John 6:56 · World English Bible
John 6:56 Meaning He Who Eats My Flesh and Drinks
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in him.
What does John 6:56 mean?
To take in the flesh and blood of the teacher is to make his way of seeing wholly one's own, so completely that no separation is left between the mind and what it has learned. This is not an act of the body, which can join with nothing, but a total sharing of purpose.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
John 6:56 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
To take in the flesh and blood of the teacher is to make his way of seeing wholly one's own, so completely that no separation is left between the mind and what it has learned. This is not an act of the body, which can join with nothing, but a total sharing of purpose. When a mind stops holding love at a distance and lets it become the very thing it thinks with, the old sense of being alone dissolves.
Dwelling is mutual because love and the mind that accepts it are not two things. A mind that fully receives this teaching finds it was never outside, and that what it welcomed had been its own truth all along.
Flesh: the living substance of the teacher's way of seeing, taken in and made one's own until it is no longer separate. Blood: the shared life beneath the teaching, the truth that flows into a mind willing to receive it completely.
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Christian Psychology lens
Live John 6:56 today
- Take one thing you believe about love and actually live it today, in one small concrete act, instead of just agreeing with it. Belief you have eaten feels different from belief you have read.
- With one person, drop the small distance you keep, the polite version of yourself, the half honest answer. Let them all the way in and see that you were never as alone as you felt.
- When you are stressed and your kindness becomes a technique you apply to people, stop performing it. Let it be what you are thinking with, not a tool you reach for.
What do I keep at arm's length, that is already my own truth?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
Do not study the teaching from the outside. Eat it, until there is no distance left between you and how you see.
Sufism · Rumi
The lover and the beloved stop being two. What you took in becomes what you are, and the longing ends in belonging.
Bhagavad Gita
I am in you and you are in me. This is not a reward for the devoted; it is the truth they finally stopped keeping at arm's length.
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