While just about everyone has been brought up to believe 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 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 correct the mind before Prayer Song is all that remains. It’s the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, will probably be worth enough time in retraining the mind.

Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego predicated on what you require (agree with) in the mind. There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing at all times with a side as cause for effect.Forms (all things of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve made it up (miscreated this world) and will 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:



Since you are always deciding, everything you ask for once you pray is what matters. Once you plead in prayer to have 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 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 objective of prayer through the use of them to help expand 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 Father to the Son and returned from the Son to the Father. God gave this gift of Love to His Son at Creation so that it is a single voice shared by both the Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation back and forth extends them forever in eternity. That’s 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 the mind. It’s how 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 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 the mind) to stop the ego forms or what is not necessarily there. a course in miracles 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 the mind) is a section of true prayer and makes the process go quicker. Prayer is timeless and continues on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder with time that returns your brain 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 is to focus on disregarding and giving up the things you think you want and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for the mind 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 is not real; (c) you made a mistake; 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 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 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 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. In the event that 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’re 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 amount of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.