SOULSPEAK is an everyday participatory art form that can be used by anyone. It is the topic of: a book by Justin Spring titled SOULSPEAK: The Outward Journey of the Soul To download the book for free, click BOOKS on the headline banner, then click SOULSPEAK on the side bar. If you'd like to order the Book/CD combination for $35, click BOOKS on the headline banner, then click ORDER FORM on the side bar. If you'd like a small preview before doing that, here's a sample of the book and what readers are saying about it:
Here's What Others Are Saying About SOULSPEAK: The Outward Journey of the Soul
"Justin Spring's poetry, writings, and accompanying
recordings resonate with something deep inside us all that is
longing to be touched. I felt myself yearning for, and in connection with, deep mystery
while reading and listening to the SOULSPEAK materials. I find
Mr. Spring's work with disenfranchised individuals to be a
beacon that may be a means out of the darkness that inhabits much
of our present day lives."
Jerry Wellik, Ed.d. Professor of Special Education,
"Here is a book that really explains the not only origins
of poetry, but how today we can again create poetry as a form of
the soul speaking. Justin Spring is passionate and compelling in
his pursuit of this pure poetry. And in his text he teaches all
of us how to speak from a deeper place, letting the unconscious,
or the soul, rise up into language and art."
Victoria Sullivan, poet, playwright, editor of PLAYS BY AND ABOUT WOMEN
"In an age in which so much of what people say is social
gambit, political rhetoric, make talk cliché, I applaud
Justin Spring's powerful technique for returning us to what
is truly important, a language that means something. I advise you
to work with this book experientially, try the exercises, sense
the vast imponderable soul-animal Spring invokes for us, lying
beneath us. Think that God is hovering nearby, just waiting to
borrow your voice."
Dr. Stephen Larsen, Professor Emeritus SUNY, co-author of A FIRE IN THE MIND, A LIFE OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL.
Here is a brief synopsis of the book:
SOULSPEAK: The Outward Journey of the Soul is an exciting CD/book combination that introduces SOULSPEAK as an art form that is already within us, waiting to be re-awakened. It is intended for anyone interested in expressing themselves from a deep spiritual and emotional level. It begins by examining the earliest form of poetry, sometimes called tribal, or oral antiphonal, poetry, and gives a series of techniques for re-awakening our inborn ability to speak. The author also examines contemporary poetry through the lens of this ancient poetry. A considerable section is devoted to understanding the art of Homer and the nature and emergence of rap and why the two are sometimes close enough to kiss.
The main contention of the book is that there exists within each of us an inborn ability to spontaneously create powerful verbal displays of the soul, called speakings. They are created communally, by spontaneously speaking from a deep level, just as pre-literate man did. The process whereby this is accomplished is called SOULSPEAK, a contemporary version of the most ancient human poetry: oral, antiphonal poetry, or as it is commonly called, tribal poetry. It is poetry as natural and as human as breathing. It flows from us as easily as gossip, but comes from a deeper level, the level of the soul, that mysterious part of us that we have sensed from the beginning of time as being both us and not us.
Here is the opening chapter:
SOULSPEAK. Just the word, or the sound of it, seems to strike something deep inside us. We look up expectantly, as if we somehow know what it means, but not quite. When people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them SOULSPEAK, they have that same look of expectancy and puzzlement. Then they break down and ask me what it means, really. When I say it means just that, SOULSPEAK, they accuse me of teasing them. Perhaps I am, but in a Socratic way, because I'm trying to tease them into discovering what they already know. And they do know what it means, because after a moment's hesitation they almost always say back, Yes, the soul speaking, or, Yes, speaking from the soul, and then there's a second moment of confusion because they don't really know what speaking from the soul means, even if they somehow sense that it's possible.
The reason for the confusion is that we have forgotten how to do it. But if our minds have forgotten, our bodies haven't. It's in our DNA—but hidden away, recessive. Recessive is a good word in this case, like the recessive genes that sometimes cause babies to be born with small tail-like appendages. A little piggy reminder of our animal heritage. The act of speaking from the soul also comes from our distant past. It is the way our tribal ancestors spoke to the gods. They knew it was a different way of speaking than their normal, everyday talk, or gossip. But they also knew it was somehow related, in that it materialized as mysteriously as their everyday speech, but from a deeper center of their beings, from their souls.
