Diane Goldner
Reality is a lot more mutable than we realize. And that as you change your consciousness, your experience of reality changes. You know, if you have this idea that everyone’s not going to be nice to you and that’s what you experience, if you change that, literally change that belief system, your whole experience is going to change.
Elizabeth Rovere
What if healing meant so much more than fixing what’s broken? What if healing was about tapping into the subtle energies that unlock our potential for transformation? Diane Goldner didn’t always buy into that. As a no nonsense journalist, writing for the New York Times and other top publications, she approached energy healing with a skeptical eye and was ready to debunk it. But instead, she found something that flipped her world upside down. Today, she’s an internationally recognized healer and a medical intuitive, helping people unlock their body’s hidden wisdom in ways in which we could all benefit. In this episode, we explore forces that shape our health and well being, the surprising messages rooted in our pain, and the story of the ultimate skeptic becoming the believer. I’m Elizabeth Rovere, a clinical psychologist, yoga teacher, and Harvard Divinity School graduate. I’m fascinated by awe, wonder, and the ways they transform us. Welcome to Wonderstruck, where we dive into big ideas with seekers, experts and visionaries across disciplines. Diane, you are an internationally known healer, an Ivy League grad, and a former journalist. You’ve been a part of New York City’s high society and yet you felt like something was missing. Can you share what led you to transition from a successful career in journalism to the spiritual path?
Diane Goldner
I just wondered if there was something more because there I was at 28 and, you know, and I thought, am I going to be happy editing? I mean, I loved editing, but was I going to be happy doing that for another, you know, 50 years or something? You know, like, was there something else I should be doing? But I honestly, I didn’t even know energy healing existed. So it wasn’t on my horizon. But what happened is I, I interviewed a woman who had started a charity for the New York Times, and it was called God’s Love We Deliver. And at the end of that interview, which was all about her spiritual awakening, which was very dramatic, she called me after the story ran and she said, why don’t you come meet my teacher? And I, I thought, wow, that would make a great magazine article. She was like, it’ll change your life. And I was like, yeah, maybe for you. You know, I didn’t really believe in that kind of. It was a great, her story was great, but, okay, so I went thinking I would, you know, pitch the story and all that kind of thing. And, you know, by the end of the day, I just was like, no way. But I did meet her teacher, and I did learn to meditate, you know, and I went on with my life. I didn’t think anything had happened. But then little things started happening, and one of them was I went on a blind date. Okay, I have to laugh, because it’s so funny, you know? Anyway, so I went on a blind date with a psychiatrist. And during the date, he pulled a book out of his bag, and it was a book about healing by Barbara Brennan. It’s called Hands of Light. And I’d never heard of energy healing. And honestly, from where I was then, I thought, oh, my God, this guy probably needs to be committed. But I looked at the book. So I had that thought, but at the same time, I was mesmerized. And I thought, my God, what if this is real? There was a certain logic to it that, what if this is real? So, you know, I had been trained as an investigative reporter. I’d worked at the American Lawyer magazine, which was the ultimate in investigative reporting.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah.
Diane Goldner
And so I thought, okay, I’m going to investigate and find out, you know, how it works. If it’s real. Da, da, da, da, da. And I thought, you know, this would be an amazing scoop if it’s real. Laughing because I was so naive, you know. And so I did a magazine article, and by the time I finished that article, I was like, okay, there is something to this. I remember one case that I tracked down was a woman who had had macular degeneration, and she had the photos of the holes in her eyes, and then she’d gone through a series of healings in the hole in one eye disappeared, and the other eye got much smaller. So there was documentation.
Elizabeth Rovere
Diane, that was also a case, wasn’t it, where they told her there was nothing that would change. This was it. Sorry.
Diane Goldner
Macular degeneration, like many chronic problems people have, which millions of people have chronic problems, you know, are usually idiopathic. There’s no medical understanding. I want to say medical because, you know, sometimes from my perspective, there is a reason. But anyway, from a medical perspective, there’s no reason it’s happening, generally. And there’s nothing they can do about it, generally. Anyway, so that was that case. And some other cases really struck me. There was a case of a woman who’d broken her pelvic bone, and for whatever reason, it didn’t heal, and she was confined to a wheelchair, and she couldn’t walk anymore. And she went to a healer. And some memories of having been sexually abused at a much younger period in her life came to the surface. Anyway, she integrated all of that. Her pelvic bone healed and she was walking again. So there were cases like that. And I thought, okay, I’m. Again, I have to laugh because, you know, I thought, okay, I’m going to investigate this and really get to the bottom of it. I’m going to look at all the science and I’m going to find out how it really works. Because I thought to myself, this is happening. There must be some science to it. That’s my paradigm.
Elizabeth Rovere
You’re a skeptic going into it, and you’re, you have, you have a delightful sense of humor. So when I was reading your book, I was laughing. So when you’re, when you’re doing this and you’re interviewing these healers or the people that have been healed, what’s your experience? What are you thinking? You’re like, like, I know you’re thinking like, there’s something to it, but are you thinking, like, how could it be like, what, how did you feel?
Diane Goldner
You know, in the beginning, I would be like, people would tell me these things and they’d be like, you know, no, that can’t really happen. But I also went to a healer. I thought, okay, you know, if I was doing a piece on auto body mechanics, I’d probably take my car in. Right?
Elizabeth Rovere
Right.
Diane Goldner
So I thought, okay, I’m going to take myself into a healer and see what happens. I didn’t even think I really had anything to heal. You know, although I was going through a confusing place in my life, I didn’t really know exactly what direction I wanted to go. So I went to this healer and I had five sessions and they were all lovely, but I couldn’t really track a thing. Okay. It’s like, you know, this is ridiculous. You know, I remember in one healing, you know, she said something about snake energy. And I got on the train and there was a woman who sat across from me, sat down literally across from me on the train, and she had this big snake running up the back of her leg, you know, a tattoo. I thought, okay, that’s an interesting coincidence. But I didn’t really think anything was happening. And I had my fifth session and she said that I had these quills in my neck. And I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. It’s like I, you know, I look in the mirror every day. I’ve never seen quills. In my neck. She said, well, you know, they’re there because, you know, they’re barbs from when, you know, men tried to stop you from speaking your truth. Okay. I was like, okay. And I almost left. And then I thought, let me just, like, test this all the way. Let her do her healing. You know, this is so far out. It’s just ridiculous. Like, what’s going to come of this? And I was on the table, and she got to my neck, and the most annoying. You know, I really wanted to kill her. The most annoying sensation as she was working around my neck. And then that passed, and the healing ended. And when I left, I thought, okay, I am never coming back. And 10 days later, I was on a ski vacation with some family, and I got into a thing with a male member of my family. And I suddenly heard the way he was talking to me. It was terrible. You know, it was so angry and aggressive. And I said, you know, you can’t talk to me that way. And this person didn’t talk to me, I think, for a year, just because I said that. And I got on, you know, the plane going home, and, you know, even two days after that, and I thought to myself, oh, that’s the barb she removed. I just knew it. But it didn’t even. When it was happening, it didn’t even occur to me. So that was profound because it was literally as if somebody had gone in and changed my programming.
Elizabeth Rovere
Interesting.
Diane Goldner
I’d been totally unaware of. I was suddenly aware of and able to deal with in a different way.
