The gift of soul love

‘All that matters when we’re through is how we loved.’

                                                                                       Beth Nielsen Chapman

Love comes in many shapes and forms but the deepest, most beautiful and most powerful of them is what I have come to call soul love. This kind of love has a number of qualities which set it apart from other forms of love. Soul love is first and foremost a profoundly unconditional love which, both in early Greek philosophy and in the Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition, was known as ‘agape love’. To love others in this way is to offer them a depth of acceptance that is often hard to come by. Such acceptance goes much deeper than the surface-level acceptance which says, ‘Whoever you are is alright with me.’ It is a more fundamental and complete acceptance of all that we are, a deep prizing of our being that is not dependent on who we may appear to be or how we may behave. Agapae love is also a love that is primarily concerned with our growth and wellbeing, a love that is endlessly patient and trusting of our capacity to heal and to become, a love that never gives up on us. It is an unselfish, undemanding and generous love. It is self-giving rather than self-seeking. It seeks not to possess or control but to free us to be who we are and to do what is ours to do.

Soul love is a reverential love. To reverence each other is to respect and honour the essence of each other as a sacred presence in the world. It is to acknowledge the inherent worth, dignity and beauty of each other’s soul. It is to approach our encounters with each other with a sense of awe and wonder. The African greeting ‘Sawubona’ captures this well. When the indigenous people of the Zulu tribe approach each other, they stand facing each other for a few seconds, looking directly into each other’s eyes. Then they voice the greeting ‘I see you’. Similarly, when Hindus meet, they offer each other the greeting ‘namaste’ which means ‘I bow to you’. They might also make a slight bow of the head and press their hands together, palms touching and fingers pointing upwards. When we reverence each other in this way, we recognise, honour and affirm that which is deepest and truest in each other.

Soul love is a deeply welcoming and gracious love. Gracious hosts are attentive, warm, kind and generous. The welcome they offer us is genuine and heartfelt. No matter who we are or what we bring of ourselves, they open up not only their space, but also their heart to us. They are fully present with us. In the time that we spend together, no one and nothing else matters to them. When we love each other in this way, we create a profoundly safe space for each other in which we experience the freedom to be who we are in that moment. It is a space in we are not condemned but affirmed, not judged but accepted, not turned away but fully embraced just as we are. As writer Dinah Craik describes it, it is a space into which we do not have to 'weigh thoughts nor measure words', in which we can 'pour them all out... knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.' It is a space in which we can discover the freedom to follow our own path and to find our own way back to the self we truly are.

Soul love is a compassionate love. A typical dictionary definition of the word ‘compassion’ will refer to a deep awareness and sympathy for the suffering of another coupled with a desire to relieve that suffering. The word 'compassion' speaks, however, of a more intimate solidarity with those who are suffering. It is derived from the Latin words ‘pati’ and ‘cum’ which together mean ‘to suffer with’. To be compassionate means, therefore, to enter into another’s suffering. It asks far more of us than our awareness and concern. The Greek word for compassion literally means ‘to be moved in the guts’. To experience compassion is, therefore, to allow ourselves to be powerfully moved by others' suffering. It asks us to 'walk in their moccasins' for a while, to enter into their world as they experience it. It asks us to be willing to ‘get into the black pit’ with them so that we might share their darkness. It asks us simply to be there, to be fully present with them as they find their way through the pain to a place of healing.

Soul love is an infinitely tender love. The word ‘tender’ is linked with two Latin words - one meaning soft or delicate and the other meaning to hold or support. Such tenderness may be evident in our voice, in our eyes, in the touch of our hands, in the tears that fall from our eyes, in the feelings we communicate, in the words we speak. Tender love receives and holds us with infinite care, gentleness and sensitivity. It senses the depth of our fragility and vulnerablity. It holds our wounded self gently in its hands, bathing us in the cool waters of its compassion. It treads so softly and quietly around us, waiting patiently for whatever is surfacing, no matter how long it may take. Its touch wraps itself around our unquiet spirit until we know peace. It enfolds the darkest and most wounded places in our being until we find healing. It holds the tender shoots of our becoming with such lightness of touch that they are free to unfurl and strain towards the light.

Lastly, soul love is characterised by the capacity for a particular depth of intimacy which I call ‘soul intimacy’. The word ‘intimate’ has its origins in the Latin verb ‘intimare’ - to make known to someone – which was itself derived from the Latin ‘intimus’ meaning innermost. At its deepest level, therefore, true intimacy is a meeting of souls. It is is the reaching out and opening up of two souls to one another. It is a loosening of boundaries, a dismantling of walls, an ever-deepening attunement of each to the other. When we connect with each other at the level of soul, we are able to make ourselves known and entrust ourselves to each other at a level that we would not have believed possible before living the experience. We feel the depth of safety and comfort that comes from being held in each other’s presence. We know the relief that comes from not having to hold back or dissemble and the freedom that comes from being able to be fully ourselves in each moment of meeting. When we are intimate with each other in this way, we stand on sacred ground together. We become, as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it, ‘two solitudes’ that ‘protect and border and salute each other’. 

Soul love flows from from our innermost self and the more deeply connected we are with our soul, the more capable we become of loving each other in such a life-giving way. For in the words of the writer John O'Donohue, 'Love is the nature of the soul.' It is, he says, the soul's 'deepest language and presence'. When we love each other in this way, we cross the distance we create between us. We meet each other’s eyes without pretending, we face each other naked and unafraid. We set aside the masks we hide behind, we seek each other’s truth with eyes wide open. We see the hidden beauty in each other, we reach and touch each other’s mystery. When we say ‘I see you’ to each other in this way, the gift we offer each other is life-giving. For it is when we are held by the soul love of another that we can speak all of our being into the silence between us, that we can embrace the freedom to be who we are becoming. 

Bibliography 

Beth Nielsen Chapman. From her song 'How We Love'

Dinah Craik (1859) A Life for a Life. Collins

John O'Donohue (1999) Anam Cara. Bantam Books

Rainer Maria Rilke (2012) Letters to a Young Poet. Penguin Classics  

©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2026

Kaitlyn Steele

www.insearchofsoul.co.uk 

kaitlynsteele16@gmail.com