Your soul is an aura that both surrounds & occupies you. It extends beyond your body's boundaries.

   If you want to feel your soul's presence, love without conditions for a moment. You will immediately feel your light.

   You may have also experienced your soul's larger presence (as have I) on occasions when your consciousness suddenly expands radically before you return to your mind's dominance. 

   Because the soul has no defined boundaries, distance is not an obstacle to its expression. That is why "distance prayers" can have an impact.

   John O’Donohue wrote that “Where there is spiritual affinity between two people, distance cannot block their presence to each other.” 

   There is a kinship of the soul – a way in which you recognize another being as sharing the blood of your heart. Ever after, you know a spirit-love that defies separation – even in death. 

   The film, "Babette's Feast" offers an example:

   The physical affinity of a pair of lovers is permanently blocked by a stern father. Decades later, old age brings a surprise redemption.

   The man tells his lover that although they were physically separated their souls were always conjoined & her spirit was with him constantly – when he slept, awoke, dined or made any meaningful decision. 

   Physical separation could not obstruct their spiritual connection.

   Consider love's relationships. 

      How much closer can two beings become than when one is completely encompassed by the other? When the cord between you & your mother was cut your struggle to escape loneliness & regain connection began.  

   Lovers seek full communion (or is it a reunion, a return to the union they had pre-birth?) Yet, love's intercourse brings them both ecstasy & a haunting question: Why can't we accomplish the complete integration that our hearts seek?  

   The body’s veils frustrate this connection.

   Gladly, your soul has no skin boundaries.  When lovers experience, through either romance or caregiving, the affinity of both skin & soul they fall into Love's light. 

   Your body is a form carved in the air. But, your soul's shape shifts, expanding or contracting based on whether you nourish it with love. 

   Your ethereal soul cannot be trapped like an animal. Try to capture the invisible & you will be as frustrated as the lover who seeks only physical oneness with his beloved or the caregiver who seeks to heal using only mechanisms. 

   Light shines forth in mothers, lovers and caregivers when body and soul are engaged.

   That is how Jesus & others healed – with loving touches that opened their soul’s sun to extinguish another's darkness.

   Radical Loving Care happens through a body-soul partnership. As the ego contracts the soul expands.

   Commit an act of love now & your spirit will instantly expand to warm both you & the soul of the other. 

  -Reverend Erie Chapman   

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