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 TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly different and incredibly beautiful. Greater than a song, it really 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, will probably be 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 ask for (trust) in the mind. There is no other way. In the Course, the mind (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing constantly with a side as cause for effect.Forms (everything 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 is Not:
Because you are always deciding, what you ask for when you pray is what matters. 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 that may remain hidden to the amount 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 everything you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the purpose of prayer by using them to further the illusion. a course in miracles online Therefore, prayer can’t be about “forms” or “needs” in any way.
The objective 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 Love to His Son at Creation so that it’s a single voice shared by both Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation back and forth 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 method that 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 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 is 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 the mind) is a part of true prayer and makes the procedure go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness is the illusory ladder in time that returns your brain to this endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears when 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 think you want and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this requests the mind to be returned to Truth (Love). You aren’t furthering the illusion. You are agreeing with God that (a) you’re a mind; (b) this form world is not 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 be more important than God’s Love. No more wanting anything before His Love, the only effect God could return can be your remembrance of Him. The more you quit, the more meaningless the world 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 really 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 receive the correct “need” answer right then.A remedy is an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You’re not requesting the echo itself. You are 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 the mind process. They’re met at the amount of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.
