Truthspeaking: Ancestral Ways to Hear and Speak the Voice of the Heart

Imagine a place where there are no lieswhere gossip is just a meaningless wordand people naturally speak with respectThe air is not laced with cursingand there is no shame or judgmentThe expression of all feelings is welcomedEven anger and fear are regarded as giftsIn this place, you can trust in another's wordThere is no need for doctrineas each person knows her own TruthEven without it being spoken you can read it in her HeartEveryone’s Truth is heardas listening is valued even more than talkingAnd each person’s voice is held sacredThere is no need to sweeten it with humoror mask it with doublespeakThey call this, their cherished way of sharing,TruthspeakingI wrote this book for one reason—to incite a revolution of the Heart. For too long we have been taught to say what others would like to hear, and what makes rational rather than relational sense. We have been encouraged to be assertive, but we have not learned how to listen. To tell the truth is our ideal, yet most of us tell dozens of lies every day.A Zen koan encourages us to speak our Truths without punishing. In the coming pages, we will reacquaint ourselves with a way of life based on the gentle, clear, and heartfelt communication which the American Indian Elders I apprenticed to called Truthspeaking.Notice that I said “reacquaint.” You and I already know Truthspeaking: we are genetically programmed to be spontaneous, in-the-now beings with astute expressive and listening skills. We evolved the ability as a matter of survival.It is only since we have become urbanized that we have begun protecting ourselves by suppressing our thoughts and feelings—and defending ourselves from the thoughts and feelings of others. This book shows how to dissolve those boundaries, so that we can again say what we really mean and hear what people are really saying.About the author When Tamarack Song was a child, he got to regularly practice Truthspeaking with the wild animals in the extensive woods and wetlands which comprised his backyard. As a young man, he lived for several years with a pack of Wolves. After that, he learned the human nuances of Truthspeaking from Menominee, Ojibwe, Blackfoot, Hopi, Iroquois, Australian Aboriginal, and Maygar Elders. They taught him much of the terminology and phrasing you’ll find in this book. He augmented this organic tutelage with his lifelong academic study of nature, language, anthropology, and indigenous cultures.