Morning dew drops hang glistening on the vine leaves. The summer sunrise sparkles in them like prismatic starlight. Skyward has grown the vine in its natural way. Clinging, climbing, and encircling the trunk and limbs of the old oak tree. It is natural for the tree to grow, to reach for the sky. The vine, too, follows its calling to ascend, chasing the sunlight on the wings of the tree. The relationship is beneficial indeed for the vine initially but will inevitably bring calamity to both as the tree is constricted, ultimately to the point of collapse.
The vines of thought and action grow similarly in our lives, and may ultimately choke both mind and body to the point of decrepitude. Unconscious behavior patterns, habits, and beliefs take hold and left unchecked can control or cripple their host. These vines of thought, conscious or not, take on a life of their own. At one point, they may have served us well, may have been too pretty to cut, glistening in the morning dew. But as they deepen their grip, they are capable of distorting or debilitating the heart and soul of a being.
Finding our concept of self in the mirror is one thing. Seeing the inner, ever creeping patterns that twist and shape within us, forming the person only we do not see, is quite another. Left untended, we like the trees in the wild woods, run the risk of becoming misshapen over time, even broken, by that which once seemed harmless and small.
Sensing imbalance, a pull to the unhealthy, chronic discomfort in mind or body are all clues to the presence of these binds within. The human body and mind ache for freedom from pain, constriction, and servitude. All vines have a beginning. They have roots. These can be found (if we dare to face the less flattering interpretation of ourselves). There, at the source, the cutting and digging up of that which does not serve us may begin. As the loss of sustenance suffuses the severed unhealthy physical and ideological tendrils, they lose their power and eventually fall away. We see freedom glistening in the summer morning dew as the binds of a lifetime begin their unraveling.
