Mass

An approach to the sense of wholeness, the communal whole or collective mind, or to the Christ. See: Meetings with Christ; archetype of Christ.

In an inner sense the wine or spirit used in the celebration of the mass represents a life changing influence, an influx of power or potential – i.e. a deep self acceptance allowing new and often life-changing experience and energy both from within and from other people and events. In this sense the alcohol or spirit is probably used by the unconscious in dreams because the conscious self often feels helpless, or has to surrender control, in order to allow the up flow of what is potential or innate within you to emerge. It therefore relates to drunkenness – drunk with the spirit. See last example below. Here is a man’s experience of exploring his dream about being drunk because men had poured alcohol into him. See alcohol

 Example: As I allowed this I had a deep sense that this represented a profound self acceptance, but also an acceptance of my life situation. I can see this in that I am no longer struggling to climb out of building work or common everyday life. The men in the dream I felt as ordinary everyday life experience, and they were pouring the spirit of life on and into me. In other words the acceptance of everyday life opens to a connection with the roots of life within oneself – life that is both common and ordinary, yet profound. At this first part of the dream I also had an image that I was drinking the blood of thousands of human beings. I don’t mean I was drinking lots of blood, but that I was drinking the essence of their lives. This had in it the experience of taking in a huge realm of everyday life. It was the taking in, the acceptance of a wide range of human experience – everything from deep sexuality to religious realms of the supersensual. This I felt was what the wine used in Mass represented.

The lifting of the chalice represents the spiritualisation of the wine – but in fact it is only a symbol unless we feel inside us that we are taking in the blood – “drinking the essence of their lives”.

The bread is also a wonderful representation of what is holy in our everyday experience.

My experience of the meaning of this came about because my awareness was lifted up and spread over the immensity of time, and from this condition I was shown the beginning of things.

I cannot say I saw this, more that I experienced the condition of the beginning. And this condition was the gathering together of what I understood to be a whole universe that had previously existed. All that had existed had come to such unity that although this beginning was physical, it was also, in its unity, a being. It had awareness. This awareness did not exist in what we know as space and time.

As I experienced this I felt as if a resolution between science and religion had taken place in me. For here was something like the condition science suggests preceded the ‘big bang’. But what had been left out, I realised, was this consciousness, this immense being. For all life had here found a unity in one immense being beyond my comprehension. It was, in fact, difficult to grasp because I was overcome by emotion as I witnessed this.

This great consciousness had longed that other beings might exist. But in its present form this was impossible. Then I understood something that tore my heart to pieces, as it still does today when I dwell on the memory of the experience. This being purposefully went about destroying itself so that our present universe – we – might have existence. It was such a wondrous action for it was done in such a way, with such skill, with such love and self-sacrifice, such art and science, that its very death was a magnificent creative act. In other words its death struck into action forces and effects that created the universe in all its variety. This death is what we know as the ‘big bang’. It created time and space and the very special circumstances of the ‘death’ set in motion the forces that brought about a very particular universe. Without the particular influences set in motion there could easily have been a universe without any ‘space’ for individual awareness. It could have been a universe where everything was purely automated. It could have been many things.

As I experienced this, I realised that everything, every atom, every living thing that exists is a part of that wondrous being. There is nothing that is not of its love. So that whatever arises in the universe arises out of, and as, THAT. The human sense of God is a realisation of the very substance of our own existence. The awe we might feel is from an intuition of what has been given us as our own being.

So the bread, which represents the very ordinary and everyday source of our existence and nourishment, is in fact the very being of God that we eat. But we need to be aware of what we do in eating to make it holy. See big bang

Useful Questions and Hints:

Can you be aware that you are taking in and living the holy all the time?

Will you let your life reflect the holy that you are?

The bread and food you eat are all the creation of the universe?

See Enlightenment – Self Help – Life – Summing Up