Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 31: The New Beginning

 

1. Guidelines for Right Decision-Making

The new beginning of Spirit’s Gifts of happy dreams of forgiveness and the Real World now becomes the focus of our curriculum. The Goal is clear, and now you need specific methods for attaining It. The speed by which It can be reached depends only on your willingness to practice every step. Each one will help a little every time it is attempted. And together these steps will lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams, and thus out of fear and pain.

These steps are not new to you, but they may be more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. So now we need to practice them a while until they become the rules by which you live. We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready for any need.

Decisions are continuous, though you are not always aware when you are making them. But with a little practice in the ones you recognize, a set of decision-making rules begins to form which sees you through the rest of the decision-making process. It is wise not to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper mindset, adopted consciously each time you wake, will place you in a state of right-mindedness from which miracle-readiness can easily extend.

And if you find resistance to right-mindedness strong and dedication weak, then you are not yet ready at that moment. Do not fight yourself. Just think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself that there is a way by which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to experience the day you want.

The outlook for each new day starts with this:

 

Today I will make no decisions by myself, but will decide all things with Spirit.

 

This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do during the course of your day. But it must also mean that you will not judge the situations in which you will be called upon to act and respond. For if you judge them, then you have set the rules for how you should act in and respond to them. And then a different action or response, one suggested by Spirit, can only produce uncertainty, confusion, conflict, and fear in you.

This is your major problem now. You still first decide on your own how to frame and thus perceive a situation – i.e., you decide the answer to the question of what a situation is for – and then you ask what you should do in response to the situation as you have already framed it. And what you hear from Spirit in response to your question may not resolve the problem as you perceive it because of the way you originally framed the situation. This leads to fear because it contradicts what you perceive, and so you may feel attacked and therefore angry. These decision-making rules will keep this from happening. But it does occur, at first, to everyone, even those who listen well.

Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, remind yourself again the kind of day you want, the feelings you would like to have, the things you want to happen and to experience. Then say:

 

If I make all decisions with Spirit, the kind of day I want is the day that I will experience.

 

These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed without conflict or fear, for opposition to Guidance from Spirit will not first arise and then become a problem in itself.

But there will still be times when you forget to withhold judgment from a situation. Now Spirit’s Guidance may provoke resistance in you unless you quickly straighten out your mind to truly want guidance that will work. You can be certain that opposition in yourself is happening if you feel yourself unwilling to step back and ask to have the Answer to the question of what the situation is for be given to you. This means that you have decided by yourself, and cannot see what the real question is. Now you need a quick restorative before you respond to the situation. Remember once again the kind of day you want, and recognize that something has occurred that is not part of it. Then realize that you have framed the situation without Spirit’s active Guidance, and must also have a predetermined response to it in your own terms. So remind yourself:

 

Without Spirit I have no appropriate framing or response to this situation. I forgot what is and isn’t for me to decide.

 

This cancels out your framing of the situation and predetermined response, and lets Spirit show you what the frame – or question of what the situation is for – must really be.

Try to observe this rule without delay despite your opposition. For you will have already set up a situation of resistance, and if you don’t reset this, your fear of being answered by Spirit in a way different from what your version of the question asks will gain momentum until you believe that the day you want is one in which you get your answer to your question. And you will not get it, for it would rob you of the kind of day you really want. This can be very hard to realize when you have already decided by yourself the way to bring about a happy day. But these faulty decisions still can be undone by simple methods which you can accept.

If you find yourself so unwilling to receive Spirit’s Answer that you cannot let go of your own framing of a situation, you can begin to change your mind with this statement:

 

At least I can acknowledge that I do not like how I feel now.

 

This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step, which follows this. Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with:

 

And so I hope I have been wrong in the way I have framed and set up this situation in my mind.

 

This helps to release your sense of being coerced, and reminds you that help is not being forced upon you, but is something that you want because you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped.

Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that you will gain if what you decided by yourself the situation is for turns out not to be its actual purpose as Spirit sees it. Until this point is reached, you will believe that your happiness depends on being right in your ability to make your own decisions. But this much Reason have you now attained: you realize you would be better off if you were wrong in such situations. This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are not being coerced, but merely hope to receive a thing you really want. And therefore you can say in perfect honesty:

 

I want to be happy, so I’m open to another way of perceiving this situation.

 

Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have remembered what you really want. The day’s Purpose is no longer being obscured by the senseless belief that you want the day for the goal of being right when you are wrong. This is the readiness for asking truly, brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you really want, and see that it is this you are actually requesting.

The last step in changing your mind about the Purpose of the day when you have forgotten it is simply your acknowledgment of your lack of opposition to being helped by Spirit. It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown:

 

What can I lose by asking to receive Spirit’s Interpretation of this situation?

 

Thus are you made ready for a question that makes sense – asking Spirit what the situation is for – and so the Answer will make sense as well. Nor will you fight against It, for you see that it is you who will be helped by It.

It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practicing the decision-making rules that will protect you from the delays and distractions of fear and conflict. When this Protection has been welcomed resolutely, the sorry dream of judgment will have forever been undone. In the meantime, you have need for practicing the rules for the undoing of this dream.

Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions that are offered here—that you can begin a happy day and experience the day you truly want with the determination to make no decisions by yourself, but to decide all things with Spirit. This seems to be a decision made by yourself. And yet in truth you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only real question is by what criteria you choose to make any decision. That is really all.

The first rule, then, is not a contradiction or coercion, but an honest acknowledgment of a simple fact. You cannot and therefore will not make decisions by yourself whatever you end up deciding in any situation. For every decision will always be made in conjunction either with the ego and its idols or with the Divine and Its Voice. You ask help of the Holy Spirit or the ego, and which you choose will join with you and advise you what to do. Your day is not at random. It is set by what or Whom you choose to live it with, and how the advisor whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You always seek confirmation before you decide anything, even if this is done without conscious awareness. Let this be understood, and you can see that there cannot be coercion in your decision-making process, or grounds for opposition in the name of being free to make you own decisions. There is no freedom from what must occur based on the laws of decision-making. And if you think there is, you must be wrong.

The second rule as well is simply a fact. For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is this agreement that permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice of the Divine. Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world and the Divine Family as well. The day you want and that you create you will offer to the whole Creation, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce throughout the world the decision-making process of your adviser.

Which advisor’s world – that of illusions or the Real World – is the world for you today? What kind of day will you decide to have? It needs just two, you and your true Advisor, to decide to have Happiness this day, and to promise It to all the world. It needs just two to understand that you cannot decide alone to guarantee that the Joy you have asked for will be wholly shared. For you have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. It needs just two. These two are joined before there can be a right decision.

Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to Creation by having it yourself. Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received so will you give.