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 incredibly beautiful. More 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’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 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 are choosing on a regular basis 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 the mind as God has nothing to do with forms.
What Prayer is Not:
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’re 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 nowadays, etc. They are what you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the purpose of prayer through the use of them to further 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 daddy to the Son and returned from the Son to the Father. God gave this gift of Want 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.
Within this form world of illusion, this prayer continues to be 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. Whoever has ever remembered the tiniest instant of this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he is 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) along the way, using forgiveness (correction of your brain) to stop the ego forms or what is not really 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 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 your brain to the endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears when the mind is totally 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 need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this requests the mind to be returned to Truth (Love). You aren’t 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 your brain (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. un curso de milagros No longer wanting anything before His Love, the only effect God could return can be 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:
Since the mind still resides with God, the Course says you don’t have 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 get the appropriate “need” answer right then.A remedy is 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 giving up all form needs. “Need” answers in the illusion are contained within that echo even during the correction of the mind process. They are met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.