While just about everyone has been brought up to believe that prayer involves pleading to God to help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and very 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 before Prayer Song is all that remains. It is the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, will probably be worth the time in retraining the mind.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego based on what you ask for (trust) in your brain. There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, the mind (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing on a regular basis with a side as cause for effect.Forms (everything of this world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve managed to get up (miscreated this world) and will give it up anytime by correcting your brain (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of the mind as God has nothing in connection 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 that may 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 Purpose 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. a course in miracles online God gave this gift of Want to His Son at Creation so that it’s a single voice shared by both 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 something special 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 this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he could be choosing (praying for) and how 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’s already there, The Song; and, (2) along the way, using forgiveness (correction of your brain) to stop the ego forms or what is not necessarily there. Joining with Love in true prayer is requesting nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) and that means you end up 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 goes on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder in time that returns your brain to this 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 giving up 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’re agreeing with God that (a) you are a mind; (b) this form world isn’t real; (c) you made a blunder; 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 answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must decide on the spot, you’ll receive the correct “need” answer right then.An answer can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not requesting 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 during the correction of your brain process. They are met at the amount of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.
