Time out with God: Meditation: a Way to Spiritual Healing

By Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer

Time Out With God Meditation: A Way to Spiritual Healing, is a simple, uncomplicated how-to-do-it way to connectedness with the One who is the Source of Life and Love. Inspired by The Practice of the Presence by Brother Lawrence, this way of healing is needed more than ever in our chaotic and stressful world of today. Meditation can be so much more that what the Eastern transcendentalists present. We need to get to the Source of spiritual healing for the energy and tranquility available by through this time honored practice available for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462823277

Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer

Dr. Zillmer has spent more than eight decades studying God’s blessed revelations in the Bible. Part of his PhD research introduced him to the great truths of cultural myths, none more powerful than the ten which begin the Bible. Modern mankind has lost the ability to understand the purpose and relevance of myths. As we recover our understandings of this art form, the great truths that begin the Bible will open up. We will understand more fully why God chose this art form to begin to answer the ten great human questions, which are ultimately the message of the messenger from heaven—Jesus.

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Meditation:

A Way To Spiritual Health And Healing

Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer

Copyright © 2007 by Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Xlibris Corporation

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33742

Contents

PROLOGUE

FORWARD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

SUMMARY

APPENDIX ONE

The Good Shepherd Series

PROLOGUE

I cannot remember a time when nature and growing things did not have some special meaning for me. Growing up on a small dairy farm in northern Wisconsin, surrounded on three sides by miles of timber, the great silences of winter, the gorgeous autumn foliage, the spring’s awakening to life, and the lush summer living, all had special meanings for me. Early on, beauty and the richness of outdoor living were part of my life. As the oldest child I was often by myself, sometimes working on various farm projects, sometimes just wandering in the woods.

My family was, however, what is sometimes called unchurched. Both of my parents had been burned on religion They took the position that if we children wanted a religion in our lives we could make that decision when we were older.

One cold, wet, October day I was helping my father pull rutabagas for cattle feed during the long winter. A nicely dressed man came to us walking through the muddy field. He turned out to be a Lutheran minister. Somehow, he had learned that I was thirteen years old, a time when I could be entered into a confirmation class. Dad turned to me and asked if I wanted to go. I looked around at the cold, wet, muddy field of rutabagas, and thought, it has to be better than this! So I said yes.

For some reason, the classes appealed to me from the beginning. Somehow the outdoor life, the spiritual dimension of life, seemed to me to fit right into the Biblical commandments, stories, and teachings. It had never occurred to me that there weren’t spiritual beings around me. By the time I was confirmed I had made a commitment to follow the ways of what I understood to be God.

Then we moved to another farm distant from the church in which I was confirmed. It was World War II, with gas rationing, the 24/7 labor on a dairy farm, I seldom attended any church services until I left for college.

Meanwhile, I did what I thought I should do and what gave great comfort to me—I read the Bible, prayed as to a friend, and believed that God was as near and real to me as He was to the people in the Bible. The experiences were real to me! No one told me any different! I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life milking cows; I was going to college to learn to be a minister, or something in the church! I had an immediate, personal, and life-sustaining relationship with God, a friendship I thought everyone claiming to be a Christian had.

The following sixty years have only deepened that relationship. While I did not go to a mission field, or become an ordained minister of some denomination, I did become a college teacher, earned a PhD, and got a diploma in theology. During my many years of college and university teaching, I also taught adult Sunday School classes in church history and theology. At the same time I maintained that personal interaction with what I came to know as the Holy Spirit.

I shall relate one more key development. I was attending a church service one Sunday. They were reading the Gospel lesson from that last chapter of John. It’s the place where Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him. As the passages were being read, I heard a voice, loud and clear, in my consciousness, asking me the same questions, Lawrence, do you love Me? I was startled to say the least! I had never asked myself that question—just assumed that, well, yes, I did love Jesus. The questions Jesus asked Peter were very simple. First, Do you love Me more than these (things, relationships, etc.)? Then Are you committed (agape) to me in love? And finally, Are you My friend (phileis me)?

It was that love-bonding friendship idea that caught my heart. To be a friend of Jesus, that was the key! To share the Jesus kind of love with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, with the Holy Angels, with all people, including myself, and with this Creation I loved so much—that is what it is all about! So, as a bond-servant of Jesus, my love had grown until I can say yes to the phileis me!

The key to this relationship is communication. My doctorate is in Speech Arts and Sciences. So what could be more natural? The Deity is omnipresent, the Holy Spirit dwells in our unconscious, rising into our consciousness from time to time with moral directives, spiritual empowerments, and special experiences. All I had to do was to allow love to grow as it fed on that deepening love-bond.

Then I read The Practice of the Presence by Brother Lawrence. It made perfect sense! It explained what I had been doing all along! It was so good to read of another’s experiences with the same spiritual phenomena.

Of course I had heard people talk about meditating. When I encountered some Eastern writings on meditation, it seemed to me that they were missing two major ingredients; the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the need for the Jesus quality of love in action. The Holy Spirit is a divine being, living and vital, a source of the power needed for spiritual growth and development; especially in healing. And we do not go into meditation and prayer to become holy hermits separated from others. The Jesus way of love is extending our time, our energies, and our possessions for the spiritual welfare of others, AND THROUGH THAT OTHERS WE FIND OUR OWN SPIRITUAL GROWTH.

So that is what this work is about, to simply share what has become so precious to me, what has worked so well for so many down through the ages. We humans are all one flock in one pasture. It is time we share our spiritual experiences, join together in our spiritual love-bonds, and allow the Spirit that is Holy to guide and empower us for greater love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-discipline.

