Find Your Teachable Moments

In her groundbreaking book, “The Gifts of Imperfection,” Brené Brown writes, “Don't shrink. Don't puff up. Stand your sacred ground.” Shame and fear may cause us to put on armor, but forgiveness — for ourselves and others — can open our hearts to express love.

In the April 2023 issue of Science of Mind magazine, writer Sally Robbins offers this perspective on Brown’s mantra: “I think of these words often when I feel vulnerable. Too many times, I have done both the shrinking when I was scared or the puffing up when I felt the need to be more than what I thought I was. As I have learned to stand my sacred ground, I realized that the shrinking and puffing behaviors do little to calm my fears. They only mask the fear by shifting from feeling to doing.”

Robbins posits that if we are here to master ourselves, then “love must the be hallmark” of everything we do. She suggests we remain open to life’s teachable moments, wherever we may find them. “The universe is full of teachable moments,” she writes, “if we look for them. Vulnerability is the openness that invites teachable moments into our lives. Then it is up to us to act — with love — on those teachings.”

As Brown would say, “Don't shrink. Don't puff up. Stand your sacred ground.”

Accepting Responsibility as an Ally

Being allies for marginalized people sounds both reasonable and lofty. How do we define the term “allyship,” and how do we live as allies?

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim-Hara, director of Diversity Programs at Mayo Clinic, defines the act of allyship as “when a person of privilege works in solidarity and partnership with a marginalized group of people to help take down the systems that challenge that group's basic rights, equal access and ability to thrive in our society.”

Allyship is not based in guilt but in responsibility. The Anti-Oppression Network says, “Allyship is not an identity—it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups of people.” The organization stresses that allyship is not self-defined but instead must be defined by those with whom we seek to be allies.

The network outlines these responsibilities, among others, for those who want to define themselves as allies:

• Actively acknowledge privilege and power.
• Listen more, speak less.
• Work with integrity and communicate openly and directly.
• Embrace the emotions that arise from allyship.
• Remember that your needs are secondary to the people you work with.

Learn more at https://theantioppressionnetwork.com/allyship/.

Opening Our Minds to God

By Ernest Holmes

Spirit responds to us by corresponding to our states of thought. We enter into Spirit in such degree as we comprehend It. It enters into us through correspondence in such degree as we comprehend It. Prayer, communion with Spirit and meditation or contemplation are for the purpose of unifying our minds with the Universal Mind, opening the avenues of our thought to a greater influx.

Spirit is ever ready, ever waiting, because Its nature is to incarnate. The greater our receptivity and comprehension, the more complete Its flow. The Universe is not only a spiritual system, it is an orderly system. We are living under a government of law, always, whether we deal with the soul, the body or Spirit, whether we are dealing with physics or with metaphysics.

The law is subject to Spirit, which does not mean that Spirit is capricious and may create a law only to break it. But it does mean that law is subject to Spirit, in that the law is Spirit's servant, just as all the laws of nature are our servants and obey us insofar as we understand them and properly use them. Spirit, being omniscient, understands and properly uses all law. Hence, Spirit never contradicts Its own nature, is always harmonious, is complete within Itself. It exists in a state of perpetual bliss and always acts in accord with the law of Its own being.

We are of like nature to this supreme Spirit. Everything exists within It. We exist within It, having arrived at a state of consciousness whereby we can consciously approach It, believe in It and receive It. In receiving Spirit, we receive the law that is Its servant, and that law becomes our servant.

—Excerpted from the April 2023 Science of Mind magazine.