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 is not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and incredibly beautiful. Greater than a song, it 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 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 ask for (agree with) in your brain. There is absolutely 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 (everything of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve managed to get 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 is Not:
Since you are always deciding, what you ask for when you pray is what counts. 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 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 everything you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the objective of prayer through the use of them to further the illusion. Therefore, prayer cannot be about “forms” or “needs” at all.
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 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 back and forth 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 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 is able to have that all enough time.
True Prayer and Forgiveness:
True prayer is: (1) asking to receive what’s already there, The Song; and, (2) on the way, using forgiveness (correction of the mind) to stop the ego forms or what’s 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.
un curso de milagros en espanol Forgiveness (correction of your brain) is a section of true prayer and makes the process go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness is the illusory ladder in time that returns your brain to the endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears once 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 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 are not furthering the illusion. 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 your brain (forgiveness) places those forms and needs on God’s altar, or in his hands, as idols which are nothing more than anything 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 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:
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. In the event that you must decide on the spot, you’ll get the correct “need” answer right then.An answer is an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You’re not asking for 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’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.