The Purpose of Prayer

While most of us have been brought up to trust that prayer involves pleading to God to help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A TRAINING COURSE in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and very 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 until the 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 ask for (agree with) in the mind. a course in miracles There is no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing continuously 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 can cease anytime by correcting the mind (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of your brain as God has nothing to do with forms.

What Prayer isn’t:



Since you are always deciding, what you ask for when you pray is what matters. When 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 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 nowadays, etc. They are everything you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the purpose of prayer through the use of them to help expand the illusion. Therefore, prayer can’t 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 daddy. God gave this gift of Love to His Son at Creation so that it’s 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 continues to be something special 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. Anyone who has ever remembered the littlest instant of the all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he could be choosing (praying for) and how to change his mind so he is able to have that all the time.

True Prayer and Forgiveness:

True prayer is: (1) asking to get 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 necessarily there. Joining with Love in true prayer is requesting nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) which means you end up receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.

Forgiveness (correction of your brain) is a part 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 the mind to the 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 focus on disregarding and quitting the things you think you want 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 are a mind; (b) this form world is not real; (c) you made a blunder; 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 only whatever you have chosen to be 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 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 await the solution. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. If you must decide on the spot, you’ll get the correct “need” answer right then.A remedy can be an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You’re 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 during the correction of the mind process. They’re met at the level of the forgiveness ladder you can understand and accept.