While most of us have been brought up to trust that prayer involves pleading to God to greatly 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 quite different and incredibly beautiful. More than a song, it really is joyous exchange of Love and thanks between God and His Creations that employs the forgiveness process to improve the mind until the Prayer Song is all that remains. It is the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, is worth the time in retraining your brain.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego based on what you require (trust) in the mind. There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, the mind (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing all the time with a side as cause for effect.Forms (all things of this world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve made it up (miscreated this world) and will cease anytime by correcting your brain (forgiveness). un curso de milagros True prayer requires this correction of your brain as God has nothing to do with forms.
What Prayer is Not:
Since you are always deciding, everything you ask for once you pray is what counts. Once you plead in prayer to have God fix a form 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 select 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 what you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the objective of prayer by using them to help expand the illusion. Therefore, prayer cannot be about “forms” or “needs” at all.
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 Father to the Son and returned from the Son to the daddy. God gave this gift of Love to His Son at Creation in order that it’s a single voice shared by both 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 a gift 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 tiniest instant of this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he could be choosing (praying for) and how exactly to change his mind so he can have that all enough time.
True Prayer and Forgiveness:
True prayer is: (1) asking to get what is already there, The Song; and, (2) along the way, using forgiveness (correction of your brain) to stop the ego forms or what’s not necessarily there. Joining with Love in true prayer is asking for nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) which means 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 goes on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder in time that returns the mind to this endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears once the mind is totally corrected and remembers only The Song.
The big secret of true prayer and forgiveness would be to focus on disregarding and quitting the things you think you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for the mind to be returned to Truth (Love). You are not furthering the illusion. You’re agreeing with God that (a) you are a mind; (b) this form world is not real; (c) you made a mistake; and, (d) it is possible to choose again.
Using correction of the mind (forgiveness) places those forms and needs on God’s altar, or in his hands, as idols which are only anything you have chosen to be more important than God’s Love. No longer wanting anything before His Love, the only 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:
Since 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 make a decision on the spot, you’ll get the appropriate “need” answer right then.A remedy is an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not requesting 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 through the correction of the mind process. They’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.