Yes Steve our appreciation to this Earth and our relationships experienced... Seems there is a real weight to it that may captivate the Soul...
In the same teachings, and I will quote you the link for the full read(it's a long one) Inayat Khan speaks of limitation that has helped placed things in perspective and yet again aligns with your thinking....
The whole matter is explained by Rumi in his Masnavi, 'Our life on earth is as a captivity, an imprisonment.' An imprisonment in what? In a physical body, which covers the light of the soul. And the mind is also helplessly attached to the body. It is the bodily desires, passion, anger, appetite, all the different desires and needs, that make the mind helpless and make man hold on to them. All the worries, anxieties, depressions, and despairs arise from them. There is not a single moment in which the mind is able to stand aloof so as to reflect the light within, the light of the soul, so limited has it been made by the limited existence on earth. In reality this is the whole tragedy of human life.
The one and only thing that hinders man from advancing spiritually, or at least from advancing towards the goal, for which he is destined, and which he is longing to attain, is this: that the mind is so absorbed by the demands and wants of the physical body that it has hardly a moment to give itself entirely to the reflection of the light of the soul.
https://wahiduddin.net/mv2/VII/VII_22.htmRumi has said in the Masnavi that life on earth is a captivity of the soul. When one looks at the bubble in which the air has been caught by the water, one sees the meaning of Rumi's words that something which is free to move about becomes a captive of the atoms of water for a time, and loses its freedom for that moment.
Man in all conditions of life, whatever be his rank, position or possessions, has trouble, pains and difficulties. Where do these come from? From his limitations. But if limitations were natural, why should he not be contented with his troubles? Because limitation is not natural to the soul; the soul, which is by nature free, feels uncomfortable in the life of limitation. In spite of all that this world can offer, when the soul experiences the highest degree of pain it refuses everything in order to fly from the spheres of the earth, and seek the spheres of liberty and that freedom which is the soul's destination. There is a longing hidden beneath all the other longings which man has, and that longing is freedom. This longing is sometimes satisfied by walking in the solitude, in the woods, when one is left alone for a time, when one is fast asleep, when even dreams do not trouble one; and when one is in meditation, in which for a moment the activities of body and mind are both suspended. Therefore the sages have preferred solitude, and have always shown love for nature; and they have adopted meditation as the method of attaining that goal which is the freedom of the soul.
There are five spheres of which the soul can be conscious. What are these spheres? They are the different shells, each shell having its own world.
The first sphere of which man becomes conscious after his birth on earth is Nasut, a sphere which is commonly known as the physical plane. How are the comforts and discomforts of this sphere experienced? By the medium of the physical body; and when there is something wrong with an organ of the senses the soul is deprived of that particular experience that it would like to have on this physical plane. The physical body is susceptible to all changes of climate and becomes dependent in its experience and expression, thus making the soul dependent and limited. Therefore, with all the riches that the world can give, man, who is only conscious of this sphere is limited. 'God is free from all wants, it is ye that are needy,' says the Quran.
When the soul is born on earth its first expression is a cry. Why does it cry? Because it finds itself in a new place which is all strange to it. It finds itself in captivity, which it has not experienced before. Every person, every object is new, and is something foreign to this soul; but soon this condition passes away. Soon the senses of the infant become acquainted with the outer life which so continually attracts its attention. It first becomes interested in breathing the air of the world, then in hearing the sounds, and then in seeing the objects before it; then in touching them and then its taste develops. The more familiar the soul becomes with this physical world the more interested it becomes; though sometimes it shows homesickness in the fits of crying that it so often has during its infancy. It is not always illness; it is not always that it is crying for things outside. No doubt, as it grows it longs for things outside itself; but it often cries from the feeling of having been removed from a place which was more pleasant and comfortable, and having come to a foreign land of which it knows so little. It is this which causes the infant to have fits of crying.
https://wahiduddin.net/mv2/I/I_III_2.htm
