Do You Wanna Be Right or Happy? ACIM Rules for Decision

do you want to be right or happy acim chapter 8

A Course in Miracles asks,

“Do you prefer that you be right or happy?”

Ummm… so, is this a trick question? Doesn’t everyone say they prefer to be right AND happy?

Or is it just me?

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It isn’t possible to be both, because in this context us being “right” means:

Right in our belief that we’ve separated from God.
Right that the ego world of time and space is our true reality.
Right that making decisions on our own keeps us in control of our lives.
Right that being in control of our lives will make us happy.

But we never have separated from God, therefore our true reality is Oneness with Him and all of our bros, in a state of perfection. That means that this world is an illusion, a dream, it’s not real.

So how does being in control in a dream actually work? And how exactly would that make us happy again?

It turns out that all the ways we want to be right are wrong.

First, we don’t really make any decisions by ourselves – that’s just the bullshit story our ego minds would like us to believe to keep us from wondering whether we’ve chosen the correct teacher or not. The ego mind wants us to think that we’re making our own decisions, but that’s just so that we won’t figure out that it’s trying to be the boss of us. There is no “us” separate from our mind, so every decision we make is a result of our choosing to be advised by either the ego-mind or the Spirit-mind.

If we choose the ego we’re electing as our guide the false self that comes from fear and always causes us to make bad decisions.

If we choose Spirit, we align ourselves with the Self that comes from love and always guides us to perfect decisions that are for our highest good and that of all concerned.

It seems like kind of a no-brainer doesn’t it?

The ego is a projection of fear – it is literally made of fear. So any decision that we make “by ourselves” (aka with the ego) can only be from fear because as A Course In Miracles teaches us, “Ideas leave not their source.”

I don’t know about you, but I can tell you that any decision I’ve ever made from a place of fear, panic, insecurity, guilt, scarcity, abandonment, catastrophic thinking or any other form of fear has turned into kind of a sh*tshow.

So how do we make decisions that will help us to be happy?

A Course in Miracles offers us an awesome 7-step process for creating the day we would like to have – several parts of which are instructional as to what to do when we find ourselves not having that day. I like to think of it as getting to where we want to go by choosing the right navigator.

7 Rules for Decision

1. We’re advised to begin the day by surrendering our decisions to Spirit thus:

“Today I will make no decisions by myself.”
T-30.I.2:2

2. We are then asked to imagine throughout the day the kind of day we’d like to have, and say:

“If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me.”
T-30.I.4:2

3. Later, if/when we have already judged and made those decisions and the wheels have started coming off the Bliss Bus, we are guided to cancel out our own question and bring ourselves back to Spirit’s guidance with,

“I have no question. I forgot what to decide.”
T-30.I.6:4-5

4. If we’re too wrapped around the axle of the ego’s ride and can’t let our own question go, we can begin to loosen our grip with,

“At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now.”
T-30.I.8:2

5. And then continue with,

“And so I hope I have been wrong.”
T-30.I.9:2

This shifts us to the recognition that we’re f*ing lost, and that being happy may actually be better than being right.

6. Now we’re coming from a place of realizing our way was not gonna get us there and we’re willing to ask for directions – as in,

“I want another way to look at this.”
T-30.I.11:4

7. The last step continues to lead us out of the where-the-f*ck-are-we that we got ourselves into – and we’re open to taking it because we still want that happy day:

“Perhaps there is another way to look at this. What can I lose by asking?”
T-30.I.12:3-4

Jesus’s final teaching in this section is a twofer. One, we can’t get to that day we said we wanted by taking the detour into Judgment. Two, only one of our potential navigators takes us right smack into the middle of downtown Judgment on every single trip.

Do You Wanna Be Right or Happy? ACIM Rules for Decision

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Thank you so much for joining me today. If something in this video or post was helpful to you, I’d love to hear about it. Please feel free to leave me a comment or send me an email.

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Happy Motoring!

Love,

Kelly