WHY STRUGGLE
This is an amazing interview with Barbara Fasion. You can watch the full 34-minute interview on YouTube
Barbara: I am fantastic, how are you Earl thanks for having me?
Earl: I am doing awesome doing amazing thank you so much for being here with us. We had a good little chat before we went on air here — to bring people up to date and I want to go back to that. Tell me what tell us what it is that you mainly do in the spiritual Realm of helping people to stop struggling?
Barbara: That’s an ongoing thing right. I am a mindfulness and meditation ambassador, and as we were discussing that’s simply a tool that I use to encourage people to consider mindfulness and meditation. It’s all the buzz now but I have been doing it for over 25 years. I have been teaching it probably about 10, and in that realm apart of how this book came about is I was struggling.
Earl: Isn’t that the thing the message is always to the messenger first.
Barbara: Exactly and I always say we teach what we need to continue to practice right, so I need to continue to practice being in practice which is what meditation and mindfulness is. And so I do that and one of the ways that I do that is I do a daily, yes I said daily on meditation practice on Facebook for my live Facebook group that’s called a Slice of Silence.
Because what I find is people look at meditation as I just don’t have time to do so and so and so — well do you have time to breathe, well then you have time to meditate, you know and so I call it the slice of Silence because sometimes we get a sliver, and sometimes we have more time and sometimes we can do the whole pie, you know but we do 10 minutes of meditation and I like for part of that to be silent because we live in a very loud noise in the world.
Earl: Lots of stuff going on.
Barbara: Lots of stuff going on and for most people silence is frightening. So I like to have a little bit of silence, normally when it’s not cold we go right out there on my deck and that’s where — so you hear the bird so the soundtrack of life is nature and so that’s what I do. So that’s what I have been doing in those spiritual realms for you know 20 or 25 years.
And I wrote this book because I wanted to stop struggling myself, and so I came up with 25 topics if you want to call them, that reminds me of what this experience of life is all about and it is just an experience.
Earl: What do you think are probably one of the man or maybe there is a couple of things that you have, but what is one of the main things that come up over and over again as far as what people struggle with that you have been in connection with?
Barbara: A couple of things that people struggle with is self-confidence, not being confident enough in themselves. They struggle with feeling like they want to try to change people you know they can’t allow people to be who they are; they want people to be more like them right?
Earl: Yeah, life would be so much better if you just change.
Barbara: It would be so much better if you would just do the stuff that I asked you to do and the way I want you to do it right.
Earl: Yes, and that always works well in marriages.
Barbara: That’s why meditation is a practice.
Earl: Oh My God I am not even going to go there.
Barbara: [Unclear 4:44] I joke and say I meditate so I don’t hurt people.
Earl: Right because I will knock your head off.
Barbara: Most people know who they are, but you know it is an ongoing process and so I do like to keep it light. It’s not that serious it’s really not it’s just practice, and the more we do it hopefully the more aware we are of it, because sometimes I am better at it and sometimes I am not and it’s okay.
Earl: In your book as I was going through that, one of the things that you say and I am going to read here from my other screen. And this is about your belief and life philosophies. And the first one that you had is one that struck me more than the others, because it’s the one thing that I think that it’s the end all be all of everything which is love.
And you say being loving, love is the most powerful healing and transformative power — being loving is the answer to most situations. Dive in on that one for me?
Barbara: Well I have a really good crew of girlfriends that have the same beliefs. And so I believe that because when we can come from a place of love it changes everything, because if I can come from a place of love I don’t judge you, I can be kind to you, I can let go of my interpretations of how you need to be and I can see you for who you really are, you know and my girlfriend and I were talking about this, but the thing is you have to have that love for yourself in order to be loving. And sometimes we may not be in that space that we are feeling loving, but or should I say and we can be kind. So if I am not in a loving space I can generally be kind and most people will know what that feels like.
Earl: Absolutely, I look at love and especially if I qualify the word as unconditional love. And a lot of people have that conditional love, I love you as long as you do this, I love you as long as you act this way but it’s not an unconditional love. And I think that’s the thing where if you don’t love yourself first and most there is nothing else you can give to anyone else.
And it will be a conditional love because that conditional love means that I can only be happy if you do this. So you have given away power that you never give away, because love is available to everyone — and when you put conditions on it that’s just what I think is a lot of the problem, whether it’s in a relationship or well mostly in relationships. When we talk about loving someone I see it as so much condition put on it as opposed to being unconditional. Is that what your experience has been, or how is it that you are seeing that play out in life with people that you know?
Barbara: I do see that and here is what I see. We come here to have this experience called the life right. Now on any given day my 18-year-old may show up, and my husband 25-year-old may show up the truth of the matter as opposed to our 50-plus something right. So that’s how I look at it because we are constantly going through this cycle of life, we have experiences and many of us would never deal with the stuff that happened to us we just keep on moving.
So the concept of unconditional love is a great concept. I feel very fortunate you know there are people that believe that we pick our parents, and there are people that believe that we have no control over that. However, I hit the lottery.
This is an amazing interview with Barbara Fasion. You can watch the full 34-minute interview on YouTube
