While most of us have been brought up to trust 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 TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly different and incredibly 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 correct the mind until the 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 require (trust) 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 constantly with a side as cause for effect.Forms (everything of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve made it up (miscreated this world) and can give it up anytime by correcting the mind (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of the mind as God has nothing in connection with forms.
What Prayer isn’t:
Because you are always deciding, what you ask for once you pray is what matters. Once you plead in prayer to have 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 will 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 through the use of them to further the illusion. Therefore, prayer cannot 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 Father 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 Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation back and forth 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. Anyone who has ever remembered the littlest instant of the 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 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’s not necessarily there. Joining with Love in true prayer is asking for nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) so you find yourself receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of the mind) is a part 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 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 imagine you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for the mind 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 is not real; (c) you made a mistake; 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 nothing more than whatever you have chosen to become more important than God’s Love. un curso de milagros en espanol No longer wanting anything before His Love, the only 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:
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 wait for 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 can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not asking for 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 your brain process. They’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.