Elizabeth Rovere
Is it like when you were saying, so the barbs were, like, energetic? Obviously, you didn’t have barbs sticking out of your. Out of your neck. And then the removal, it sort of let things flow energetically, more smoothly.
Diane Goldner
Well, I would put it a little differently than that. Yes, on one level, yes. But the other thing is that energy is consciousness. So when you change the energy, you’re changing your consciousness. That’s what really happened. Wow. My consciousness changed. I understood the world differently.
Elizabeth Rovere
You just started seeing things differently, which.
Diane Goldner
I think I was different. I was no longer gonna respond to that kind of language or. It wasn’t even the language. It was the anger.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right, right. So I want us to come back more to your journey, because it’s quite profound. And I love that you went from as people will be listening will be this incredible skeptic to, wow, like, energy is consciousness and mind shifted. So what is energy healing? What is this energy? I know it’s really difficult to encapsulate or explain. But maybe you could help us.
Diane Goldner
Actually, I think I can. You know, when I was investigating my book, which took about five years. Okay. I was so confused. And I would ask people, what is, you know, subtle energy? Because that’s what they would call it. And everyone would give me a different answer. And so it was really, really confusing. It took me about five years to totally figure it out, but I can now say it so succinctly. So your subtle energy is actually everything about you that is not literally your physical body. It even includes the vitality of your physical body. Right. We all know that sometimes we feel more energetic or less energetic. So it includes your emotions, your thoughts, your beliefs, your intentions, experiences that are stored in your energy field or your body, however you want to describe that. So it’s everything about you. The shocking thing is that we don’t think those things are tangible. Right. I mean, it was Descartes that said, you know, there was a complete separation between what you think and the physical world. I think it was Descartes.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right.
Diane Goldner
So the thing is that you, you know, I can feel those different energies. I can feel what someone’s feeling or I can hear what they’re thinking. When I’m doing a healing, I don’t walk around trying to do that sometimes. So that’s your subtle energy. I want to say that we all experience it consciously or not all the time. And I can give. Like, one of the healers I interviewed gave me this great example, and people could do this right now, it’s so easy. You can close your eyes and imagine that you have gone into a bar and just feel what the energy would feel like to you. Maybe you can think of a bar you’ve actually been in and then let that go and close your eyes and imagine walking into a church or some other, you know, space of prayer. Right. Or even a forest. What do you. What do you feel?
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah, it’s profound. I mean, thinking of a particular church that I’ve walked into, you know, the huge arches, and my whole body just is like, relax. Right. It relaxes in that context. Right. And then a bar, when I think of one I’ve gone to, I feel like. Like kind of up and kind of more excited and, like, you know, energized, but kind of frenetic.
Diane Goldner
And maybe a little like, you have to contain yourself because there’s so much going on. Yeah, yeah. So that’s just a really simple example. So the subtle energy is real. Another really simple example is, you know, if you’ve ever encountered somebody who’s angry. You know, you’re walking through your day, you’re not angry, and all of a sudden somebody calls you and it’s like screaming at you. You know, you usually get angry, and it’s a resonance, you know, you’re vibrating with their anger. That’s subtle energy.
Elizabeth Rovere
No, you can feel it. Sometimes you can just walk. I mean, I think people do sometimes walk through a room. They’re like, wow, that’s really. There’s a sense of real depression in that space or, you know, rage. Somebody’s just sort of emitting rage. Do you see that?
Diane Goldner
Yeah. And, you know, people also, you know, you meet somebody and you can just feel they’re heavy or they’re light or fun. That’s. You’re reading their energy. You know, you’re reading the whole, whole orchestra of their energies, Right? I mean, subtle energy is so real, and we’re all experiencing it. It’s not, you know, some magical. It is magical, but it’s not. Do you know what I’m saying? But the trick is, like, as a healer, I’m able to transmute that energy, right? If somebody’s got an energy that’s making them sick and I can shift that, that’s the ticket, right? And that takes some training.
Elizabeth Rovere
So I can’t help it. But the next question is, how do you actually do that?
Diane Goldner
That’s a good question. Okay, so I’m going to give three different examples. I mean, I have so many examples that I get about what to share. So. Okay, very simple.
Elizabeth Rovere
One.
Diane Goldner
A woman came to me. This is quite some time ago, and she. Her hands were atrophying. I mean, this is one of those cases. You know, she’d been to all the doctors, and they were like, I don’t know, you know, and, you know, there was nothing they could do. And it was kind of getting worse, and she wanted to see if I could help her. Sometimes I ask some questions and sometimes I ask others, but in this case, I was kind of curious. Sometimes there’s a precipitating event that actually causes a shift. And I said, you know, I asked her when it started, and she told me. And I said, well, you know what, about a year or two before this, that did anything happen in your life? And she was like, no. And then this. It was literally, I could see a light bulb go off in her head, like in the cartoons, the comics, you know, and she said, oh, my God. She said, you. My husband had a skydiving accident, and I saw him, like, you know, his parachute didn’t open. And I saw him crash. Um, he did survive. He crashed into a tree. So he was lucky, but he was. It took a year of nursing him back to, you know, so it was a very traumatic event. So I still didn’t know exactly what had caused it, but I knew it had something to do with this. Right. And so I started the healing. And as I ran energy into her hands, so I’m really running a high vibration, and then I’m allowing almost like echolocation or something, you know, the information to come to me, what’s in her hands. And it was clear as day. You know, sometimes I think I couldn’t make this stuff up, you know, because I can’t. So the answer was that she couldn’t handle the possibility of her husband’s death. They were sweethearts. And so, you know, I did this healing where I, you know, worked on that issue and released that fear and showed her that it was okay and that she would be okay. And she left that healing. And, you know, she reported back to me at some point that her hands had gotten significantly better. They weren’t all better. And then two or three years later, maybe it was just two years later, she came back, her hands had gotten a lot worse. So it was this. It turned out to be the same issue. Her mother was in the hospital, and the doctor said she was probably going to die.
Elizabeth Rovere
So it was the same difficulty handling. Handling the death of people that she was close to.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. And this time I actually, you know, I never know how metaphysical to get, but let’s just say a high spiritual being appeared and told me what to tell her, you know, which was basically that she would always be okay and that she could turn to, you know, she was Catholic, so she could turn to Jesus or Mary for help or just turn within and ask help, and she would receive the guidance that she needed to deal with whatever she was dealing with. And in this case, you know, she left my office with that information, and she was able to handle the whole situation with her mother, who did recover.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, good.
Diane Goldner
Made all the decisions that she needed to make using that guidance I had given her to ask for guidance and help. And her hands, again, improved.
Elizabeth Rovere
That’s impressive. That’s. Yeah, that’s. It’s remarkable. You know, it brings into the whole manifestation of, like, how, you know, there’s these messages in the body or the body is conscious and that the hands, in a way, the energy of the hands, so to speak, or I don’t know how you would say it, were communicating with you on a more let’s just leave it at that. They were communicating with you. But it brings me back to your own journey. It makes me think of your story of going to the teacher, to these other healers. I’m kind of curious. You had had this shaktipat experience. How did it happen for you that you became more open to this? Was it through the shaktipat or was it just an ongoing journey?
Diane Goldner
It was both. Let’s describe what shaktipat is.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yes. Thank you.
