While most of us have been brought up to believe that prayer involves pleading to God to help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and incredibly 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 until the 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 your brain.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego based 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 all the time 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 give it up anytime by correcting the mind (forgiveness). 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 possess 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 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 through the use of them to further 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 daddy to the Son and returned from the Son to the daddy. God gave this gift of Want to His Son at Creation in order that it is 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.
In this form world of illusion, this prayer is still something special from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in your brain. 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 is choosing (praying for) and how to change his mind so he is able to have that all the 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 the mind) to give up 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) which means you end up receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of your brain) is a section of true prayer and makes the procedure go quicker. un curso de milagros Prayer is timeless and goes on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder with time that returns your brain to this endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears when the mind is totally 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 need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for your brain to be returned to Truth (Love). You are not 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) it is possible to 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 only anything 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 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 should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and wait for the answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must decide on the spot, you’ll get the correct “need” answer right then.A remedy can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not asking for the echo itself. You are choosing the gift of Love from The Song by 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 you can understand and accept.