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 in this world, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and very beautiful. More 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 before Prayer Song is all that remains. It’s 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 (agree with) in your brain. There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you also are choosing all the time with a side as cause for effect.Forms (all things 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 the mind as God has nothing in connection with forms.
What Prayer isn’t:
Because you are always deciding, everything you ask for when you pray is what counts. Once 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 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 in this world, 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 help expand the illusion. Therefore, prayer can’t be about “forms” or “needs” at all.
un curso de milagros 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 so that it’s a single voice shared by both Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That is prayer’s purpose.
In this form world of illusion, this prayer is still a gift from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in your brain. It’s the way 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 enough 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 asking for nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) so 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 goes on forever, and forgiveness is the illusory ladder with time that returns the mind 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 want 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’re 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 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 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:
Since the mind still resides with God, the Course says you don’t have to decide alone and really should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and await the solution. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. If you must decide on the spot, you’ll receive the correct “need” answer right then.An answer 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 amount of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.