Diane Goldner
You know, it’s not a term, it’s a Sanskrit term. So I had met an Indian meditation master. And so shaktipat is, in essence, when a master transfers her light or consciousness into the person, the other person. So it’s not like you suddenly become completely illuminated. I wish. But it starts a process of clearing out. Let’s call it the debris or the delusions that we all have, you know, that we need this or we need that or, you know, this happened, whatever it is, right? Or we have this anger or this resentment, you know, it starts cleaning that out. And that process, God, could take lifetimes, you know, so in a sense, it’s a maha healing. It’s a big healing, right? Of like somebody starts a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction, and then there you are. You have to deal with was literally like a tsunami of energy. I didn’t really know I had an energy field in those days. And it was like a tsunami went through me. And I was much more vast than I realized, which we all are. It’s not just me, but it was just like, you know, and I think I lost consciousness for a minute, and that was. And I wasn’t expecting it, so the whole thing was like, oh, my God. And then afterwards, I thought to myself, did that. What. What was that? Did that happen? And it was like nobody around noticed it. Do you know what I mean? And then the teacher didn’t even acknowledge that it had happened. And it was really like I was on my own. That’s how I felt. But it was unbelievable. I knew that I couldn’t pretend that hadn’t happened, which was my original. Like, could I just pretend that didn’t happen?
Elizabeth Rovere
Right, right.
Diane Goldner
Because you don’t want to. You don’t want to go outside the norm. You know what I mean? It’s. You know, But I didn’t know that I had. I didn’t know for a long time a. What shaktipat really was. You know, I’m speaking now many, you know, I hate to count how many years later. So my perspective has changed. But in the beginning, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. And it was really, A, unnerving. And then, B, you know, I had experiences, obviously, having healings. And then I was going into the workshops because I was reporting and trying to make sense of what was going on. And healers would. Two things would happen. They would talk about what they had done, and then they’d kind of invite me to participate because I think they thought it would give me a better idea of what was going on. And so I would try the things they said they had done, thinking they would never, ever work, at least not for me. You know, they sounded so crazy. I didn’t think they could work for anyone. But it turned out every time it would work. And that was shocking. I went through about five years where I was basically in a constant state of shock. I mean, I’m laughing, but it’s true.
Elizabeth Rovere
I remember, Diane, there’s one part where they were asking you, like, you try it. Look at this person. I think you were in a workshop, and you were like, okay, I don’t see anything. And they’re like, come on. Do you see any. What do you see? And you said, well, I kind of see this grid pattern of light. And then your. Your partner was like, that’s exactly it.
Diane Goldner
That’s. Yeah, it was. Actually. I was visiting the Barbara Brennan school, and it was after hours, so a group of healers were hanging out, and I was hanging out with a few of them, and one of them, Gerta, who really. I think she just enjoyed pushing my boundaries. She was, you know, she said, what do you see in so and so’s leg? You know, she. The other woman was wearing a leg brace. And I was like, well, not. I don’t see. And she said, oh, come on.
Elizabeth Rovere
What do you see?
Diane Goldner
And I was like, nothing. And she was like, come on. And so I was like. I looked again, you know, and so I said what I saw, which I did see something, but I didn’t think it was anything. I said, oh, it’s gray. And she said, yes, it is. Because I was going through all these workshops asking, you know, whoever. I was sitting there, what’s going on? What’s going on? Because I couldn’t. I didn’t think I could perceive what was going on during a healing time.
Elizabeth Rovere
Was it. Is that what happens for you now, where you see different colors of light? And did you see the grid pattern as well?
Diane Goldner
Yeah, I might have. I don’t. Even if it’s in my book. Yes, I Don’t remember that, but yeah, I mean, I think Gerta first asked me what I saw in general, and then she asked me to see what it looked like as a grid. So all of our cells, you know, build on a grid of energy. You know, they’re not just like mo, you know, a mushmash, you know, they actually. So. And they. And that’s the energy grids that run through the body.
Elizabeth Rovere
I guess it’s like when you are doing a healing, do you see what do you like?
Diane Goldner
Do you.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah, what do you see?
Diane Goldner
You know, it’s very variable. It kind of depends on, I don’t know, everything. The other person, me. So sometimes it’s very dramatic and visual. Sometimes I hear something. A lot of times I feel what’s going on inside them, or I. I just know it’s like I’m in them, almost emerging. When I do distance healing, which we can talk about later, you know, I almost overlay that person through my energy field. So I. I just feel whatever they’re. What’s going. Whatever they’re going through, or at least as much as I’m allowed to feel. So, you know, I’ll give you another example where a gentleman came to me and this was a high charging executive who did not believe in healing. I get a lot of those. So somebody’s friend suggests, you know, somebody’s in a crisis, and they said, go see Diane. You know, it can’t hurt you. Okay. So it was one of those things. His friend suggested that he come to see me. So he had lost the hearing in one ear through a benign tumor, but it had destroyed the nerve in his ear. And he was coming to me because the doctors had found a shadow. You know, they. When they took a series of pictures, they found a shadow in the other ear. And they were. There was concern that he was going to lose his hearing altogether. And so, you know, he laid down on my healing table and I started running energy into his ears and asking, you know, and I saw him swimming in the ocean, you know, as a younger person, and so happy because he didn’t have to hear anything. You know how the ocean muffles your sound. And so swimming was nervous. I love swimming too, but I love it because he floating and this and that. He loved it because he didn’t have to hear anything. And I thought, that’s interesting. I was like, I wonder what it is he doesn’t want to hear. And the answer came immediately: his father. So I. It was clear to me, I can’t even tell you how, but it was clear to me that his father had spent a lot of time yelling at him. Okay. So I worked on the idea that he didn’t have to stop hearing, you know. You know, to protect himself from his father’s anger. And, you know, we finished the healing, and I explained what I had seen and what I had done. And he just, like, looked at me like. He’s like, oh, my God. He said, you’ve just described my whole childhood. Yeah, we did one or two more healings. You know, it turned out, you know, he was having. A lot of people at work were yelling at him, maybe even yelling at people at work. You know, it was. You know, it wasn’t just in the past. Right. It was an ongoing thing, and we did a lot of work and cleared a lot out in just one or two sessions, maybe three. And he went back for new scans, and the shadow was gone. And I ran into his wife, maybe it was two years after that, and she said that the nerve in the other ear, which had been completely destroyed, had started to grow back, and he had 1 or 2% hearing in that ear.
Elizabeth Rovere
Wow.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, I. I don’t. You know, I can’t track.
Elizabeth Rovere
Well, it’s. It’s so interesting because, I mean, I. I can’t remember if I read this in your book or not, but if you had. Had referenced it, but, you know, Bessel Van der Kolk and The Body Keeps the Score from psychotherapeutic.
Diane Goldner
I don’t know if I read it.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah, well, there is. There’s that track, and then there’s also a man called John Sarno who did some of this work. But what’s interesting about those. Those two, and the direction that they’ve went with these kinds of ways in which the body manifests the history or the trauma is that a lot of times people end up on a spiritual path because of the process of what unfolds. Right. And it’s almost like you’re coming from it, from, like, the spiritual practice and seeing into what’s happening, and they’re sort of coming from a slightly different place, but ending up in the spiritual place. And I think it’s really a dimension that we’re. You know, it’s so important. Which makes me think of, why isn’t this more. Or maybe it is. Maybe energy healing is becoming more and more popular.
