The World is a Waiting Lover
Desire and the quest for the beloved
By Trebbe Johnson Forward by Thomas Moore
Book Review by Marie-Claire Wilson
“The World is a Waiting Lover” is a wonderful book to show how important it is to bring passion and meaning to our work, relationships, and our vision about the future.
This book has 13 direct steps to achieve the love that everyone wants:
1. The Leap of the Flame: The Soul’s Longing to Thrive
2. Desire or the Fall: The Delicious Madness of Tumbling in to Love
3. The Love Wolf: Unrequited Love and Its Traps
4. Truth and Consequence: Finding Meaning in Love’s Abyss
5. Soulful Yearning: the Deep Desire for a Higher Lovemaking
6. The Beloved: the Quest for the Soul Partner
7. Escorts to the Beloved: Human Lovers who Break our Heart and Lead us to the Divine
8. Seized by the Rapture Bird: Allurement - How the Beloved Beguiles Us
9. Beauty Tips from Myrna Loy: the Shadow, the Critic, and Other Obstacles to the Beloved
10. Courtship of the Beloved: the Practice of a Passionate Life
11. Your Fullness is My Delight: the Ceremony of Sacred Marriage
12. How Big Love Can Be: Bringing the Beloved into the World
13. The Lover Who Came by Staying Away: Becoming the God Within
Civilizations since ancient times have been obsessed with love. But perhaps because of our modern progress, we who live in this highly-developed civilization with the most technological advantages and with an elevated economic potential, have become more like robots than ever, and we have forgotten the essentials of love!
Our way of living today bears the imprint of a mechanization of our society, a mechanization that continues to become more pervasive. We expect mechanization of the material realms, but more alarming is that there is even mechanization of our thoughts, our values, and our psychology. We are more and more crushed under the weight of rapid rhythms in our day to day lives, by the overwhelming conditioning that we receive from a society that is deemed “advanced.”
As a result, we as the mere human have become almost paralyzed to the possibilities of creative expression and loving. This is the subject that the author, Trebbe Johnson, addresses so adroitly here. Trebbe points out how a monotonous and mechanized life permeates our entire life with its sterility. More and more we lead lives without passion. As an example of the superficial way we live, many of us work because we have to, not because we love our work. We go through our days without passion, without love. If we lose or bury our passion for our work, then, inevitably this lack of passion spills over into our daily lives. How can we find any passion for love? This makes it impossible to live a balanced life.
Love is an emotion that is the brightest sparkle in our lives. Love comes from the divine source, and it cannot be commanded, managed, or analyzed. It is the same with passion.
A person without passion is as good as “living dead.” A life without passion is like a garden that has been completely neglected, a garden that dries out and dies. But everything is possible in love, and we all have a chance to change our existence and plant new seeds, have a new beginning for passion and for life. By having a positive and realistic visualization of love, we can achieve almost anything.
One of the most interesting chapters is titled, “To Become Whole Adults.” Here is a quote from the author from that chapter: “To become whole adults, we will able to face the trials of life, and to bring our passion into the world in creative ways that range from how we treat our children to how we treat our community. We must pay attention to the secret other and find out what it wants from us. It’s not just the shadow that can cause problems, it’s any inner figure that has a strong will of its own and that sometimes refuses to cooperate with what we think of us as our best self.” The author explains why it is so important to pay attention to how we treat each other and ourselves in this chapter.
Further, Trebbe talks about inner aspects of our personalities that keep us from passion, such as the “critic” and the “loyal soldier.” “The critic is one such troublemaker, and one that practically everybody can identify with because unlike the shadow, its influence is very hard to ignore…” The author goes on to explain more about these inner personality traits that affect the way we experience passion and love in our lives. “People often confuse the critic and the loyal soldier, but they are not the same. The critic is a judge, and you can never do anything to please the critic. The loyal soldier, however, is a protector who only wants you to stay small and safe so that nothing will harm you. The critic tells you that you’re too stupid and worthless to walk into the arms of the beloved. The loyal soldier tells you that you’ll be killed if you try it. Both try to hold you back, but their reasons for doing so and the attitudes behind their efforts differ greatly. As my friend and colleague, Joe Woolley, has pointed out, the loyal soldier actually loves you very much.”
