While just about everyone has been brought up to trust that prayer involves pleading to God to help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that is not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly 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 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 your brain.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego predicated on what you ask for (agree with) in your brain. There is no other way. In the Course, the mind (content) is split between God and the ego; and you also are choosing at all times with a side as cause for effect.Forms (all things of this world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve made it up (miscreated this world) and will give it up 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:
Because you are always deciding, everything you ask for when 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 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 nowadays, etc. They are what 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 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 backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That is prayer’s purpose.
Within this form world of illusion, this prayer is still 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 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 give up 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) and that means you find yourself receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of your brain) is a section 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 the mind 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 would be to focus on disregarding and giving up the things you think you need and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this requests your brain to be returned to Truth (Love). You aren’t furthering the illusion. un curso de milagros en espanol You are agreeing with God that (a) you are a mind; (b) this form world isn’t 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 only whatever you have chosen to become more important than God’s Love. No more wanting anything before His Love, the only effect God could return can be your remembrance of Him. The more you quit, the more meaningless the world 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. If you must make a decision on the spot, you’ll receive the appropriate “need” answer right then.A remedy can be 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 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 it is possible to understand and accept.