Diane Goldner
It’s becoming more popular, but it’s still. I mean, you know, I come from a family of psychiatrists.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, you do? My condolences.
Diane Goldner
I call analysts, to be exact. I mean, I think we just agree not to ever discuss what I do, okay? Because if I say anything, it’s disturbing, let’s just say it’s disturbed. So which, you know, that’s just the way it is. So whatever. What I want to say is the most important thing is that this idea that there’s a spiritual dimension and that belongs to God is something we’ve seen before. If anyone can recall, we had Galileo, who was not supposed to look up at the, you know, the heavens because those belong to God. But nevertheless, he did, and he said, gosh, we revolve around the sun. We’re not the center of the universe. And he was excommunicated for that because he stepped into God’s territory. So I think we’re seeing a different aspect of that continuing. So this idea that there’s a separation between what’s spiritual and what’s scientific is only because the boundaries of science haven’t gotten here yet. And likewise, you know, if you’re spiritual, everything is spiritual. I’m not saying that the spiritual realm doesn’t exist. I’m saying that it does exist, but it’s not. It’s not the airy fairy thing people think it is. It’s part of our. Our universe, our world. It’s part of the natural world and.
Elizabeth Rovere
A part of our human experience, and.
Diane Goldner
It’S part of our human experience. And this idea that you can’t explore it is, you know. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Elizabeth Rovere
I totally understand. I mean, I can tell you I have so many different associations to what you’re saying. And, you know, to, you know, William James talked about this in 1902. Like, human beings have the capacity for spiritual experience, and we do ourselves a disservice by not looking at it. It’s human experience. And like you were saying, you know, Gerta saying, like, well, what do you see? What do you see when you’re looking at this person and you’re like. I don’t know, like, nothing, Right? Because you disregard what you see until somebody says, well, why don’t you think about the possibility of what you see, what you might see, Right?
Diane Goldner
So our culture doesn’t. Like, I grew up. I’m sure you did, too. I’m sure everyone, almost everyone who’s listening, you know, grew up without. I mean, nobody ever talked to me about my intuition or that I should follow my intuition or that there was a part of me that was beyond my five senses or nothing. It’s a terrible disservice.
Elizabeth Rovere
Diane, it’s so funny, because I was you know, thinking it was reading about you and your books and writing questions. And I wrote the word down, you know, something about intuition and insight. And I was like, insight? It’s like we use that word all the time, right? And it actually means, what is your insight? You know, we use it. It’s like that’s a pretty big. Do you even know what you’re saying.
Diane Goldner
You know, from here is, you know, I mean, Einstein is one of the biggest mystics we’ve ever had. Einstein, I mean, where did he get E = MC squared? I mean, he received it.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah, he was. He dreamed it.
Diane Goldner
Yes. And Newton, too.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yes.
Diane Goldner
Another one of our great scientists. Gravity, you know, I mean, he was a tremendous mystic. So this idea that science and mysticism aren’t related is, I just want to say, a little cuckoo.
Elizabeth Rovere
It does seem cuckoo. It does seem like a strange blip in the history of the universe. So, you know, it brings me back to you and your journey and you saying, like, okay, what’s the deal with this? You know, I’m an Ivy League grad. I’m smart, I’m a journalist. I’m an investigative journalist. So not only did you go to, like, the Barbara Brennan School, which, by the way, she was a physicist originally.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, and I didn’t attend as a student. I attended as a journalist, just to be clear.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah, a seeker in disguise as a journalist.
Diane Goldner
Exactly.
Elizabeth Rovere
But you also, didn’t you take a class in physics as well at Hunter College?
Diane Goldner
Yeah, you know, because. Because during my period of confusion, because there was this confusion where, you know, I just felt there was something more I should be doing. And this was after I had met the meditation teacher that there was something more I should do. And so I woke up one morning and I thought, oh, I’m going to just take some of those pre med classes that I never thought I could pass, like chemistry and physics. And so I, you know, I got there just in time for late registration and I signed up. So the interesting thing was that my physics professor turned out to be a mystic.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. What’s up with that?
Diane Goldner
So, you know, you know, like, when you’re supposed to go on a path, you know, you do get guidance. You know what I mean? I didn’t know what was going on, but there it was. So, you know, we were in a class and he was talking about resonance and he said, you know, they had built a bridge in Washington state and the engineers had made a mistake where all of the pieces of the bridge kind of were at the same frequency. I don’t even know how that happens? That they know what the frequencies are? But apparently they do. And one day the wind hit that particular frequency and the bridge collapsed like a. Like, you can see this. It’s. I forgot what the link is, but you can look it up. I think it was in Tacoma. And you can see the bridge collapsed. They have video of it.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, wow.
Diane Goldner
And it just. Like matchsticks, it just dissolved because. Yeah. And that’s how powerful these frequencies are.
Elizabeth Rovere
So that’s like pure engineering.
Diane Goldner
That’s pure engineering. Anyway, so the professor said, you know, everyone has a frequency, even you. I was like. I was like, no, you’ve got to be kidding. So I went to see him. You know, I thought, I need some help. And I went in and I said, you know, I need help. I said, you know, I’m having problems with, you know, I think it was, you know, weights and water and how it displaces things. I said, but, you know, I said, you know, when you said that thing about frequencies, what did you mean? And he started talking about the chakras with me, and I was just speechless. And he was a retired, you know, captain in the Coast Guard.
Elizabeth Rovere
Fascinating. Yeah. It’s so interesting because a lot of the, you know, the known quantum physicists, you know, Bohr and Heisenberg, all had, you know, a toe or a foot or a hand in Eastern spirituality, and we’re very fascinated by, you know, the unified field and oneness, and they’re very influenced by it. I also think. I just wanted to underscore one point you made about. About quantum physics. It’s like, you know, it’s. It is a evolving theory. It’s not like it’s finished or that, oh, now we know everything because of quantum physics. I mean, it’s. It continues to develop.
Diane Goldner
Yes. We’re in the early stages of understanding quantum physics. We don’t really. We haven’t really. We’re still living in a Newtonian world.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah.
Diane Goldner
Our medicine is Newtonian.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. If our medicine was more quantum, and wouldn’t that be more energy healing? I mean, maybe that sounds naive. I mean, maybe a physicist would tell me I’m naive. I don’t know.
Diane Goldner
But no, I mean, there. You know, when I did my research, my scientific research, there were studies of, you know, you know, breast cancer. And you could see the frequencies before. Before there was breast cancer. You know what? Yeah. I don’t remember the details, but it was, like, shocking to me.
Elizabeth Rovere
This is a research study.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
I think thermography. Or was it something else?
