Page 67 - ECOlogic Book

contemplation and reflection. The delicate balance of intimacy and distance,
so necessary in all relationship, can be well practiced with multiflora. And
this is how the earth speaks.

Slowly, as I learn with the multiflora has to teach, I learn more about my
own soul as well, for they are not different. “The soul”, says Moore, “the
mystery we glimpse when we look deeply into ourselves, is part of a larger
soul, the soul of the world, anima mundi. The world soul affects each
individual thing, whether natural or human-made. You have soul, the tree in
front of your house has a soul, - but so too does the car parked under that
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tree.” A car?!! Hold on! I haven’t done tick yet?

As I learn the language of the multiflora, I also begin to find myself. Carl
Jung explains how our own soul can be awakened by learning the language
of another living entity: “Concretely, a tree can tell us much in the language
of its form, texture, age, and color and in the way it presents itself as an
individual. But in this expression of itself, it is also showing us the secrets of
our own soul, for there is no absolute separation between the world’s soul
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and our own. We are truly the world, and the world is us.” Soul, says
Moore, is the unfathomable mystery that is the very seed and heart of each
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individual. It’s the seed and heart of you and the seed and heart of Gaia.
Same seed. Same heart.

And so, as I slowly, painfully, attempt to understand the language of this
new place, I know the difficulty of understanding one’s deepest self as well.
I contemplate my own thorns and blooms, and, befuddled as I often am
about who I am and why I’ve made the choices I’ve made, I open to a larger
world as I consider Thomas Moore’s words: “it takes a broad vision to know
that a piece of the sky and a chunk of the earth lie lodged in the heart of
every human being, and that if we are going to care for that heart we will
have to know the sky and earth as well as human behavior.”
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85 IBID, P. 267-268.

86 IBID, (Quoted on P. 281).

87 IBID, P. 19.

88 IBID, P. 20.

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