Abbreviated A Standing Order by Neville Goddard and The Lord's Prayer from Fenton's Translation.

"A Standing Order" is a lecture by Neville Goddard regarding the proper attitude to have for praying. The title comes from an observation made by Ferrar Fenton (1832-1920), that the nature of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6: 9-13 and Luke 11: 1-4) is that of a standing order, "a thing to be done absolutely, and continuously."

The Lord's Prayer as Fenton saw it:

"For your Father knows your necessities before you ask Him. Consequently, you must pray in this way: Our Father in the Heavens; your name must be being hallowed; your kingdom must be being restored; your will must be being done, both in Heaven and upon the Earth. Give us to-day our to-morrow's bread; and forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us, for you would not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from its evil." (The Lord's Prayer, The Complete Bible in Modern English, emphasis Goddard’s).

My own observation is that the Lord's Prayer is not a prayer at all; it is an attitude of confidence to strike, parenthetical instructions for a form of meditation, guidance to the "frame of mind" that is to be had in that form of prayer. The Lord's Prayer is set of directions regarding how to pray, not words to recite. It is a manual for a mystical exercise, because these guys were mystics -- this is what they did. We are supposed to be mystics, too. Life is supposed to be an ecstasy.

We have to understand the point of view of the authors, which is that Jesus Christ is the spirit of God within us. He knows the mind of every man because he IS the mind of every man. Jesus Christ is that spirit of God who became man that man might become God. We actually are God (there isn’t anything that isn’t), but we presently need to reacquire consciousness of that fact.

Says Neville in A Standing Order: “If I use the word 'God', or the word 'Christ', the word 'Jesus', the word "Lord', and in any way it conveys the sense of an existent someone or something outside of yourself, you have the wrong concept of God or Christ! We are told, ‘Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Do you not realize that you are the temple of the living God, and the spirit of God dwells in you?’”

There is no distance or separation in these states. "In" means is. Or maybe I should say "as." The only distance between God and us is our lack of understanding that there is no distance. And he is working on that.

In the event of my own baptism in the Holy Spirit, in a meditative state I saw the figure of a man raised from the mud of the earth. I watched as the mud was made into bone and sinew, muscle and blood and skin. The man became alive, shocked and confused at its own existence, and wandered off wondering what to do.

I watched as consciousness aware that I was watching, and I felt compassion for the ignorant man-animal. Empathetically imagining its point of view, I became the one having that point of view. I guess I annexed his brain, because instead of wandering in blind instinct, he became imbued with my consciousness, the power of thought and speech, and he, or rather we, became a deliberate being. I became totally involved in being him and completely forgot that I was ever anything else.

I admit I am an alien invader. And so are you.

The thing to remember is that we are God. Not a god, nor becoming gods, not "like" or "as" God -- we, the conscious beings that we are dwelling in the bodies of humans -- are God. We are not sharing or stealing his glory: we are his glory. However, we became completely ignorant of our own divine nature when we entered the ignorance of humans. We forgot that we were ever anything else, but God hasn't forgotten us! Our connection with him has never been severed, nor can it ever be. He shall lose none. Not one in all eternity. Jesus Christ is our live-wire connection.

So, with this comprehension, this view of truth that we are the spirit of the eternal Living God and God is ultimately in control, we approach the task of praying. Shall we beg and plead or wonder if we are being heard? Should we fear that we have offended God and are rejected??

For certain, our lives in this ignorance are at a variance to the holiness of our Father, but also as certain is the fact that we are in his program of forming himself in this dimension. This is his doing -- all of it.

With that in mind, that this literally is God’s doing and that he has issued standing orders which are to be obeyed absolutely and continuously, we SUBMIT to his lordship and acknowledge in attitude that these things ARE: "According to your standing orders, your nature (in me) must be being hallowed, your kingdom (in me) must be being restored, your will (regarding me) must be being done -- as in heaven, so also on earth. This is YOUR doing, I am in agreement and I completely accept what you are doing."

You see? The Lord's Prayer is a frame-of-mind to be had, an attitude to be struck. "You have issued standing orders that demand and receive obedience. This is my reliance, that my divine nature is at all times receiving your attention: you will provide my needs."

It is just like when we sought the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the only thing we could do to get it was to relinquish our self-lordship and receive what was freely given. Well, the baptism in the Holy Spirit isn't the only thing we get that way, but everything else, too! This is what the Lord's Prayer is all about -- He knows our necessities, surrender and receive them.

Like the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the world is ours for the asking and receiving. But we have to ask -- we have to be involved, for our attention and involvement in the right attitude is being cultivated. Godding is a full-time enterprise, and we are being trained for management positions. The frame-of-mind engendered is a door for us to go through -- relinquishment is a portal to his power. We surrender to a divine experiment: "How fully can you surrender and not be afraid?" (Frank C. Laubach. His Letters by a Modern Mystic (Fleming H. Revell, 1937) -- in my opinion one of the greatest books on Christianity ever; this quote, though, is from Open Windows, Swinging Doors (Regal Books, G/L Publications, 1955), p. 24).

The proper frame of mind to establish is that we are submitted and relying on him and cognizant of our receiving of God's attention under his standing orders. Then, we ask to be set right, for our lives to be corrected in concert with him. We must undertake our part of the enterprise, which is that anything of us that failed or in any way was not as perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect be submitted for forgiveness and correction. It was "sin"; it missed the mark of what God knows we need, and the standing orders are for such errors to be corrected. We engage the lordship of him who loved us and gave himself for us.

We submit our sins to him, because we need what went wrong to be corrected. Otherwise they will proceed into our future to confront us there. We create our own afflictions in this world because our sins go round and round until they get corrected. We need to own up so that the Father might forgive them (which is to correct them) and break the cycle.

How? This is a dream world. Sure, it is a physical, concrete reality, but it is also a dream. Sorry, but all your gold is cankered – it is a dream. We create our reality by imagining, and we are quite miserable at it. We take whatever misery-creating imaginings we sinned with today and imagine the right thing that should have happened. We imagine what would have been right, noble, pure, clean and acceptable for us to have thought and done. We imagine it vividly, experientially, feelingly, and repeatedly until it "takes on all the tones of reality."

What will be the bread of experience tomorrow, we receive as imagination today. The sin is forgiven and we will not be tempted by its evil again.

This is a dream world. The instructions in the Lord’s Prayer sets the tone for dreaming correctly.