Diane Goldner
I think I have a picture in my first book. So one of the people I interviewed, Robert John, who was the head of the Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science. And so he was a, you know, a brilliant mechanical engineer and physicist. And he’d written a book on magneto jet propulsion. He’d written the textbook on magneto jet propulsion and, you know, done stuff for NASA and all this other stuff. And one of his graduate students came to him and wanted to do some kind of study on the interaction between the mind and matter. And, you know, he just knew that she would fail, but felt that it was important for her to explore and do the research and, you know, see for herself, you know, that that’s part of, you know, becoming a scientist. And so he let her proceed. And when he saw the results, he said he just, you know, his whole world turned upside down. And. And he started something called the Princeton Engineering and Applied Research Lab. They called it PAIR for short. And they studied the interaction of the mind and the physical through a random event generator. It’s sort of like a coin flip. But it would be a computer. And so the computer would be random, you know, churning out random numbers. Could be below zero or above zero. Or the baseline, of course, would be zero or one. Okay. And. And so they would have people sit in front of these machines and try to either get it to go up or down or be the baseline. And what they discovered was that it was subtle, but over numbers and numbers of, you know, tests, it was dramatic. You know, the effect of a person on the physical, their mind or their intention was huge. And I mean, the chance that it was chance was like one in, I don’t know, you know, like, really high. It’s in my first book, but I don’t remember the details, but it was like, oh, my God. And even the baseline, when people were intending to just have a baseline, it would be too perfectly close to the baseline to be normal. But the really profound thing they discovered is that the people who had the biggest impact were the people who felt like they had merged with the machine, fallen in love with it. They were having a sense of union.
Elizabeth Rovere
Interesting.
Diane Goldner
Which is what you have when you’re a healer working with somebody. You have union. And that’s where the healing is. I could go on about that study because for me, it was revelatory and confirming and amazing.
Elizabeth Rovere
Well, and that Princeton was doing this study.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, I think they were doing it in the basement.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right.
Diane Goldner
They were funded by big, big people. And the, you know, all the big guys in the Department of Defense came to their 20th anniversary party. I think he lost a lot of his colleagues at NASA over, you know, over it.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, wow.
Diane Goldner
He felt it was really a scientific issue that we would need to be able to shield our, you know, like nuclear facilities, psychically. Shield them from psychic influence.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, wow.
Diane Goldner
This was not just like an abstract thing. This, There were military issues connected to this.
Elizabeth Rovere
Interesting. And he was connected to the Department of Defense. Yeah. It seems like, I mean, you know, not to go conspiratorial, but it does seem that the government and the Department of Defense are always very interested. You come to find out about these things, you know, like, and then they surface like 20 to 50 years or so later or more.
Diane Goldner
But, you know, like there’s, there’s remote viewing project.
Elizabeth Rovere
I know, I know.
Diane Goldner
Which was run by a physicist.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yes. Yeah. So it’s kind of like the more you hear about it, it’s like, okay, yeah, it’s more out there than we’re aware of.
Diane Goldner
The people in the know, they just think, honestly. I ran into the NIH at one of these events and, and I had tried to interview him during my first book because he had referred a senator’s three year old daughter to a healer. And he wouldn’t give me an interview. And I asked him, like, why wouldn’t you tell me? So he said, people aren’t ready for this. But he did refer the senator’s daughter. You know, she had brain cancer and she, she survived.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, that’s beautiful. Good.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. So.
Elizabeth Rovere
But he’s right too. In some ways, people aren’t ready for this, but I feel like more and more they are and they’re curious.
Diane Goldner
So I don’t know if I can turn the tables for a minute. Like, what got you interested?
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, well, it’s. I feel like my whole life in some ways, you know, I’ve always had those kinds of questions. I mean, I definitely, you know, I felt like I was sitting in Sunday school asking questions and I was told not to, you know, or don’t bring that up, or why would you ask that? Or, you know, like someone shaking their head.
Diane Goldner
You know, it’s interesting. It’s on both sides. The religious side and the medical and the scientific side. Right. Don’t ask this question.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. You know, and it’s just, you know, I am a psychologist and there’s, you know, like, I was talking to you about Van der Kolk and Sarno and when I started reading Freud in graduate school, like, there’s a whole section on Freud, you know, his collected works, and there’s sections. If you look at where does he talk about telepathy or, you know, clairvoyance. He talks about it in the collected works and he says that empathy is emotional telepathy. And I was like, what? This is amazing. And I wrote a whole paper on it and guess what? I got a bad grade.
Diane Goldner
I’m not surprised coming from a bunch of surprised. But, you know, it is interesting because he said at the end of his life, he said if there was something he could do, it would be to explore these realms. I think that was later in his life.
Elizabeth Rovere
It was part of the reason why he. But he broke from Carl Jung because he was worried about being discredited. But right towards the end of his life. Yes, but it also brings, you know, kind of circling back to this question of healing and, you know, it’s a modality. But why do you think sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work? What is that? Is it about? Where is there the role of suggestion or karma or readiness?
Diane Goldner
So, you know, I worked with a lovely woman who. She had cancer in her brain. I think it was secondary cancer. You know, she’d had. Maybe she’d had breast cancer, I don’t remember now. So it had gone to her brain and we did healings and she went into remission to the point where, you know, she just. Just really wanted to embrace life. And she ended up leaving her husband, who she had always felt would take care of her. But she didn’t feel that it was a happy and expansive relationship. Let’s just say that. And she went with this guy and she was very happy and they bought a house together. But then she realized that he wasn’t really on her team. Like if she got sick, he wasn’t going to be there for her. And she was devastated. And her cancer did return and she did pass on. You know, that’s an example of she didn’t have the time or the bandwidth to absorb that shock.
Elizabeth Rovere
Could you feel it, Diane, when you were working with her, that that was, you know, struggle?
Diane Goldner
I did, but she also stopped calling me when she started spiraling down. She had really given up hope.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay, okay, I see.
Diane Goldner
You know, I think about her because, you know, I don’t think she could even articulate what the problem was. I mean, she articulated the problem with him, but I don’t think she could connected it totally. Maybe she did. Another case that I handled, which was really tragic, was a client called me her son, who had been a very troubled man. Maybe he was a vet. I can’t remember, but very troubled. And maybe he’d been living on the streets and this and that. Anyway, he got hit by a car and there was a question of whether he was going to lose his leg or not. And I. I worked on it so intensely and I had, you know, I teach long distance healing. I had my groups work on it on him. And there was just a feeling of he. He just was in such despair. Anyway, you know, it wasn’t because of the leg. It was. The leg was because of the despair. Right. And he ended up losing his leg, which I think he didn’t want to live after that. And he was released, and then he died a short time after that. So sometimes somebody’s despair is just so deep. There are other times. I remember I worked with a woman, and again, she didn’t come to me very often, but she had a very advanced lung cancer. Young woman with young children was really hard, you know. Yes. And she didn’t even want to tell her children that she was what? I think they knew she was sick, but she never told them she had cancer, that she might die or anything. And, you know, her poor child would be like, mommy, is this what you have? Mommy, is that what you have? And she couldn’t really even rally herself to really try to heal herself. Right. And she did pass off. So those are three examples. There are other things that are just, you know, so deep without getting too metaphysical. You know, sometimes we come in with really intense things that we need to heal. And it is, you know, I joke about it, but it’s really true, you know, that there’s only one thing more difficult than healing sometimes, you know, when you have to work on, like, really deep trauma, you. You have to experience it sometimes, you know, it comes up through the body.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right.
