Rules for Decision

Rules for Decision - Kenneth Wapnick

It is obvious from the title of the workshop, "Rules for Decision," that we will be spending most of our time with that particular section from Chapter 30 in the text, and that that section indeed will be the center point of the workshop. We will look at a number of other parts of the Course which bear on the themes of that section as well. As is also obvious from the title, the central theme that we will be addressing is the idea of choosing or deciding. The whole Course, and in particular this section, makes clear that we have only two possible choices open to us at any time: to choose either to have the ego be our teacher or our "adviser"—the term used in this section—or to choose Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Later on I will spend a considerable amount of time talking about Jesus and what it means to choose him as our adviser or teacher rather than the ego. What I would like to do first, however, is to provide some metaphysical background for the whole idea of choosing the ego or the Holy Spirit. A large portion of what we will be talking about during this workshop will not be very metaphysical. This is a very practical and down-to-earth section in terms of what the experience of choosing the ego or the Holy Spirit is like. But as with any discussion of the Course having to do with the specific or practical—how we behave within the dream or in this world—if we first don't understand the overriding metaphysics of the Course, then the practical application will make no sense. So we will begin with that. I will do a rather shortened version of what I usually spend much more time doing.