Inner Strength Defies the Skeptic: A Psychological and Spiritual Guide from Fear to Freedom

Duane Campbell
Immediex Publishing (2006)
ISBN 19329568288
Reviewed by Nina Larson for Reader Views (11/06)

On the surface, Duane Campbell’s book, “Inner Strength Defies the Skeptic,” is about looking inside oneself to find your personal truth, path and spirituality. His main claim is that value and identity has to come from inside a person, not outside, and especially not from anyone who has a vested interest in skewing that identity for the worse. His stated goal is that he wants this book to startle awake his audience. Awaken them to how they have accepted someone else’s priorities, ideologies and limits.

Despite an early claim that his work, referenced under the title of ‘The Awareness Project,” was for “all facets of people, regardless of age, social class, racial or religious background, economical or educational level,” pp17, I felt his target audience was clearly poor, black, urban Americans; especially males. This feeling is an example of Duane Campbell’s skill in writing. What he writes is more layered then most authors’ works. For instance, tracking back on my feeling about his target audience, it started from his repeated use of “man” and “mankind” in one chapter and of course the male pronoun throughout. This was startling since I had heard about this disassociation from other females in other writings, yet I had only once felt that way myself. I suspect this feeling was solidified from the poem extolling the wonders of black women and the next poem a dirge for the black man. As you can see, all of this is subterranean; and very different from his explicit words.

Much of the book has these layered meanings. On the whole, while his route to finding inner strength was helpful, I am uncomfortable with the sub text about the purpose and use of this inner strength. The author states that “some may consider the (main section) of (this book) to be radical and/or confrontational” pp19. I however found that section to be the best part. I can understand why he thought this since on the same page he defines the choice faced after the reader uses that section as either a “rebellion of an oppressive state of existence or the acceptance of a corrupted social and/ or psychological hierarchy,” pp.19. This kind of choice is like asking a man if he has stopped beating his wife. By definition any answer is an admittance of violence in the past. Likewise, because the author only allows those two options, it defines you as either with him or against him.

The setup of the book brings this lens up early, in the first of the three sections. This first part explains the ‘Awareness Project,’ the book, and about the author. The second section is titled ‘Outreaches’ and is the bulk of the how-to. In this part, a poem starts each chapter. The last section, labeled ‘Flow,’ is all poetry. All in all this is quite a short book and very lyrical. “Inner Strength Defies the Skeptic” is a great example of how different written English usually is from spoken English. The entire book has a rhythm; ponderous on the statements, dancing on the poetry. A minor quibble is that the first two sections are a little disorientating to read since almost all of his sentences are statements and each sentence is a different paragraph. This is probably due to his goal of having all of his ideas “in statement format and not within the terminology of the theoretical” pp. 12. And this format does make it easy to meditate on any paragraph/ idea. Mostly these sections read like they should be orated from a pulpit or in a rally. On the technical side there were a couple of grammar mistakes that might be deliberate since his poems used e. e. cummings’ method of lower-case letters as the standard of punctuation. It did bother me that his great ‘Awareness Project’ mantra of “Within the seed of an apple there lives an orchard invisible” was under a picture of a sprouted acorn.

In conclusion, I believe “Inner Strength Defies the Skeptic,” follows the author’s intention very well. This is not a comfortable book and probably has layers I couldn’t see or didn’t notice. I found his message interesting, the methods helpful, and the purpose disquieting. I believe this book would interest any person who is spinning in place, convinced that their value depends on what “everyone knows” is important. I get the impression that this is the first of many planned publications and applaud Duane Campbell for following his path.

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