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 in this world, that is 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 really is joyous exchange of Love and thanks between God and His Creations that employs the forgiveness process to improve 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 predicated on what you ask for (trust) 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 at all times 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 will cease anytime by correcting your brain (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of your brain as God has nothing to do with forms.
What Prayer isn’t:
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Because you are always deciding, what you ask for when you pray is what matters. When you plead in prayer to possess 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 will remain hidden to the amount 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 in this world, etc. They are everything 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 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 daddy. God gave this gift of Love to His Son at Creation in order that it is a single voice shared by both Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That’s prayer’s purpose.
Within 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 method that you reach God in the illusion. Anyone who has ever remembered the tiniest instant of the 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 enough time.
True Prayer and Forgiveness:
True prayer is: (1) asking to get what is already there, The Song; and, (2) on the way, using forgiveness (correction of the mind) to stop 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 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 with time that returns the mind to the endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears once the mind is totally 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’re agreeing with God that (a) you’re a mind; (b) this form world isn’t real; (c) you made a blunder; 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 whatever you have chosen to be more important than God’s Love. No longer wanting anything before His Love, the only real effect God could return can be 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:
Since 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 await the answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must make a decision on the spot, you’ll get 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 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 the mind process. They are met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.