Book Review: Love and the Mystery of Betrayal

Book Review by The Dream Alchemist

Book: Love and the Mystery of Betrayal

(Recovering your Trust and Faith After Trauma, Deception and Loss of Love)

Author: Sandra Lee Dennis
Genre: Nonfiction, Psycho/spiritual; relationship
Published by: West County Press

“If you are reading this book, it is likely that you or someone important to you is responding to an urgent call to open up a pained past or dive into the swirling seas of a currently upended life.” (P91).

… And I am the living proof!

That this book fell in my hands is simply part of Divine Design. All the signs are there:

Synchronicity: I had been editing an old story that I wrote 10 years ago and that revealed my own descend into the Mystery of Betrayal and the Sacred Darkness of its passage.

Healing: As I reviewed my story I realized that I was guided to this story because there were remnants of the wound that I had not healed and they had compounded with a recent relationship trauma to generate the health issues that I am addressing right now.

Timing: I was supposed to review this story much earlier, but these health issues delayed my reading, so that I went through the healing, then read/edited my story and connected the two incidents. Then I began to read this extraordinary book, and now I have the blueprint to deepen and finish my healing and a great reference book to include in the story when I publish it. Everything comes full circle!

This  perfection happens when sacred healing finds us, and this book is such a miracle. If it has found you, receive the blessing.

For me this book is sacred. It has the qualities of a sacrament, of an anointment and ceremony that acknowledges both our human frailty and our superpowers.

To say that it is an excellent book seems trivial. It is a sacred experience of healing through a deep dive into the transformation that betrayal brings into our life so that it can be cleared, healed and transmuted into a higher frequency of love.

Sandra Lee Dennis has achieved a rare marriage of soul, body, emotions, mind and spirit in her language, in the journey through which her book takes us and in the knowledge she shares with us.

If you have gone through a betrayal –romantic or otherwise– it may have left pieces of poisonous thorns embedded in your soul and you may have left pieces of soul embedded in the time-space continuum of the trauma.

A shaman would tell you that you need to do a Soul Retrieval. This book has the same qualities of such ceremony.

You may not realize it but years ~even decades after the trauma of betrayal~ these unresolved pieces can result in health issues, relationship failures, blind spots that grow into Toxic Fields or flood your life ~psychic lakes of amnesia~ where your memory and awareness goes to sleep. Or you can close off entire aspects of your Sacred Self, your emotions and even your trust and faith.

The good news is that it is never too late, and if this topic resonates with you, then this book is your alchemical codex to free yourself from the limiting and traumatic impact of betrayal.

If you have gone through the trauma of betrayal, no matter how long ago it was~ get this book immediately and clear time not just for reading; for healing. The journey through this book is a healing experience that helps us to understand what we’ve gone through, to name the invisible, hidden cracks this trauma inflicted in our psyche, to validate our soulful intuition and finally, it helps us emerge into an ecstatic experience of self-love and higher love.

If you are going through the trauma of betrayal now, get many copies of the book. One if for you. The other is for your closest friends and relatives; your support system, and one or two for the healers or therapists of your choice. This book is your blueprint through the dark stormy seas of betrayal into the harbor of radiant health.

If someone you love has gone or is going through a betrayal, get two copies. One for you and one for that person. Read yours carefully so that you know how to talk to this person in ways that truly support her and how NOT to talk to her so that you don’t join the many insensitive voices that add salt to injury.

One of the things that appalls me about our modern world is the insensitivity to grieving.

Sandra Lee Dennis does an amazing job of addressing our cultural blindness to the trauma of betrayal; so that you can maneuver through it without shame, guilt or alienation from your Sacred Self.

Another topic that Lee Dennis introduces is our secret tendency to measure trauma based on how long, how tragic or how dramatic a trauma is; so that betrayal seems trivial in the face of death, serious car accidents, murder, rape or physical violence.

This book is vital in our society because so many of us have been deeply traumatized by betrayals that have stolen essential parts of our self, limiting our lives and haunting us for years; perhaps for all our lives.

As the author points out, because betrayal often comes accompanied by personal shame, social embarrassment and relationship awkwardness, its devastation is swept under the rug and the person is expected to “get on with her life.” This leads to a social gag that compounds the problem, making the person feel that they are alone and that there is something wrong with them that they cannot “move on.”

Sandra Lee Dennis has broken the silence behind the trauma of betrayal by sharing her own excruciatingly painful and gloriously sacred journey from betrayal to the deepening and expansion of her capacity to love.

She is blowing the whistle in a society that minimizes emotional trauma because it is afraid of things it cannot control, like emotions.

This author, who is also a doctor in psychology, writes this book  in the voice of the Sacred Warrior who walks through fear into freedom, through pain into power.

She also becomes a priestess of the Sacred Darkness who guides you through a journey through the dark night of the soul, revealing ancestral wisdom from the very womb of the Sacred Mystery that has been held by priestesses in the Sacred Feminine School of Wisdom.

Trust your heart to this author-healer-warrior. Walk inside this book to walk inside yourself and find your way back to your heart.

About the Author

SANDRA LEE DENNIS, PhD. obtained her M.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan and her doctorate in Integral Studies (Psychology and Religion) from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is an author, teacher and explorer of the interplay of depth psychology and spiritual experience. Sandra was a teacher in the Gurdjieff tradition for many years, a long-time student of Diamond Heart work, and an Ananda yoga instructor. She has been on the faculty at Portland State University, the University of Hawaii, CIIS, and the Jung Institute of San Francisco. The most compelling credential that informs her work, however, is her dedication to and passion for inner life. She spends her time writing, reading, gardening and luxuriating in the beauty of the Bay Area.

I give this book 5 stars because my rating does not allow me to give it ten!

(5 / 5)

Visit the author’s website: www.sandraleedennis.com

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