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 in this world, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is quite 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 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 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 (all things 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 your brain (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of the mind as God has nothing to do with forms.
What Prayer is Not:
Since you are always deciding, everything you ask for when you pray is what counts. When 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 which will remain hidden to the amount 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 everything you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the purpose of prayer by using them to further the illusion. Therefore, prayer cannot be about “forms” or “needs” in any way.
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 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’s a single voice shared by both the Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation back and forth extends them forever in eternity. That is prayer’s purpose.
In 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 method that you reach God in the illusion. Whoever has ever remembered the tiniest instant of the all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he is choosing (praying for) and how exactly to change his mind so he can have that all the 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 give up the ego forms or what is not necessarily 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 the mind) is a part of true prayer and makes the procedure go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder in time that returns the mind to the endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears when 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 giving up the things you imagine you want and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this requests the mind to be returned to Truth (Love). You are not furthering the illusion. course in miracles You are agreeing with God that (a) you’re 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 only whatever you have chosen to become more important than God’s Love. No more wanting anything before His Love, the only real effect God could return can be your remembrance of Him. The more you give up, the more meaningless the world 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 have to decide alone and should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and wait for the solution. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. If you must decide on the spot, you’ll receive the appropriate “need” answer right then.An answer can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You’re not requesting the echo itself. You are 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 the mind process. They are met at the amount of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.
