Origen, that great authority, suggests a parallel: that God’s Son, God’s image, is in the ground of the soul like a living spring. If earth is thrown on it, earthly desire that is, it smothers it, covers it over, and it vanishes from our ken. But in itself it remains alive, and on removing the soil that was thrown on from without, we see it again. --- Meister Eckhart
There is so much to consider here. First, I find it interesting that he is quoting Origen. He was the great thinker of early Christianity, 185-253 C.E. Later Origen was called a heretic for several odd reasons. Here is one of the greatest mystics quoting him 1260-1328 C.E. So apparently, he saw genius in Origen, as have I.
Anyway, I appreciate the visual of a living God-spring bubbling inside of us in our souls. But then we throw dirt upon it and cover it up. It is unharmed, but we are cut off from It. We are walled off, helled off, from God.
As we remove our negativity, fears, anger, resentments, false ideas, etc, the dirt is removed. We put it there, we take it away.
As Meister Elkhart says later in the sermon:
When the artist makes a statue of wood or stone, he does not put the image in the wood; he chips away the wood which hides the form. He gives the wood nothing, he takes it away: carves it out where too thick, pares off overlay, and then there appears what was hidden.
We find God never left us, was always there, right where we left Him/Her, under our own pile of dirt, in the center of our soul.