Diane Goldner
So it’s not easy. But as I say, there’s only one thing more difficult than healing, and that’s not healing. But sometimes it’s more than a person can do in this incarnation. Or, you know, they come too late or they don’t think anything can help them, so they don’t try that hard. You know, there’s a lot of different things, and then there’s other things. You know, I mean, the universe is so much more complex than I think we understand. And, you know, this is way before I had any understanding of my abilities or gifts. Okay. I was at dinner at a friend’s house, and the wife was pregnant. And I heard that he, the husband was going to lose her early. And I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with that information, I had no idea. Anyway, when the baby who turned out to be a girl was 8, she died in a freak accident, which I won’t go into here. And so the message was about the baby that the wife was pregnant with. Not the wife. Right. But I knew that before the baby was even born. I was told that I didn’t know understand exactly what was told until later. But there’s more going on, you know, there. Sometimes the soul maybe comes in, only needs to come in for a brief time or is there for other people. It’s just very complex.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. It’s not something that we can actually fully understand. For example, like, if you’re hearing that at a dinner, what would you. There’s nothing you can do with it.
Diane Goldner
There’s nothing I can do with it. And at that time, I didn’t even know, you know what I mean? It was going back to that thing where nobody talks to you about what’s really. You know what I mean? I didn’t have anyone to step. You know, I learned my math, my science, my English. But nobody ever said, Diane, you’re intuitive. You know, it’s a gift.
Elizabeth Rovere
But you were. I mean, you were. And then it became enhanced.
Diane Goldner
And I’m going to add something really. You know, for a lot of people, I think they get sick. They’re intuitive and they get sick. They don’t know how to deal with their intuition. They don’t have good boundaries. They feel with others, they take on the energy of other. You must use.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, all the time.
Diane Goldner
All the time. And people get sick from not having the right training and understanding or paying.
Elizabeth Rovere
Attention to their inner guidance.
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
How is there a way that you could. How do we tell people to pay attention to their insight? Okay, well, intuition.
Diane Goldner
Okay. The thing is, you know, the body is like, I don’t want to say in every case, but in a lot of cases, you know, the illnesses that we start to get are really messages from our, you know, whatever you want to call it, your higher self, your. Your consciousness, your whatever it is. Okay. And if you don’t pay attention, it usually the. The message gets louder, meaning the problems get worse. So if you do have something in your body, it’s better to pay attention to it and ask yourself, like, you know, what could this mean? Why am I feeling this way?
Elizabeth Rovere
What story is it telling?
Diane Goldner
Yeah. You know, I worked with a woman who had an autoimmune disease, and as we worked together, she became aware that she would have a flare up when her husband was being especially abusive.
Elizabeth Rovere
There you go.
Diane Goldner
I’m laughing. Not, you know, in total, like, it’s just like so painful. Okay. That it’s easier to laugh then.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right. No, I understand. Yeah.
Diane Goldner
So she eventually came to the conclusion that she should end her marriage, which I think was the best thing for her, and that’s what she did. And I do think she got better after that, you know, to the point where, I mean, she wasn’t calling me for healings.
Elizabeth Rovere
When you’re doing that kind of healing and you’re tapping, are you tapping into some sort of way, this universal energy source? And when you’re doing. So how do you do it so that you don’t get depleted? And then do you have to protect yourself in any way?
Diane Goldner
Those are fantastic questions, which there’s never, you know, some questions are infinite.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yes, yes.
Diane Goldner
Go on your whole life. So I do a lot of practices. So in general, I sometimes think I was dispatched to be a healer because there was no better use for me because I was meditating all the time. And, you know, I do, you know, some Vedic prayers and Jewish prayers. So I think that’s protective. I always, whether I see spirit guides in a particular hearing or not, I do always call in spiritual support. I don’t ever feel like I’m doing a healing completely alone. And. But the other thing is that. And I teach this to my students, you’re not really giving your energy away. Some people think, oh, they’re going to send light, they’re going to do this, they’re going to do that. What really happens in a healing, at least the way I practice healing, in the way I think healing should be practiced. Okay. Is I go into what I’d call a higher state. You know, my mind is very quiet, so I’m inviting somebody to join me in that higher state. And in that higher state, whatever the pain is, the contraction or, you know, lack of boundary, that is what. When we can repair, let it go, it just. They come into a better vibration.
Elizabeth Rovere
Kind of like going back to what we were talking about. That. That frequency, like the tuning fork, where you’re.
Diane Goldner
The tuning fork, it’s through resonance. So a lot of times I’ll be holding. I’ll give you another. A really amazing. This is one of the most amazing cases I ever. I feel like I ever did. I got a phone call from a friend that a neighbor’s boy had fallen off a third story roof. They didn’t know if he was going to make it and could I do anything. And he was in a really precarious state. This is a very good example of one kind of resonance. So when I started the healing, I realized he was in a total, not, you know, not surprisingly. Right. Total state of panic. Like unbelievable. And it probably took me about two hours to calm him down. And when I said calm him down, I just had to hold my state until he finally relaxed into it.
Elizabeth Rovere
Wow.
Diane Goldner
It’s not that I don’t go in at all, but you’re never pushing you. It’s a receiving really of somebody’s energy.
Elizabeth Rovere
That makes sense.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. And so at the end of those two hours or whatever, I went into his head, you know, to help his head, and he immediately went back into that state of panic. Now this is long distance, so like just energetically touching his head brought him back into that terrible state of panic. So I had to calm him down and keep him calm while I worked on his head. Anyway, he walked out of that hospital like three or four weeks later.
Elizabeth Rovere
Incredible.
Diane Goldner
And I wouldn’t even say that it was the healing. The healing. I would say that in that frozen state he never would have healed. His energy just couldn’t. But all I had to, I mean, I did work on his head and I think I did a second healing and maybe a third. But the most important thing I did was release that panic and let his energy flow so that he could heal.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. You know, we know that like, we know that that state of like incredible sense of anxiety or stress based fear, you can’t heal. You can’t think. You know, people don’t die because they’re lost in the forest. They die because they’re too anxious when they’re lost in the forest.
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
When you’re doing that healing, are you drawing from a universal source?
Diane Goldner
You know, here’s how I’m going to answer that. I think I’m connecting to the universal source.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay. Okay.
Diane Goldner
I am the universal source. Not. You’re in a high frequency that matches the universal source.
Elizabeth Rovere
So you’re in it very close to it.
Diane Goldner
I don’t want to overstate myself.
Elizabeth Rovere
Is your subtle body connecting to his subtle body or is it just more abstract?
Diane Goldner
Okay, so. No, it’s, it’s. Okay, so it, this is not a crystal glass, but have you ever been at a nice, you know, nicely set table with crystal glasses? And as a child, did you ever run, you know, like your, your finger and then the net glass next to it or all the glasses start making the same sound?
Elizabeth Rovere
Yes.
Diane Goldner
Okay. That’s what’s happening.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay.
Diane Goldner
So a lot of people misunderstand. They think they’re running their energy into somebody. And it’s not like my energy never runs into somebody. But really, you’re holding a state and.
Elizabeth Rovere
Bringing someone into it. Like the glasses. Yeah, that’s a fabulous example. That’s really helpful.
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay. But it’s still. Yeah, no, but still. Can you help me understand?
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
So what. So where do the chakras or the auras fit into that?
Diane Goldner
Okay. All great questions. So the. And I, of course, didn’t know if chakras were real. I really was like the ultimate skeptic, you know, I was like, yeah, okay. And so I’m just going to share a little example. Okay. And then I’ll try to answer your question. So when I was first visiting the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, they were doing a healing. And so everyone. And there were like 100 people there and students, you know, and they were all running their energy centers. And I was like. I was like, really? You know, because you can’t see it. I couldn’t feel it. Okay, right through the first, the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth one is your throat. And they went to the fifth chakra. And I nearly choked to death. I. I just. I literally felt like I couldn’t breathe. And. And I totally freaked out. I looked around for the exit, and I realized I would never make it to the exit. You know what I mean? I was like, I was really gone.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh.
