While just about everyone has been brought up to believe that prayer involves pleading to God to greatly help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly different and very 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 before Prayer Song is all that remains. It’s 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 (agree with) 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 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:
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 are 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 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 nowadays, etc. They are what you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the objective 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 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. a course in miracles online Continuously sharing Love and Creation backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That is 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 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 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 give up the ego forms or what’s not really there. Joining with Love in true prayer is asking for nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) and that 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 process go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder with time that returns your brain to the endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears when the mind is completely 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 want 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’re agreeing with God that (a) you’re a mind; (b) this form world isn’t real; (c) you made a mistake; and, (d) you can 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 become more important than God’s Love. No more 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 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 need to decide alone and should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and wait for the solution. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. If you must decide on the spot, you’ll receive the appropriate “need” answer right then.A remedy can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You’re 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 during the correction of the mind process. They’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.
