The tree

My last post has inspired many interesting and helpful comments, one of which spurred me to a burst of poetic eloquence. I like it, so I'm putting it up as a separate blog entry. Be warned that, because of a sinus infection, I am currently taking prescription cough medicine laced with codeine; thus, what follows may be only the ravings of a fatigued and drug-addled brain.

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My best guess - which is only a guess - is that Mind does give rise to the physical cosmos, and that in some mysterious way our own individual minds are minuscule offshoots of this larger Mind.

Here's an image: There is a tree deeply rooted in good soil, with a profusion of leaves on its branches. Soil, roots, trunk, branches, and leaves are all one system, and when the leaves drop off they will return to the soil as nutrients. The soil is Universal Consciousness, the ground of being. The roots the means of translating the soil's stored energy into the form of a growing tree (i.e., translating Mind into physicality). The tree trunk and branches are the physical world. The leaves are our own individual consciousnesses, separate from each other, but grouped together, and fed by the same root system that supports the whole tree. And our ultimate fate is to drop from the branch, lose our form, rejoin the soil, and merge with the ground of being.