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’s not true prayer nor its purpose. un curso de milagros Prayer in A TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and very 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, will probably be 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 require (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 (everything of this world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve managed to get up (miscreated this world) and can cease anytime by correcting your brain (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of the mind as God has nothing to do 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 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 which will 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 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 help expand 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 Father to the Son and returned from the Son to the Father. 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 backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That is prayer’s purpose.
Within 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 littlest instant of this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he could be 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 get what is already there, The Song; and, (2) along 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 requesting nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) so you find yourself 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 goes on forever, and forgiveness is the illusory ladder with time that returns the mind to this 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 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’re agreeing with God that (a) you are a mind; (b) this form world isn’t real; (c) you made a mistake; 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 nothing more than anything you have chosen to become 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 give up, 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 need 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 make a decision on the spot, you’ll receive the correct “need” answer right then.A remedy 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 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 you can understand and accept.