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 in this world, that is not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly different and incredibly 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 correct the mind before Prayer Song is all that remains. It is the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, is worth enough 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 (agree with) 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 continuously with a side as cause for effect.Forms (everything of this world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve made it up (miscreated this world) and may cease 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 matters. Once you plead in prayer to have 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 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 what you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the objective of prayer by using them to help expand 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 Love to His Son at Creation in order that it is a single voice shared by both the Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That is prayer’s purpose.
In this form world of illusion, this prayer is still a gift from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in the mind. It’s the way you reach God in the illusion. Anyone who has ever remembered the tiniest instant of the 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 enough 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 your brain) to give up the ego forms or what is not really there. Joining with Love in true prayer is asking for nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) so you end up receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of the mind) is a section of true prayer and makes the procedure go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder in time that returns the mind 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 concentrate on disregarding and quitting the things you imagine you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for 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 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 quit, 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 really should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and wait for the solution. un curso de milagros Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. If you must decide on the spot, you’ll get the correct “need” answer right then.A remedy is 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 through the correction of the mind process. They are met at the amount of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.