Plotkin says that encounters with spirit is a transcendent experience. However, encounters with soul takes us on a spiritual descent. He reveals how humans are the only species that need instructions as to what our purpose is in the larger Earth community. For example, Salmon need no instructions as to how to swim upstream to spawn. Monarch butterflies need no instructions as to how to navigate from Canada to Mexico to winter in the same oyamel forests where their great, great, great, great grandparents clustered. He encourages us to seek out a soul encounter in order to find our ecological niche and the metaphor that will give us a sense of our place in the larger world. He encourages us to do the necessary work to become true “adults.” And he points out that being an adult has nothing to do with our chronological age. His work reminds us of the work of Earth Elder, Thomas Berry who tells us that we must “reinvent, a sustainable human culture by a descent into our pre-rational, our instinctive resources.” We do this work in order to give our gifts back to the web of life and become embedded in life-enhancing activities.
