Therefore Jung postulated an unus mundus, a unitary world, which when observed from outside appears as matter and when observed from inside appears as the collective unconscious. – Marie-Louise Von Franz

Our birthright vitality and consciousness, from which the technological world likes to separate us, remain rooted in the adaptability of our bodies and the organic world. – Joanna Gardner

… a symbol is the best possible expression for something that cannot be expressed otherwise than by a more or less close analogy. – C. G. Jung

I sometimes wonder why I am so fascinated by birds and also why welcoming the same species, and even the same individuals, to my backyard every day never gets old. Each day my backyard birds bring the same joy to my heart and grace me with the same feelings of lightness, childlike wonder, and enchantment. Every time I see a bird, it’s as if I am seeing it for the first time.

If you were to ask me why birds play such an important role in my life, I wouldn’t be able to give you a clear and direct answer. I’d probably tell you that they’re special, that I feel a profound affinity for and connection to them, or that they feel something like an extension of me. I might even say they’re “magical.” Each of those responses points to something ineffable, to a relationship with elements of the natural world that defies description, and that we know intuitively by its effects upon our spirit.

Jung would likely say that birds are symbolically important to me, that they represent a condensation of unconscious processes that cannot be fully explained in words, but that find their correlates in analogy alone. A bird, like the rest of nature, is a manifestation of energy in the field of time and space, the same energy that is embodied in the collective unconscious in archetypal form. A bird, then, is also a metaphor.

That feeling of symbolic, or ineffable, connection to nature, or connection by analogy only, is a perception of the original oneness, what Jung called the unus mundus. This is something like the womb of the Great Mother, or the undifferentiated whole of creation. The original oneness is beyond words and can be pointed to by analogy alone.

As I was journaling about these ideas early yesterday morning, I found myself staring out my living room window at the trees in my backyard. One, in particular, had fixed my attention, and as I stared at it, a small voice in the back of my mind reminded me, “This is also you.” Every landscape we walk is also an internal landscape. Every element of nature has the potential to be symbol of profound significance, and when the unconscious chooses a symbol, it is revealing something important to us. It is showing us something we need to learn about ourselves. It is leading us down a path to healing, showing us a future direction, or simply giving us something to love. But most importantly, I think, symbols give us a sense of mystery in our lives.

Nature and consciousness complete one another. They are inextricable parts of the original oneness. We need nature in order to know who we are and to experience ourselves as part of a great mystery. Tending to nature and tending to our souls is one and the same. Indeed, as I write this, I am watching two squirrels chase one another across my back porch. (One just knocked over a flower pot.) They, too, are extensions of me. We embody the same vitality (and downright mischievous energy), and when I tend to them by providing food, water, and a small piece of habitat, I am tending to my own soul.