The spiritual journey is open to everyone, especially the needy, the hungry, the hurting, the lonely, and the captives trapped in their own belief boxes. It costs no money or monetary donations or contributions. The Practice of the Presence is open to every one of us wherever we are, however stressed out we may be, whether at work or at prayer. We can all learn to take time out, not for God, but with God.

Everyone has had some spiritual experiences, whether admitted to or not. These are the experiences that unite, empower, and heal us. The spiritual dimension of life is more than an idea, a mental belief system, a theology to be accepted or rejected; it is a life, a special way of living experientially, existentially, and personally.

This is not some new idea. Down through the ages, all who have walked this way of spiritual connectedness, from every tribe and people and tongue and nation of all times and places, have found a measure of spiritual well-being, and through that, a measure of healing. In whatever healing they have found, they have discovered an increased wholeness, a goal toward which everyone reaches. It is that wholeness which the Presence wishes to give to anyone who will walk the way. The Deity of Love wants to bless and enrich our lives right where we are, and then take us from wherever we are into larger dimensions of living, and on into the eternal dimensions of blessedness. It seems to me that it is all part of the natural growth and development, which is key to living in this marvelous Creation in which we live.

FORWARD

Why another book on meditation? With all the Eastern emphasis on meditation, with various gurus leading groups into finding some inner peace, with corporations setting aside time for meditation, why write another book on it?

We humans tend to vastly overcomplicate matters, especially on matters closely connected to our personal spiritual well-being. We have done so with this matter of prayer and meditation.

Perhaps everyone has meditated. Webster defines meditation as deep, continued thought, reflection. Haven’t we all done that when we try to think through something? What makes meditation on spiritual matters different?

This is not primarily a how-to-do-it book. This is a sharing of a life-long study and practice of this healing art. It is further based upon experiences of spiritual people down through the ages of our human existence:

Jesus told His disciples, during those few hours before His arrest and Crucifixion, These things I have spoken unto you that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:11, 12) The Jesus Way of Life, through love in action, is based upon close interpersonal communication between Himself and the Heavenly Father. Constantly, and especially before He had to make big decisions, He spent time in prayer and meditation with the Heavenly Father, ministered to by the Holy Angels. (Mark 6:31, Matthew 4:11, Luke 22:43)

Jesus spent so much time in prayer and meditation, not to escape from the world, but to better prepare Himself for His life of ministry in the world. Too often prayer and meditation have been regarded as escapism only, rather than as a way of building a stronger foundation for larger living while in our world.

Many how-to-do-it books focus upon reaching more deeply into oneself for the guidance and strength needed for daily living. This work will focus upon the indwelling Holy Spirit as a spiritual basis for our larger living. As will be seen, it is through a deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit, which indwells every human, from which the guidance and power can be found for the peace and quietude we so desperately need.

Many people, when they think of meditating, focus upon their own mind and body. For many, the spiritual component, if any, is a general mental connectedness to something outside the body. Meditation is not just a way to broaden one’s awarenesses, not just a way into mental tranquility, not just a way to find physical harmony, not just an energy source for healing, but a personal living encounter with our indwelling Holy Spirit.

Meditation and prayer is an avenue through which we can love-bond more deeply with our Heavenly Father, and with Jesus.

This is the three-fold foundation upon which this work on meditation is based:

(1) Meditation should not only be of benefit for myself, but should serve a larger benefit for those around me. Meditation is not simple escapism. It is time spent apart so any time with other relationships may be enriched.

(2) Meditation needs to be joined with our Higher Power, in this case the Holy Spirit, if it is to be of real guidance and empowerment for abundant living.

(3) The entire meditation experience is a basis for a growing love-bond with the Deity, our Self, other people, and the rest of this Creation, through the Jesus commandment, Love one another as I have loved you.

Our journey through life often ignores the Fourth Commandment, Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. In other words, take time out for God. We may argue over which day and where to go, but in order for us to live any kind of abundant life, we need to take time out for spiritual matters. And we aren’t going to find the time, we must make it. We certainly do that for other things we think are important.

After taking the time, then what? We can focus upon quieting our minds, reducing stress, connecting to something deep inside, but there is so much more. Let us reach beyond our immediate sensory experiences into something so much larger—the spiritual world. It is here all about us. Why limit ourselves? Why not use the ways and means suggested in the Bible and used by spiritual people everywhere down through the ages? Why not use meditation as a source of power for living, as Jesus did, instead of some form of escapism? Why not use the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent power of our indwelling Holy Spirit to guide and empower us for larger living? And why not allow ourselves to love-bond with the virtues of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-discipline, with the Way of Love lived and taught by Jesus, and finally, with our Good Shepherd Himself?

This kind of meditation is so much more than simple mind manipulation and mind-soothing. This is the avenue for real healing of our spirits, our emotions, our minds, and even our bodies. But real healing must deal with the spiritual, and that spiritual must include the realities of the three revelations of the Spiritual World, of the Creator in this Creation, of the Historical Jesus, and of our indwelling Holy Spirit. It is there for us. It is here for anyone.

The reality is that everyone has had some spiritual experiences. The question is, do we want more? That is the goal of this book on meditation—to share some of the more that is available for each one of us, taking us from where we are, wherever that is, and leading us deeper into the core of the love of our Creator. Why? For our more abundant living.

As with any experience, there are ways and means that work, and there are ways and means that don’t. It is similar to any other learning, there is a skill, a pathway, an attitude, that develops with usage and intuition. This pathway is open to any who will walk the Via Amor, the Way of Love, led by our Good Shepherd, who is love.

A key point is that we are not alone in this incredible adventure of living, this experience in interpersonal communication. There is that which seeks discovery, seeks our spiritual wholeness, an Infinite who seeks a love-bond with the finite, with every human. Incredible but true. We are not orphans in this world, unless we choose to be so. The Spiritual World of