Weblogic 10.3.5 unable to find excludesFile path using getResourceAsStream

While working on a project to upgrade from oracle application server to Weblogic 10.3.5 I ran into an issue where Weblogic was not able to find excludes file in the default location (/WEB-INF/lib/decorators.xml) using "getResourceAsStream"; 
Using "getRealPath" worked for me. 
I still have not been able to figure out exactly how Weblogic creates its application structures or have not really tried out all different options, but was successful with that change.