We must understand these inner personality traits that we all have can betray us. She also talks about how we feel when we become aware that these sides of our personality exist and are thwarting us. “When people finally shine the spotlight on the insidious characters that inhabit them, their first reaction is often a determination to ‘kill’ the loyal soldier or the critic or shadow, so that they can get on with their life. It doesn’t work this way. Ensconced companions will simply hide out in some inner closet where we won’t notice them for a while, and then just when we think the coast is clear, and we’re congratulating ourselves on our maturity and wisdom, they pop out and snare us all over again.” But the author does not leave us hanging. She gives us simple ways to turn our personality traits that have been holding us back into positive traits that will help us to achieve what we seek most in life. The book is full of very good advice that is easy to understand and easy to follow.
If we don’t accomplish things in life with love, that is love for our work, love for others and the way that we treat others, and love for ourselves, living by the golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), we will sooner or later provoke some very negative consequences in our lives. You may call it karma, as the author does, and you may also see it as a way to take responsibility for our own life.
This book includes some very good quotations from other writers. One of these is Valerie Ilkinson, who has a very realistic point of view on the subject. “Many people feel there can only be one relationship and maybe I think there can only be one physical (erotic) relationship. At least, that is all I can or want to do. But real, interactive, spiritual relationships that participate in the divine beloved can be multiple, and this is virtually true of all of the ones that I have are with people whom I’ve met, shared a meal with, talked with, experienced as souls in some sense, like feeling their energy, knowing the sound of their voice. The divine beloved instructed me to expect to meet him, not only in my (human) beloved, but in others; to know as him by the inner recognition and the timing.” I find this a remarkable observation on relationships and love because I also believe that there is a lot of misunderstanding and confusion surrounding the idea of a soul mate. I often talk about this subject with my clients. The soul mate is not necessarily a perfect match as a partner for love! Sometimes we can be soul mates with someone such as our father, our mother, a grandparent or a friend. Usually there is a special and unique kind of feeling attached to this person. We often can’t understand it on an intellectual level, but we are attracted to them on an energetic level. We can usually even feel, on a deep soul level, the same vibrations they do. Sometimes this happens with people that we only meet briefly, and yet we feel as if we know them well and as if we have known them for a long time. These kinds of things are simply a part of the way we as humans love. Love covers a huge area.
Remember that inside of each of us there are qualities that are sleeping, awaiting our attention, love, all the wisdom of the world, and all of the futures to come. All we have to do is listen to our inner voice, that sure and confident part of our inner soul, and appreciate ourselves. This book is a message of love and also a lesson about how to develop a better spiritual life. If we do not open our hearts to the emotions that make way for love, then we live in a desert of chaos.
I highly recommend this book for all readers, and especially to those who would like to open the way for more love in their lives.
Trebbe Johnson offers vision quests and workshops on desire throughout the world. Her writing has been published in Parabola, Sierra, The Nation, and other publications. Her website is www.visionarrow.com Marie-Claire
Wilson, author of the Spiritual Tarot: The Keys to the Divine Temple,
is a bilingual writer and poet. She has been a practicing medium
for 28 years using direct clairvoyance, the Tarot, numerology and
palmistry. For an appointment face-to-face or phone readings call:
404.847.7330
www.Marie-Claire.tv
I find this a remarkable observation on relationships and love because I also believe that there is a lot of misunderstanding and confusion surrounding the idea of a soul mate. I often talk about this subject with my clients. The soul mate is not necessarily a perfect match as a partner for love! Sometimes we can be soul mates with someone such as our father, our mother, a grandparent or a friend. Usually there is a special and unique kind of feeling attached to this person. We often can’t understand it on an intellectual level, but we are attracted to them on an energetic level. We can usually even feel, on a deep soul level, the same vibrations they do. Sometimes this happens with people that we only meet briefly, and yet we feel as if we know them well and as if we have known them for a long time. These kinds of things are simply a part of the way we as humans love. Love covers a huge area.
Marie-Claire
Wilson, author of the Spiritual Tarot: The Keys to the Divine Temple,
is a bilingual writer and poet. She has been a practicing medium
for 28 years using direct clairvoyance, the Tarot, numerology and
palmistry. For an appointment face-to-face or phone readings call:
404.847.7330 
