While most of us have 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. Greater 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 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 predicated on what you require (agree with) in the mind. There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing at all times with a side as cause for effect.Forms (all things of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. a course in miracles We’ve managed to get up (miscreated this world) and will give it up anytime by correcting the mind (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of your brain as God has nothing in connection with forms.
What Prayer isn’t:
Because you are always deciding, everything you ask for when you pray is what counts. 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 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 nowadays, 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. 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 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 back and forth extends them forever in eternity. That’s prayer’s purpose.
In this form world of illusion, this prayer continues to be a gift from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in your brain. It’s the way you reach God in the illusion. Anyone who has ever remembered the tiniest instant of this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he is 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 the mind) to give up the ego forms or what’s not really 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 the mind) is a section 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 once the mind is totally corrected and remembers only The Song.
The big secret of true prayer and forgiveness is to focus on disregarding and quitting 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 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 blunder; 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 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 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 need 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 receive the correct “need” answer right then.An answer is an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not requesting 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 through the correction of your brain process. They’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.
