While just about everyone has been brought up to trust that prayer involves pleading to God to help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that is not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly different and very beautiful. Greater than a song, it is joyous exchange of Love and thanks between God and His Creations that employs the forgiveness process to correct the mind before Prayer Song is all that remains. It’s the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, is worth the time in retraining the mind.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego predicated on what you require (trust) in your brain. There is no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you also are choosing all the time with a side as cause for effect.Forms (all things of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve managed to get up (miscreated this world) and can cease anytime by correcting your brain (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of your brain as God has nothing to do with forms.
What Prayer isn’t:
Because you are always deciding, what you ask for when you pray is what counts. un curso de milagros Once you plead in prayer to possess God fix an application problem with another form problem, you’re asking the ego mind for help (not God). Those forms and needs are deemed more important than God’s Love which will remain hidden to the degree you choose the illusion.
All external things (forms) are needs. Other labels are wants, desires, status, problems, sickness, human love (special relationships), gifts and goals in this world, etc. They are everything you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the purpose of prayer through the use of them to further the illusion. Therefore, prayer can’t be about “forms” or “needs” in any way.
The Purpose of Prayer:
The Song of Prayer is defined by the Course as a Song of Creation, Love and gratitude being sung from the daddy to the Son and returned from the Son to the Father. God gave this gift of Want to His Son at Creation in order that it is a single voice shared by both the Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That’s prayer’s purpose.
Within this form world of illusion, this prayer continues to be something special from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in the mind. It’s the way you reach God in the illusion. Whoever has ever remembered the littlest instant of this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he could be choosing (praying for) and how to change his mind so he can have that all the time.
True Prayer and Forgiveness:
True prayer is: (1) asking to receive what is already there, The Song; and, (2) on the way, using forgiveness (correction of the mind) to stop the ego forms or what is not really there. Joining with Love in true prayer is requesting nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) so you end up receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of your brain) is a part of true prayer and makes the process go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness is the illusory ladder with time that returns the mind to this endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears once the mind is completely corrected and remembers only The Song.
The big secret of true prayer and forgiveness is to concentrate on disregarding and giving up the things you imagine you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for the mind to be returned to Truth (Love). You aren’t furthering the illusion. You’re agreeing with God that (a) you are a mind; (b) this form world isn’t real; (c) you made a mistake; and, (d) you can choose again.
Using correction of your brain (forgiveness) places those forms and needs on God’s altar, or in his hands, as idols which are nothing more than whatever you have chosen to become more important than God’s Love. No more wanting anything before His Love, the only real effect God could return can be your remembrance of Him. The more you give up, the more meaningless the planet becomes and the faster you sing His Song.
Prayer in the Illusion:
Because the mind still resides with God, the Course says you don’t have to decide alone and should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and await the answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. If you must decide on the spot, you’ll get the correct “need” answer right then.An answer can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not asking for the echo itself. You’re choosing the gift of Love from The Song giving up all form needs. “Need” answers in the illusion are contained within that echo even during the correction of your brain process. They are met at the level of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.
