Sacred symbols, worship, and ritual can, by their penetrating power, dissolve old ways and boundaries of thinking and allow us to reunify ourselves at a higher level of consciousness, more neurologically complex and better integrated. Subjectively, this is reported as an experience of "flow," a loss of ego-self, diminishment of the normal subject-object distinction, a reduction of anxiety, and a gain in clarity, global consciousness, and a sense of wholeness. This is the state of consciousness we enter when we enter sacred time.
— Gary Eberle, Sacred Time and the Search for Meaning