I should say precisely what I mean by the soul, as there have been centuries of religious, metaphysical, and philosophical discussions about its nature. While I dismiss none of this out of hand, I'm suspicious of most organized thought. I only know what I know, and what I know is that there is something very deep in me, almost hidden from me, that is guiding me towards some end. What that end is, I have no idea. Nor do I know why this is happening, or who is making it happen, or what is its nature. I know only that it exists. I can feel it, and I call it the soul, which is the word I use for my deepest, most mysterious self. The soul is both me and not me. In some sense, the word soul is really a metaphor for that most mysterious part of us that is utterly beyond knowing, much as God is a metaphor for that indescribable mystery that is at the heart of everything. What God actually is is beyond comprehension. The same thing applies to the soul. I can't tell you what it is, I can only tell you stories about it. Here is one, a story of discovery:
You are in a small boat, alone. You're anxious, but not afraid.
You know where you're going. Dover, then somewhere else,
you say to yourself. You're ready for anything. And
flexible. Hell, sometimes you change directions just like that.
At any rate, you have reasons for every move you make: if not
before the fact, then after. You're sure of yourself, you
have maps, sextants, whatever, to guide you. You raise and lower
sails; turn on, turn off the motor as the mood suits you. You
make port, just as you had planned, but you're slightly
off, landing in Calais instead of Dover. You can't really
say why.
Sometime later, back at sea, you lean over the side.
There is something thin, almost invisible, like a line, attached
to the bottom, leading down to the cavernous depths. The line, if
it is a line, seems infinitely long, almost numinous. It comes
and goes, as in a dream. As you watch, you sometimes see it
moving in the same direction as the boat, then sometimes in a
different direction. When it goes in a different direction, it
pulls you slightly off course. Or at least that's how it
feels. Calais instead of Dover, you say to yourself. All of a
sudden, something dark and glittery rises up from the depths. You
can almost see it. It is just beneath the surface, rippling the
water. You sense something familiar yet mysterious, something
that is like you and yet not you. You want to call it something,
you're not sure what. And then it disappears. The soul is
the term that suddenly comes to mind.
Later on, you realize the boat shudders when it is not going in the same direction as the
soul. You don't know why, but you guess it has something to
do with the strain on the line. But how do you keep in step with
the soul? Something in you says, Lean with it, whatever that
means, and you do. The boat stops shuddering. You're in the
groove, but absolutely in the dark as to where you're
going. But you know it's where you're supposed to be
going. For better, or for worse.
Perhaps I should tell you another story about the soul, one closer to the point of this book, which is that speaking from the soul is an art we have forgotten. It is a very human art, and it is in us, waiting to be reawakened. Somehow, the body knows how to let the soul speak. We just have to hear it and we can do it. Why? Because mimesis (imitation—the urge to imitate, to replicate, to make) is an essential human urge. It is what drives the creative artist to portray the world in a particular way, a way that imitates the texture of the soul's expressions.
None of this is news. Without the urge to imitate, the soul's messages would pass through us like smoke through a forest. Because of our need to imitate, however, all we have to do is witness (or experience) something that appeals to us and something in us wants to replicate it—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Insofar as the spoken arts are concerned, this is how we learn to gossip, to make jokes, to speak from the soul. Here is another story. It is a story about the soul speaking:
You are in a boat, alone. Again. You keep busy, playing the
radio, talking to yourself. You remember someone telling you, you
forget who, that whales are always somewhere beneath you, singing
their mysterious, elaborate songs. But you have no way of knowing
exactly where they are. How could you? The whales, wherever they
are, are in another world, one far beneath the surface of your
life. You hear only the music from your favorite station, your
own mutterings.
Then, for some reason, you become restless.
Suddenly, the hull begins to throb so loudly you vibrate like a
string. You're trembling, but not afraid. Somehow you know
what's happening, even if you can't quite put it into
words. You don't know why, but you sense that something
absolutely huge and wondrous is just beneath the boat. You glance
over the side. The water all around you is dark, rippling like a
shadow. You surrender to it, let it rise up through your body.
Something in you speaks. But the sound of your voice is
different. Suddenly, you realize what the sound is, why it is
different. It is the sound of you and not you. It is the sound of
the soul
I know you would like more precise directions on finding the whale, perhaps positioning the boat, but they're not necessary at this stage. That comes later. All you have to do is accept the essential truth of the story: that speaking from the soul is in us, that all we have to do is bring the self and soul close enough and the body will take care of the rest. The problem for us is that unlike tribal man, our souls have been layered over with our modern consciousness, a consciousness much different from that of our tribal ancestors, a consciousness that makes it much harder for us than it was for tribal man to speak because, for us, the whale is too far beneath the boat.
Just what that distance is—the difference in consciousness between tribal and modern man—is a matter of debate, but I think it is clear that prehistoric, preliterate man operated in a different sea of consciousness than modern, literate man. Tribal man lived more in the present, in the sea of is. Modern man, who only occasionally lives in that sea, is preoccupied with the life inside his mind, where he is constantly reliving his past and previewing his future. Endlessly. Endlessly.