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 in this world, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly 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 before Prayer Song is all that remains. It’s the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, is worth enough time in retraining the mind.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego based 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 on a regular basis 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, what you ask for once you pray is what matters. Once you plead in prayer to possess God fix an application problem with another form problem, you are asking the ego mind for help (not God). Those forms and needs are deemed more important than God’s Love that 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 nowadays, 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 help expand the illusion. Therefore, prayer can’t be about “forms” or “needs” at all.
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 Father 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 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 is still something special from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in the mind. It’s how you reach God in the illusion. Anyone who has ever remembered the littlest 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 is able to 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 give up the ego forms or what’s not necessarily there. Joining with Love in true prayer is requesting nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) which means you find yourself receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of your brain) 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 the 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 quitting the things you think you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this requests your brain 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 isn’t 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 nothing more than whatever you have chosen to become more important than God’s Love. No longer wanting anything before His Love, the only effect God could return is your remembrance of Him. The more you give up, the more meaningless the world 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 really should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and await the answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. course in miracles In the event that you must make a decision on the spot, you’ll get the appropriate “need” answer right then.An answer is an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You’re not asking for the echo itself. You’re 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 through the correction of the mind process. They are met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.
