Decision-making in a Random Universe

Or is it random?

Making decisions can be tough. The mind has no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow, we can’t know how anyone else is going to figure into every decision, and there will always be events outside our control. Living in what appears to be a random universe, it’s hard enough getting through today without having to figure out what we should do tomorrow.

Should I take this job, stay in this relationship, move out of my apartment, sign that contract, go back to school, quit what I’m doing and start over? Such are the constant anxieties of modern decision-making. If the only guidance we have is the rational mind, that’s a pretty sorry guidance system for predicting the future. We can write lists of Reasons to Do It and Reasons Not to Do It all day long, but we can never really know what lies beyond the bend.

The spiritual worldview puts decision-making in a completely different context. For it posits that there is a part of the mind that does know the future, not consciously but unconsciously. We can call that part of the mind the Holy Spirit, or intuition, or I-just-know-it-in-my-gut; it doesn’t really matter what we call it. The idea is that there is an expanded mental function - not irrational but simply non-rational - that can direct us in ways that reason alone cannot do.

PeteWill

For the faithful among us, asking God what we should do in a situation is not hocus-pocus. It’s not a less sophisticated but rather a more sophisticated way of looking at the world than one in which we see ourselves as simply random dots in a meaningless world. For our lives are not random, and the world is not meaningless. Prayer is a way of reconnecting to meaning in a world that, in case you haven’t noticed, has gone mad. It’s a conscious reconnection of our mind to a deeper source point than the rational mind alone. It puts decision-making in the hands of a Higher Power, a divine intelligence with knowledge of past and future, as well as realization of how every decision will affect everyone.

In the words of A Course in Miracles, “Love restores reason and not the other way around.” As we journey more deeply into the 21st Century, we are evolving beyond a rationalistic view of life that recognizes no power beyond our own. The heart has infinite wisdom; we’re just trained by the thinking of the world not to hear it.

Praying for guidance is simply directing the mind to know what it most deeply knows. The power of God is not a power outside us, but within us. I’ve had people say to me, “I don’t know what God is telling me,” and I usually answer the same way: “Oh yes you do, you just don’t like what God is telling you.” We’re just not used to taking the wisdom of our heart that seriously.

I often used to pray, feel an answer, and then say to myself things like, “Boston? Not Atlanta? But that doesn’t make sense. I’ve reasoned all this out, God, and I really do think Atlanta makes more sense. I’ll give you a day to think about it and then I’ll ask again!” Then, when the answer kept coming back “Boston,” I would start trying to convince God that I thought He must have made a mistake.

Oh, how many times in my life I should have just said, “Boston. Got it. Thanks.” Because days or weeks or months later, sitting amidst the ruins of some situation in Atlanta, I’ve seen so clearly that I should have gone to Boston. If there is a God, He’s at least as smart as we are.

Decision-making doesn’t have to be so hard. The trick is to ask, to listen, and then to own what it is that you know. Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer and ask what to do. Quite often, you’ll be amazed at your first thought when you wake up tomorrow.

The key is to not ignore it.