While just about everyone has 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 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 correct the mind until the 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 your brain.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego based on what you require (agree with) in the mind. There is no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you also 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 may cease anytime by correcting your brain (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of your brain 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 how 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’s already there, The Song; and, (2) along 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 requesting 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 part of true prayer and makes the procedure go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness is 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 concentrate on disregarding and quitting the things you think you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for 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 is not 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 nothing more than whatever you have chosen to be more important than God’s Love. a course in miracles No longer 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 have to decide alone and should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and await the solution. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must make a decision on the spot, you’ll receive the correct “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 are 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 through the correction of your brain process. They’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.
