The Bread of Life

"He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." John 6:56
When Jesus said the above it drove a lot of people away. It says in John that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" John 6:66 It is, for many, a hard teaching to digest, pun intended. Obviously it is a metaphor that is meant to draw us into some contemplation. Jesus does this a lot, he wanted people to think things out and come to their own understanding. That way you appreciate the knowledge more than if it is just given to you simply. Often we quickly forget a truth that is simply given to us. The reason is that we didn't have to do any critical analysis. When you have to mull something over the knowledge becomes part of you. You understand it in your own way and are not just routinely repeating something memorized. We can teach parrots to memorize lots of words and phrases but they don't understand what they are saying. So what does it mean to eat his flesh and drink his blood? If we do that then how is he dwelling in us? The flesh is body, the solid foundation. The blood carries and circulates all of the nutrients we ingest, nourishing and rejuvenating all parts of the body. What was the body of Jesus. The answer of course was his teaching. Love, compassion, forgiveness, selflessness. This is the core or body of his teaching. If we "eat" and truly absorb this teaching it becomes us, and in turn Jesus dwells in us, as we awaken the Christ within us. We drink something to quench our thirst. Our thirsts can be our passions, our selfish desires, our inclination to be selfish or sinful. When we drink the blood of Christ our thirst is truly quenched. Our desires are no longer selfish because we see the world in a new way. What we desire changes. The old self of the world drops away and the new man is able to be born. The man that was always inside had been stifled with the mundane and worthless pursuits of material indoctrination. Our goal in life changes from what we can store up for ourselves to how can we serve and help others. This serving has to be done with no objective gain for ourselves or we are just caught up in another illusion. Serving has to be done for no other reason than to just serve. If we serve for any purpose we are engaging in just another ego building exercise. This is not an easy thing to do but it is really our true purpose in life.