I invite you to decrease your connection with anything that:

• Demeans your spirit

• Shrinks your lust for life

• Limits your freedom

• Compromises your integrity

• Dishonors your reverence

• Inhibits your self-expressiveness

• Alienates you from what you love

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I posted the above message on Facebook. In response a reader named Janet said this:

I understand the urge to disconnect from what demeans and diminishes, and have experienced the usefulness of the strategy.

But I think there’s also something to be said for just noticing the things that demean, shrink, limit, and compromise, particularly when those things are other people.

I think we can be bridges and pathways for healing when our choices are more than just an either-or disconnecting or not.

Sometimes hanging in there with the discomfort gives me a chance to understand and transform my perception of what I am and what I’m not.

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In response to Janet, I wrote the following:

For myself, the world brings such a nonstop flood of things that demean, shrink, and limit, I disconnect from as many of them as possible. But it’s not a practical option to disconnect from all of them.

Also: In disconnecting from them, I don’t abandon the possibility of learning from them.

As an example, I just ceased any further link with a chronically crabby jerk who happens to be a famous teacher.

In the aftermath, I am mulling what I can keep learning from the crabby jerk (I have already learned a lot!) and from the feelings and thoughts that have arisen in me in response to the crabby jerk’s crabby jerkness.

But it would be an act of self-harm for me to continue being linked to this person.

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Another reader, Linda Faye Carson, articulated a wonderful amendment to my original statement. She wrote:

Allow me to put a positive spin on your statement about disconnecting:

Increase your connection with everything that:

• Lifts your Spirit

• Builds your lust for life

• Expands your freedom

• Supports your integrity

• Honors your reverence

• Expands your self-expressiveness

• Helps you keep in touch and harmonize with what and whom you love



This artwork is titled "Aboriginal Art Gathering Circle" and is designed by GhostGumDesigns.