Spiritual Facelift. Victoria Holt

a soul and a spirit body but no material body. The person no longer resides in the physical (material) world but continues to exist in a nonphysical reality on the Other Side.

      Let us discuss further your soul, your spirit body, and your physical body individually so that you have full understanding of the function and role of each. Once you understand the working systems of your soul, spirit body, and physical body, you will not only start to understand that everything is affected by your soul condition, but you will also understand what you are really looking at in the mirror.

      Even though the soul, spirit body, and physical body are being discussed separately, remember that there are no impenetrable barriers between them; they coexist in the same space. If you continue to focus on only your physical body and ignore your soul and spirit body, you will be unhealthy and imbalanced. They are interdependent and need to work together optimally if your body is to stay young and healthy.

      Diagram of the Soul, Spirit Body, and Physical Body

      At conception, our unaware soul is attracted in by our parents. It forms both a spirit body and physical body and starts the road of self-discovery. The spirit body is attached to the soul by a gold cord, and the physical body is attached to the spirit body by a silver cord through which a stream of life-force energy and information flows.

THE SOUL

      One secret to understanding God’s universe is learning to understand the human soul. But to understand the soul and its workings fully we must first correct some of the myths about the soul. Your soul is an entity. It is the real you—the living, breathing, feeling, emotional, core of you. It is not your physical body nor as many New Age and Eastern gurus teach, is it your spirit body, etheric body, or aura. The spirit body and the physical body are mere appendages of the soul, created for each individual soul at conception.

      All souls are created by God who is an infinite soul and entity—the Supreme Being. All souls are made in God’s image; they are created by God’s Desire and God’s Sexual Union. The reason that souls incarnate and that you were born was so your soul could gain a consciousness of self and individualize. Before your soul incarnated, it was not conscious or self-aware. At conception your unaware soul was drawn in by your parents’ Law of Attraction. Something in their souls attracted in your particular personality type. Your soul formed both a spirit body and physical body in your mother’s womb and started the road of self-discovery.

      Before your soul was born, it was part of a whole soul containing masculine as well as feminine qualities and energies. The whole soul is a reflection of God. God’s infinite soul is also made up of masculine and feminine qualities and energies. When you were conceived, your whole soul split into two soul halves. These halves individualized and formed their own physical body and spirit body. It is these soul halves that are known as soul mates. You are one half of a soul-mate pair.

      After separating from the whole soul, the two individualized soul halves continue on with their individual life experiences and soul journeys. Each half is complete in itself. The two halves do remain connected energetically at all times even if they never meet or live far apart. But throughout their lifetimes, each soul instinctively searches for the other and has a desire to reunite and become whole again although they are not consciously aware of this desire. As the two soul halves progress in love, they get drawn back together. They also continue to progress in love and evolve after they die. When they reach the highest level of love on the Other Side, the two halves release their individual spirit bodies and merge back together as one whole soul. At this point, reincarnation can happen. You will read more about soul mates and the soul split in Chapter 4.

      There is much still to learn about the soul, such as the fact that it has a unique personality and holds many different attributes and qualities. Even though souls are created in the same way by God, each individual soul is completely different from another—each soul is unique. Your individual soul contains only your passions, desires, emotions, aspirations, intentions, free will, memories, personality, instincts, and natural love.

      Your soul also has senses, which it uses to gather information and experience the universe. The soul picks up and retains emotional residue from others. Emotions from the soul become stored in both the spirit body and the cells of the physical body. If these emotions are loving, they positively impact the body. If they are disharmonious and negative, they cause physical damage.

      Your individualized soul half was incarnated so that you could not only become self-aware but also experience your environment and your own free will. It also incarnated to develop a natural love for everything in that environment and to develop a personal relationship with God. All soul development is a development in love, either Natural Love or the Divine Love that is given by God. (These two kinds of love will be discussed more fully in Chapter 2 and 6.) It is your soul development in love that determines your happiness and your attractions to events and situations in your life. The level of love in your soul also determines the condition of your spirit body and the youthfulness of your physical body.

      It is the soul and not the personality that goes through a journey of ascension back to God to pure light. The soul instinctively seeks to return and reunite with God even if the mind does not consciously make us aware of our soul’s desire. If you focus on the soul and not on the physical body or the intellectual mind, then your soul’s journey home to a place of perfected love will accelerate. This means that ultimately your suffering will end, and your soul will reside in a place of eternal bliss.

THE SPIRIT BODY

      There is an aura and an existence of an electromagnetic field around every object in the world, including you. The spirit body is also known as the etheric body or aura, and your entire physical body is surrounded by it. It is attached to the soul by a golden cord and to the physical body by a silver cord. It is an invisible energy field controlled and affected by the condition of the soul. The size of your spirit body or aura is unique to you and dependent on the state of your soul condition. Even though most people cannot see the spirit body with their human eyes, they can sometimes feel it. But there are some people who are sensitive enough to see someone else’s aura.

      Your spirit body is the etheric map for the physical body and holds the complete template of the physical. Every cell in the physical body has an etheric counterpart. The spirit body has the same structure as the physical body, including all the anatomical parts and all the organs. The etheric body creates the grid on which the physical body grows and is responsible for the vital transfer of information and life-force energy from the universal energy field. It also acts as a filtration system. Universal energy filters down through the soul to the spirit body to the physical.

      At death the spirit body detaches from the physical body, but it remains attached to the soul and still has a mind. The spirit body is still living and thinking after death. It is important people take note that their spirit body reflects the true condition of their soul. Even if you had good genes, the body of an athlete or a “beautiful” supermodel, that is of no consequence if you did not do deep soul work or release negative emotions such as anger or hatred from your soul while you were alive, because the contents of your soul will be degraded and your spirit body will look deformed after death. For some people it can be a shock to see their damaged spirit body once they cross over to the Other Side.

THE CHAKRA SYSTEM

      Running through your aura or spirit body are many layers known as subtle energy bodies, auric layers, or meridians. Our soul is an energetic system where emotions are running constantly. These emotions cause energy meridians in the body. These subtle energy bodies are controlled by the soul and the emotions contained in our soul. There is a synergistic relationship between each of the auric layers or energy bodies. Each one is interconnected so what affects one layer, affects the others. These distinct layers of energy are intimately connected to what is known as a chakra system.