While just about everyone has been brought up to believe that prayer involves pleading to God to greatly help, save, fix problems and bring us things in this world, that is not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is fairly different and incredibly 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 correct the mind until the Prayer Song is all that remains. It is the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, is worth enough 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 (trust) in the mind. There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you also are choosing constantly 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 your brain as God has nothing in connection with forms.
What Prayer is Not:
Since you are always deciding, what you ask for once you pray is what matters. When you plead in prayer to have God fix an application 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 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 through the use of them to further the illusion. Therefore, prayer can’t 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 daddy. God gave this gift of Love to His Son at Creation so that it is 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.
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 your brain. It’s the method that you reach God in the illusion. Anyone who has ever remembered the tiniest 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 the 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 your brain) 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 end up 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 with time that returns your brain 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 is 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 are 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 your brain (forgiveness) places those forms and needs on God’s altar, or in his hands, as idols which are nothing more than 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 quit, the more meaningless the planet becomes and the faster you sing His Song.
un curso de milagros 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 answer. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must make a decision 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 asking for the echo itself. You’re 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 your brain process. They are met at the level of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.