Bring God Into Your Life
by
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Remember, connecting to people is part of being connected to God.
Exercise I
- Find a comfortable seated position in a safe quiet place. Choose a time of day when you are well rested, a time when you are not in a rush, not hungry, have no chores that need doing and are not distracted.
- Close your eyes and focus on your breathing.
- In whichever way you visualize God, visualize God giving you the breath of life.
- Take three breaths. With every breath say, " Breathe in the good, breathe out the bad."
- Remember a time when you were in love, focusing on your feelings.
- Remember your feelings or envision them at the moment you learned that the one with whom you were in love loved you in return.
- Envision yourself the very next day, focusing on your feelings of joy and elation.
- Do you remember that there was nothing that could have bothered you that day? Life was beautiful. Everything was good. You had warm feelings for everyone.
- Remember the degree to which you cared about your friends, your classmates and your co-workers.
- Recall that your thoughts and feelings were focused exclusively on the one with whom you were in love.
- Repeat to yourself, "This is the way it must be to be filled with the Spirit of God!"
- Now, stay exactly in the mood you are in!
Exercise II
- In whichever way you choose, picture yourself part of a community of people who are as revitalized as you are.
- Now, picture thousands of people, all of whom are Spirit filled. In whichever way you would envision it, envision them joining together in a pious celebration of God’s gifts.
- Imagine these people at work and at play. Picture them with their families and with each other, joyous and loving, in harmony with the divine within themselves and within others.
- Imagine different ways those who were touched express themselves now that they are spiritually revived.
- 5. Repeat to yourself as many times as is meaningful, " O God, renew a right spirit within me" (Ps. 46:1).
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Dr. Rettek has written an engaging book intended mainly, but not exclusively, for those who have long searched for the spiritual fulfillment that comes of God being part of their lives.
He attributes this lack of spiritual fulfillment to a widespread alienation from God and from people, existing in the more technologically advanced nations of the world. The alienation itself is the result of the on-going dehumanization of the individual as a social being that plagues our contemporary society. Remaining within the medical model, he describes alienation as an illness likening it to autism, the condition affecting an equally intangible but important inherent human quality. As autism affects our ability to relate, alienation affects our ability to develop a sense of belonging, of being connected.
His treatment of choice is spiritual healing, until recently the province of God-centered people for whom it has long been the way to spiritual renewal and points to the benefits of spiritual healing in ameliorating the often-debilitating effects of many disorders, both physical and emotional. Following an overview of the need for healing, a discussion of the obstacles most often preventing healing from taking place and a description of the means by which they can be surmounted, he arrives at the heart of the book, the instruction guide section.
This section consists of a detailed, carefully explained program of exercises intended to provide the skills needed to restore or create for the first time our connections to God and to people. Some familiarity with a few well-known Bible stories is all that is needed. The exercises are arranged sequentially so that one may find the degree of spiritual fulfillment at which he or she is most comfortable. Or, by completing the program, the reader can develop a personal relationship with God. With God now brought into one’s life, one can choose to live in the presence of God, unceasingly.
Drawing on his psychiatric background, Dr. Rettek incorporates various therapeutic techniques into the instruction portion of the book i.e. insight, visualization, education and identification of feelings. Adding to the book’s interest are scriptural readings, poetry and a view of the world as illuminated by the presence of God.
About the Author
Dr. Rettek has been writing fictionalized accounts of his varied experiences, seemingly forever. Like Marco Polo with whom he likes to identify, he always wanted to share the wonder and excitement he had experienced in finding himself involved in fulfilling and often bittersweet, adventures. This time he has taken us with him on an unforeseen journey, one that developed into an illuminating search for spiritual fulfillment.
His interests have often evolved into literary pieces. He wrote a series of articles, for Private Practice, a magazine for physicians, including, How I found An Old Cure For New Problems. His interest in photography evolved into a three-act play, Valentine, a supposal about Eugene Atget who was among the world’s greatest photographers. Stemming from his longstanding involvement with painting, he wrote the screenplay, Molly and the Wine Dark Sea, portraying the conflict between the purism of art and the demands of practical reality.
He also wrote two fictionalized biographical accounts, Myron’s World, a collection of short stories about a twelve-year-old boy growing up on the Lower East Side of New York during the Great Depression and The Calling, a book dealing with the tribulations of a medical student wrestling with both life and the challenges of studying medicine in a foreign land.
His collected short stories include Malka and the Wolf Man, the story of a young woman, whose parents, murdered by Cossacks during a pogrom, appear to her in the night, pleading with her to avenge their death so that they can cease their eternal wandering in the Land of the Dead.
Almost forty years of involvement with people at their most open and vulnerable moments as a family practitioner, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst has given him the experience that enables him to write about people with a considerable degree of authenticity.
Dr. Rettek is a member of the Retired Reserve, USAF. Trained as a specialist in Aerospace Medicine, his trouble shooting assignments included bases in the United States and Europe. When he separated from the Air Force as Colonel in command of a Medical Service Squadron, he was the oldest crewmember on flying status with prior World War II service.
He and his wife, Susan, a jewelry designer, live in New York by the sea where they enjoy their children and grandchildren and live each day in joyous celebration of God’s many gifts.