Search Results for: little death

Your Many Deaths

Posted on by Joel

If you do it right, you will suffer many deaths in your lifetime. And if you do it right, each one will bring you closer to your real self. Believe it or not, everything that is happening in your life is working to bring about these little deaths, which will peel back the layers of your false self and allow the truest form of your being to emerge. Really your “false self” is just all the forms of you that existed before this and which must be shed, like a snake repeatedly sloughing off its skin. Other people may not even notice how you have changed, but you will feel like a new person, freshly alive in a new way (born again). It’s just the newest form of you – and you are destined to do it again. Read More

Growth and Death

Posted on by Joel

2016-05-04 18.06.25

It seems like life is equal parts death and growth. You cannot have one without the other – unbounded growth not pruned back by a little death will become unruly and unmanageable. At the same time, you will not always be moving backwards (experiencing death and loss). There will be a time to burst forth in growth. Don’t be afraid of either. You should learn to make friends with your loss and pain because they have so much to teach you. What has taught you more than your pain? At the same time, do not be wary of growth and success. You should be wise enough to realize you can lose at any time, but you do not need to live in fear of these losses or when they will reemerge. The losses only serve to shed what is not needed and let you return to a phase of growth and thriving. It is all the gift of life. Read More

Keep Your Losses Close

Posted on by Joel

When we experience loss or trauma, we don’t forget. And it’s good to keep our traumas, our dark nights of the soul, our griefs and losses in mind.  We can learn from them. Even when you’re bursting forth with growth, you should always remember and acknowledge it can all be whisked away in a moment. You can die any second, so be thankful – for life and death. You may have another dark night of the soul, another loss, another little death coming, but it will just be another step back from which you will recover and live to fight again. Even your “big death” is just your entrance into a new life, or your going back into the Great Life, so there is nothing to fear! Read More

Something Needs to Die

Posted on by Joel

My friend and mentor has told me this many times: somebody told him once that when you are depressed, you want to die. And you obviously don’t need to die, but something in you needs to die.

That is brilliant. I think I go through this almost weekly depression and many times, I have no idea what is going on, but sometimes I feel like God is trying to kill something in me. More often than not, it has been when I have grown hardhearted, or I am trying to hold onto something that has needed to go for a long time. Read More

The Never-Ending Shed

Posted on by Joel

Life is a continual series of surrenderings. Once you think you have died enough, life and God are back to prune some more. There is more to shed. If you are wise, you will continue to be open and ready for these little deaths. Do not build up your shields against them because then they will just fall harder and faster – it will take more to undo the cozy shelter you have built for yourself. The shelter is that which you have built to protect yourself from what – more abundant life? That for which you have been incessantly searching? Hmm… Read More

Harnessing the Power of Your ADHD

Posted on by Joel

We tend to think of problems with focus and attention as impairments in brain functioning. Forgetting things, losing things and not being able to focus on the task at hand are all problematic, but it is important to understand what is actually going on in our ADHD brains and how we can use them optimally.  It is not that we are incapable of focus; we may just need to put in a little extra effort to be able to harness all our brains are capable of doing. The ADHD brain is actually moving too fast. In most cases, ADHD is more like “too much attention” than not enough. We can pay attention to too many things at once. We end up focusing on things we don’t need to. Or if asked to do something that is not challenging mentally (doesn’t take much processing power), our minds drift because of the simplicity (or dullness) of the activity. Read More

Legacy

Posted on by Joel

I’ve been thinking a little about “legacy” lately, since I am in my 30s and all. And my mom just turned 60 and we are having another little child who is a girl. She is a wonderful gift, but one of the things about having all girls is that your “name” doesn’t get carried on through your own family. I mean there are other little Ybarras which grow up to be big Ybarras and the name will live on, but not from my immediate family. Read More