Diane Goldner
And. And then I thought to myself, fifth chakra, throat. And it released. Like, just knowing that that’s what was going on somehow released. And then I had been assigned. A teacher had been assigned to be my escort, you know, and afterwards she said, you know, she said, you have some blockage in your throat chakra, which was a message I heard a lot because of course I did. And I was a writer, so this is really crushing, you know, because writing, your voice, your. And she said, you know, and that vibration hit your throat chakra, and that’s why you had that reaction. And I was like, it was hard to argue with that, but I did. You know what I mean? Because I didn’t want to hear it.
Elizabeth Rovere
So. Yeah.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. So. So the chakras are real. Okay. I think that I’m sharing that story because I didn’t think they were real. And there I was. Okay. I’d say they’re the closest to our physical body in a way. There are energies that are more subtle, more fundamental. But your chakras are how you receive a lot of information that you’re maybe not totally conscious of. Like, if you feel like someone’s angry. It’s through your chakras, basically. And each center controls various aspects of the physical, the emotional and the spiritual aspects of who you are. And if your chakras are open and flowing, then you’re gonna have more consciousness and presumably more health. And conversely, if they’re closed, then you might have a contraction in the physical body and not feel well or get sick. And then if it’s spinning backwards, then you’re really in trouble. I’d say that our energy. You know, people talk about the mind, body, connection, and your energy is that missing link. How does the mind and the body connect? Well, through the energy. It’s literally through the energy. You know, people are looking at that. The Newtonians are looking for the molecules that make that happen. And I’d say your energy affects your molecular structures.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right?
Diane Goldner
Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
No, that. That makes sense. Like, logically and intuitively, can you. Can you reverse that chakra if it’s spinning backwards?
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay. All right.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. So. So, you know, when I worked on that boy, I’m sure I was holding my heart center in, you know, a very calm state and allowing his heart chakra to spin, you know, until it caught on to mine.
Elizabeth Rovere
Till it. And calm down. Okay. Do you feel like that, in an even more literal but abstracted way, that the foundation of healing is love? That this energy of love.
Diane Goldner
I do. That’s such a high state. Everything just relaxes. Talking about, like, the kind of love, like the sun is shining and it’s just in that state. Right.
Elizabeth Rovere
Joy, ecstasis, but grounded.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. So going back to the paralab, what they discovered was that, you know, the people who were in a state of love and union had the biggest effect.
Elizabeth Rovere
Right.
Diane Goldner
And Bob John said to me, he said, love. He said, that’s the most powerful force in the universe.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah.
Diane Goldner
That’s a physicist.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. I think that’s pretty cool when a physicist can tell us that. I mean.
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
And knows.
Diane Goldner
Amazing. That’s. That’s. That’s bringing those two pieces together. I mean, and that’s like. I mean, why was Jesus so powerful? Because the flaming heart of Jesus. Right?
Elizabeth Rovere
Absolutely. Yeah. Huh. I mean, it’s a lot to sit with. It’s like. I don’t want to just run away from that because I think it’s probably the most profound thing. So that. That sense of the absolute as. As love, if we. If we want to even use the word absolute. It’s a complicated terminology, but I’d go there.
Diane Goldner
I mean, I think, you know, it’s underlying everything in the universe is that state of love. And actually.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay.
Diane Goldner
And then we fall out of that state for various reasons. And our whole job is to go back into a state of love. It’s not easy, you know?
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. I. I love that you. I love that you said that. That our whole job is to go back into that state in a. In a way.
Diane Goldner
And most of us don’t even know that’s our job. You know what I mean?
Elizabeth Rovere
Like, I think it brings up the point, though, about, you know, when you’re saying that I have the back. My internal voice is saying, yes, but yes, but. Or maybe I should say yes. And having that sense of, like, love isn’t just like, oh, you know, I’m just gonna be a doormat and give you whatever you want. Like, love is fierce. Like, that sense of fierce compassion that the Buddhists talk about. You know, people think it’s, like, so flim flam, and it’s just. It’s so powerful.
Diane Goldner
And how do you hold that state? You know, like, when I held that state with that boy, you know, when I’m in a really deep state, I’m not really. Yeah. Thinking. I’m just being. You know, I don’t have preconceived notions of what I’m gonna do or how I’m gonna help that person. I’m just holding a state and then, you know, letting whatever vibrations. Sometimes it’s, you know, very. As I said, very intense to release a vibration for somebody, but I’m basically holding a state, and it’s a state of love. As close as I can get to that.
Elizabeth Rovere
Does it. How does it impact your own feeling about mortality? Sorry.
Diane Goldner
I’ll just say when I. Again, I’m gonna. I’m gonna answer that question, but when I began as a healer, I used to be so embarrassed. I’ve been a journalist, and I remember once I was doing healings with a retired CEO of a Wall Street investment firm, and I had a message to deliver to him from, like, a spiritual guide or whatever it was. And I remember just, like. Just like, apologizing and hemming and hawing because I just. And he said, Diane, he said, it’s okay. He said, you’re not a journalist anymore. He released me. So I. Okay. I’ve helped people pass on. I’ve seen the light leave the body. I’ve had some memories of. I mean, again, I’m almost afraid to say it because it sounds so out there, but I do have memories of previous incarnations, so I don’t think we’re we have mortality. Like people think, of course, leave this body, this life. People can hang out with us or go to the beach with us or with us once we leave, you know, and there’s a hole. But I do believe souls recycle. I mean, that was the teaching of the Catholic Church until like the third or fifth century. It’s the teaching of almost every spiritual, spiritual path. You know, the Tibetans literally find the Dalai Lama by him identifying objects from his previous incarnation. You know, everything we do and accomplish in this life does carry forward the karma. If you bring light to the world.
Elizabeth Rovere
That carries forward, it means something.
Diane Goldner
You could call it karma, whatever you want to call it.
Elizabeth Rovere
I think it’s really important. And it’s, you know, obviously there’s been people that I’ve interviewed that have talked about that experience, like the. Some people who have had the near death experience or about reincarnation and so forth. So. But when you said that, it was striking to me when you said you’ve been with people that have passed and seen the light go or move, transition, were you able to hold? Were you with them in the process? Were you with that light?
Diane Goldner
I was with that light on the higher dimensions. Because it was long distance. I’ve done it a few times. So one case, a friend asked me to work as one of his parents was passing and he had a group of healers that he invited. And there was a reason I couldn’t do it, that set time. And he said, that’s okay. He said, you know, there’s no time in this space. So I joined as soon as I could. And when I got into the healing, everyone was there in a circle already. And I joined that circle. And then the person who was departing, I literally saw there, that light move up. Now I’m going to move on. Because there was another case that was really amazing for me. And as soon as you asked me this question, of course it came up again. And somebody who had interviewed me, in fact asked me to help me, his father, who was in the hospital crashing around. It was clear he was dying, you know, he had lung cancer and whatever and he was thrashing around. He would not leave. I think they had tied his hands to the bedpost, you know, that kind of stuff. And he asked if I could help. And so I went into the healing. It was clear he had some unfinished, finished business with his children. So I had to bring in the souls, you know, so he could make peace. And so that’s what I did. I ended the healing. Later I was at my meditation center. And I. When I was in meditation, I went and I looked and I saw his soul. He was Catholic. Be received into the heart of Jesus.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, my goodness.
