're really standing in the way of the path that they're meant to be taking, exactly. Yeah, but it's meant to call that like talks about Jesus being able to see people in their wholeness and that's why he affected people in the way that he did is because he didn't see all the broken things about a person. He saw their soul, he saw their wholeness and by witnessing that in them, it amplifies it. Right, like anything that we witness in spirit, it becomes materialized or amplified. So you were saying earlier about unconditional love and accepting people as they are. I mean, that's really because being able to see the spirit in them is like Namaste, you know. It's like the divine in me is witnessing the divine in you and yeah, it's not a gift that you give, it's just letting your soul see another soul and understanding, like your wholeness and your connection.
Speaker 2:Well, give an example, like in my book After Life, my first chapter. It's called this God Exists. I had a good friend and he went back and boysy and he was a private investigator, I was an insurance broker, he was a atheist, I was an evangelist, he was married, I was married, we both had kids, we both did martial arts together that was our common thread, so to speak and we were in what we call leads groups. We were part of the Chamber of Commerce and that's how we got our business. We were networking, okay.
Speaker 2:So Ken comes to me and says I want to be your friend. I go, you want to be my friend? I don't even believe anything that you believe. He says I don't care, let's become friends. I never had anybody even approached me like that my whole life. So we said we're going to meet once a week and have coffee. So we go to the mall and sit there and have coffee. We would start talking about issues, and he was a Democrat and I was a Republican, blah, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 2:And after we did this a couple years, we became very good friends because he could say anything to me and I could say anything to him. But we didn't insult each other. We just, we just listened right, we just understood how that person thinks, how they believe. How can you believe this? This is why I believe this, and it was like I had never had an experience with anybody in my life. But it helped me so much because when I and I was going, I was learning how to do psychic work, okay, and he thought I was just full of crap. You know, he thought I was nuts. So there's no God, there's nothing after death. So he comes to me after he dies and that's why I wrote my first book. I told him. I said he says where am I? And I said you're in the afterlife, my friend, he's okay. I guess you weren't lying to me, after all. It was one of these crazy things that was like our society hasn't got to that point yet, okay, we haven't got to the point where even Democrats and Republicans can sit down and hash things out together without burning something down or killing somebody or, you know, storming off in a rage. So our society is so immature and primitive throughout the world.
Speaker 2:But energy work is kind of like the beginning of. Souls are waking up. They're saying there's got to be more to this life than arguing about things, right. So we come into that point. But how do we find that? It's like it always starts with you and me ourselves and what you're doing. You're talking about going through past lives. You're uncovering all the background that's created your biases over all these issues that people are still arguing about. You're coming to a point where you're saying, okay, I'm willing to listen to you even if I disagree. Okay, this don't shoot me or kill me because I disagree with you, but I'm at a point on a spiritual level, that I can handle what you have to say Okay, because my ego is not that fragile.
Speaker 2:So then you get into this whole thing about ego, right? I mean, there's all kinds of teachings about how to release your ego, because everybody runs around with this, this idea that they have to be right. You know, we're all programmed, so all of these things that we're talking about is due to programming, and energy work basically takes you back to a place where, if you want to, you can start over again and look at all your biases and find out why. Why am I? Why do I hate black people? Why do I hate white people, you know? Why do I hate Jewish people? Why do I hate Muslims. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just goes on and on and on. Why so? You go back and find out where that all came from and then you can learn to release that and you're going to establish yourself as who you want to be. We have free will. We can believe whatever we want. So if you want to hang on to your old beliefs, you can do it. I mean, nobody's going to make you do it.
Speaker 2:But the people that we run into that want to learn energy, work, our souls that have got to a point, I think, where they're just fed up with the chaos within themselves. Right, they want to know who am I. I've out everybody's telling me who I should be, but I don't even know who I am. I'm a product of a mold. I'm either a Republican or a Democrat, or or I'm this or that.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying, yeah? So think about how confused our societies not just the United States and the whole world is, because when I went to India, there's a whole bunch of prejudices against other races in every country. The United States isn't any different than anywhere else. Even on this island of Maui we've got a conglomeration of a bunch of races. Most of them get along okay with each other, okay, but there's still conflicts. So it's kind of like I know I'm trying to try not to get off the subject here, so we're going to go back into why are we doing energy work right? We're trying to get focused on who we are and let go of all the baggage to a point where we can actually be a benefit to mankind.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a journey we just took alongside Rich Rostin. But this is just the first chapter in Rich's incredible story. In the next episode, we'll dive deeper into his exploration of subtle energy practices like chakra balancing and past life clearing. You'll hear how he transformed into a sought-after energy healer, guiding others through the unseen forces shaping their lives. And if you're curious about how Rich harnesses his abilities to help others heal practical tools you can use to tap into your own energy for growth and the unseen currents that influence your life and how to navigate them then don't miss part two of this insightful conversation. Subscribe and share it with your friends and get ready to explore the fascinating world of subtle energy with Rich Rostin. Remember you can listen to these episodes all at once or break it up, depending on your preference. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, share your thoughts by leaving a five-star review. It really helps more people to find this space. Want to go deeper? Head over to my website at leavingtheturchdefinegodcom. There you can make a donation and make sure that we continue to have these conversations, no matter where you are on your spiritual journey. If you or someone you know would like to join the podcast and tell your story, please reach out to me on Instagram at authenticallymelly. Remember you're not alone on this journey. Keep exploring, keep asking questions and keep finding your own unique connection to something greater. Until next time, stay authentic, stay open and aloha.
