Course XLV - Teaching 8: Expanded Soul

Gradually, a miracle takes place in the soul of the Ordained Soul: his expanded soul.
As the soul is more and more into the Radius of Stability and into the limits of the Holy House, silence becomes effective, enters, and fills with peace and calm the void of worldly things.
This peace is so subtle that sometimes you do not perceive it.
As the soul gets warm slowly under the beams of the Great Current and the body discards the bad essence of the past through its pores, the self breaks his shell and goes out, to the light of the Divine day. Beings of the world never will be able to know what is this mystery of an expanded soul; every day, they are more and more enclosed in their hard and resistant shell of worries for their homes, things and relatives; and they call this “to be free”, “to live their life” and “not to be subject to…”. But those souls that have renounced to all possess the gift to experience this supreme good.
A liberated soul goes out of its seashell to look at the sun.
It is difficult to explain this state that those souls that experienced it can explain. This state appears suddenly; sometimes you experience it and even you do not realize it, because it is so natural in this new life. Like any miracle, it is such when you find it in the frame of the highest simplicity; it is there, in front of the soul, like the most ordinary thing in the world.
And the soul experiences in the first place an expansion of its feelings.
How selfish the soul was in relation to its feelings inside the shell! How limited its feelings were, and how hard its bond that tied it to them!
Through its feeling of possession, the son became indifferent, mean and poor before any collective problem of life, and the eyes looked as if they did not see any misery in the world; and when he said, “Poor child”, “Poor sick fellow!”, “Poor woman!”, it was with the secret fear that something like that might happen to one of his relatives.
But lo!, the soul has broken its shell. Those personal affections remained there, in the deep of his consciousness, like something sacred, but not like a possession, and since the soul does not expect anything of them, they became a feeling that comprises many. And one day the Ordained Son feels the miracle of his undetached self that is free of ties and expanded. It is a sweet and strong feeling at a time, which fills the soul and becomes within like an elation of amplitude, understanding and love. You perceive this effective warmth when it comprises those children and sick and needy people entrusted to the Ordained Son, as a whole. It is a very tender feeling through which he is more and more solicitous and efficient. This feeling is like sadness, like longing for a heaven, when one batch ends and another begins; it is identification of the consecrated soul with their worries and pains, and this identification is stronger when is impersonal.
The miracle of an expanded soul is greater and greater. It is an expansion of ideas, aims and knowledge. Nobody ever will know the infinite desire of the heart and mind of a consecrated soul. It is convenient for all to believe that those souls are meek doves into their dovecots and to look at them with pity. Worldly people have so many things into their shell: job, house, city…; all their possessions, everything is their reduced world. Let us leave them alone. They do not know what beats behind those humble aprons and jackets, and what those eyes see behind their lowered eyelids!
An Ordained Son does not know why, but feels the expansion of the Divine Work on the earth and would wish to multiply up many times to fulfill it. All is little, even the world, for what a consecrated soul desires.
How many works these minds build, how many countries they travel through in their dreams, and how many heroic deeds they realize!
Seemingly, all is little to a consecrated soul. The Son would wish to go to all nations, carrying a message of love to all beings, healing all sick people and meeting all their needs. The hours of the day are too short for a soul that wishes to beg for all and to comprise all.
Miracle of love and understanding of Renunciation!
Now the shell is broken, and the free souls fly through infinite spaces and make their whiteness visible to all beings. And they do not feel self-sacrificed, but enjoy: they enjoy divinely these expanded realizations.
But consecrated souls do not stop here; their expanded souls cross frontiers of the planetary chain, entirely comprise the whole Universe, and become an expansion without frontiers and limits, which is purely spiritual.
There the soul surrenders completely. Now, surrender is not a word, but something that “is”.
It is as if the soul, acquiring for a while the speed of the light, traveled to the farthest reaches of space to rest on the Divine Mother’s lap.