Diane Goldner
I know. And I’m not Cat… I wasn’t brought up Catholic. I went to the funeral because this was somebody I was friendly with. You know, this. And in the liturgy, the priests asked for Jesus to receive the soul. And I thought, oh, you don’t have to worry about that. He’s already done that. But I didn’t know that was part of the.
Elizabeth Rovere
You can’t make it up.
Diane Goldner
You can’t make it up. I mean, and I, you know, especially I didn’t know that that’s. You know what I mean?
Elizabeth Rovere
That that was part of the liturgy. Yeah.
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
Oh, my God. That’s phenomenal. That’s pretty amazing. I mean. Oh, my gosh. Wow.
Diane Goldner
I mean, it was incredible. It is, and it was incredible for me.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yes.
Diane Goldner
To be able to see that. It’s a huge blessing. It’s not something I take for granted.
Elizabeth Rovere
It’s quite remarkable. And, you know, it’s just. I just think it’s such a wonderful story of where you started and then where you came to and where you’re, you know, where you’re going, who knows? But it’s just. Well, it’s just in this process. I mean, it’s a remarkable, incredible story. I have to ask you, because when I was reading your book, you talked about some of these interesting and unusual and remarkable people that you met along the way, and one of them was Mother Meera.
Diane Goldner
Mother Meera, Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
And I was really struck by you seeing her and your experience there. And also some of the things that you said were really funny. You’re like. You said in your book, you’re like, okay, I don’t have to believe she’s like this divine person. I’m just going as a journalist. I’m just interviewing her.
Diane Goldner
That’s where I was at the time. You know, one of the first healings I had with my first person I went to for healings, you know, she said three goddesses had come to see me in the healing. And I just thought, wow, this woman is so poetic. But I mean, come on. Like, why would goddesses come to see me?
Elizabeth Rovere
You know?
Diane Goldner
And one of them, she said, you know, I’ve never heard of this person. It was either Mother Meera or the woman who foretold. I can’t. I have to look back in my own notes. Foretold of the coming of Mother Meera, you know, so that was one of those healings I didn’t think had amounted to anything, but it did lead me to go see Mother Meera. So it was a very profound healing. Right. I just wanted to bring those pieces together. Yeah. So that was very early in my whole transition or path. And I did go thinking, why am I going? And yet I was like. Like a moth, you know, I just had to go and see for myself. It was extraordinary, you know, and I could feel my third eye throbbing when I was in her presence. You know, we’d have meditation in Darshan, and it would last a few hours. And that whole time I could just feel it, you know?
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah. I just. I mean, I’ve. I just think that seems like it would have been something, you know, even if you’re walking in as a skeptic, that it would be extraordinary. And I know that in your book, you talk about what you were just saying about, like, your head was throbbing right where the third eye was, and.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, yeah, it was from seeing Mother Meera.
Elizabeth Rovere
Yeah, it’s profound. I mean, that’s just really. It’s really striking. Diane, the big question is, what does all of this say or mean about the nature of reality?
Diane Goldner
You know, fantastic question. So I think what I want to. How I would answer that is that reality is a lot more mutable than we realize. And that as you change your consciousness, your experience of reality changes. And it is kind of amazing and dramatic sometimes. So, you know, if you have this idea that everyone’s not going to be nice to you, and that’s what you experience, if you change that, literally change that belief system, your whole experience is going to change. That’s just an example.
Elizabeth Rovere
That’s beautiful. I have to. I just have to share this with you because it came into my mind when you said that there’s a Buddhist monk called Shantideva, and do you know him? He said, so you can either, like, try to, like, cover the entire world with leather, or you can just make yourself a pair of sandals. You know, it’s that shift and that’s more subtle in a way, but it’s the same similar trajectory, I think.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, it’s constantly shocking to me. So, I mean, even things like, you know, I really work mostly on health and emotional issues, but everything is made out of energy. So when people have financial issues, I mean, I can do a healing, and I’ve done healings on things like that. And as soon as that belief is changed or that anger is removed, you know, the financial picture changes.
Elizabeth Rovere
Absolutely.
Diane Goldner
Yeah. So it’s everything.
Elizabeth Rovere
So interesting, you know, I don’t know if it’s related or not, but I heard you talk about at one point that there’s like an energy grid or a matrix or Indra’s Web or it’s like Spider Man. And I was wondering if you could explain what you’re talking about.
Diane Goldner
So, as I said, all our cells are built on an energy grid, and so that runs throughout the body. And I would just say that when somebody goes through surgery, those energy lines are cut as well as the physical. And that, you know, when I do a healing, that gets repaired and that helps the body.
Elizabeth Rovere
Fascinating.
Diane Goldner
Yeah.
Elizabeth Rovere
You know, I have. I have the question for you. I’m just curious. So when you see light or you see energy, does it have a pattern? You know, kind of like how a snowflake has a pattern or like a beautiful kind of lattice or lace looking.
Diane Goldner
No, not like that. It’s, I would say, intensities of light.
Elizabeth Rovere
Okay.
Diane Goldner
Like you could have, like, everything turn into light or just, you know, sometimes it’ll be, you know, it’ll. The physical and the metaphysical will meet. You know, I’ll be doing a healing and something will shift, and at that moment, the sun will burst into the room. I know it’s not an accident, you know, but it’s just, you know, anyone can see light. You’ll think you’re imagining it, but if you close your eyes and you ask, you know, for everything to be illuminated, you’ll see. See every light. You know, your whole inner landscape will turn into light.
Elizabeth Rovere
It’s pretty exciting, actually. It’s. It’s like you’re opening. It’s like you’re just making the request and opening the door and saying that it’s possible to your own sense of consciousness or sense of self into something and it. It unfolds. It sounds like.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, well, it’s there, you know, There.
Elizabeth Rovere
It’s there. It’s there all the time.
Diane Goldner
Yeah, there all the time. It’s not like something we create. I think sometimes people think they’re imagining it. But what is imagination? Sometimes it’s seeing your. It’s these other levels that you’re able to perceive on.
Elizabeth Rovere
Exactly. That’s a very good point about imagination. Einstein said something like that. It’s more powerful than knowledge. Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.
Diane Goldner
Beautiful.
Elizabeth Rovere
Well, thank you, Diane. Thank you so much for talking to us today. This has been wonderful and a pleasure to talk to you and hang out. Thank you so much.
Diane Goldner
Thank you.
Elizabeth Rovere
I hope this conversation made you question what constitutes healing, even in just the smallest way. Diane Goldner’s. Journey from skeptic to healer is proof that when we stay open, life has has a way of surprising us. A huge thank you to Diane for sharing her wisdom and to you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, pass it along to a friend, leave a review or drop a comment. We love hearing your thoughts. Follow us @wonderstruckpod on Instagram, subscribe on YouTube and your favorite podcast app and visit wonderstruck.org for more on our guests and upcoming events. Wonderstruck is produced by Striking Wonder Productions with the incredible teams at Baillie Newman and Creator Aligned Projects. Special thanks to Brian O’Kelley, Eliana Eleftheriou, Travis Reece, and Josh Wilcox. And remember, stay open to the wonder in life.
