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 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 improve 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 enough time in retraining your brain.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego predicated on what you ask for (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 (all things of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve made it up (miscreated this world) and will 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:
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Because you are always deciding, what you ask for once you pray is what matters. Once you plead in prayer to possess 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 that may remain hidden to the degree you choose 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 help expand the illusion. Therefore, prayer cannot be about “forms” or “needs” in any way.
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 Father. 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. 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 continues to be 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 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 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) and that means you find yourself receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of your brain) is a section of true prayer and makes the process go quicker. Prayer is timeless and goes on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder with time that returns the mind 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 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 are not furthering the illusion. You are agreeing with God that (a) you are 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 nothing more than whatever you have chosen to become more important than God’s Love. No longer wanting anything before His Love, the only real effect God could return is your remembrance of Him. The more you quit, 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 answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must make a decision on the spot, you’ll get 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 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.