04-24-19 What is Prayer
We often associate prayer with asking for something a means of getting what we want, an answer to a problem we need to solve. It can be a request to have something in form such as a house, new car, relationship etc. In this talk, we will discover that these are not really prayers. What we are asking for is better illusions to build a better self-concept. In A Course in Miracles a prayer is a letting go of everything we think we know and want, allowing the truth to reveal it’s self to us. Prayer is a giving up of the self we made to return to loves presences.\
Our problem lies in this split between a body identity and our Spirit identity for both we cannot have. One must be false and one must be true. “Although you are one Self, you experience yourself as two; as both good and evil, loving and hating, mind and body. This sense of being split into opposites induces feelings of acute and constant conflict and leads to frantic attempts to reconcile the contradictory aspects of this self-perception. You have sought many such solutions, and none of them has worked. The opposites you see in you will never be compatible. But one exists.” W-pI.96.1.
For us to know our true Self and let go of the split mind we can follow this prayer from A Course in Miracles as a guide to letting go of everything we think we know “Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.”- A Course in Miracles W-pI.189.7.
