- Creativity as a Spiritual Practice.
- Introduction to the 10th anniversary edition of the artist's way
- Difficult as it is to remember, it is our work that creates the market, not the market that creates our work.
- Art is an act of faith, and we practice practicing it.
- Like all artists—like all of us if we listen—I experience inspiration.
- I had not yet learned that we do tend to practice what we preach, that in unblocking others I would unblock myself, and that, like all artists, I would thrive more easily with some companionship, with kindred souls making kindred leaps of faith. Called to teach, I could not imagine the good teaching would bring to me and, through me, to others.
- “Remember, there is a creative energy that wants to express itself through you.”
- “Don’t judge the work or yourself. You can sort it out later.”
- “Let God work through you.”
- Creativity is like crabgrass—it springs back with the simplest bit of care.
- People “heal” because creativity is healthy—and practicing it, they find their greater selves. And we are all greater than we can conceive.
- Higher powers stand ready to help us if we ask. We must remain ready to ask, open-minded enough to be led, and willing to believe despite our bouts of disbelief.
- Creativity is an act of faith, and we must be faithful to that faith, willing to share it to help others, and to be helped in return.
- For artists, a wing and a prayer is routine operating procedure. We must trust our process, look beyond “results.”
- Artists throughout the centuries have spoken of “inspiration,” confiding that God spoke to them or angels did. In our age, such notions of art as a spiritual experience are seldom mentioned. And yet, the central experience of creativity is mystical. Opening our souls to what must be made, we meet our Maker.
- We pray. Fame will come to some. Honor will visit all who work. As artists, we experience the fact that “God is in the details.” Making our art, we make artful lives. Making our art, we meet firsthand the hand of our Creator.
- Introduction
- “Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.” - Paul Tillich
- “I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.” - William Blake
- When the word God is used in these pages, you may substitute the thought good orderly direction or flow. What we are talking about is a creative energy. God is useful shorthand for many of us, but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source, and Higher Power. For many of us, thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping-off place.
- The theory doesn’t matter as much as the practice itself does. What you are doing is creating pathways in your consciousness through which the creative forces can operate. Once you agree to clearing these pathways, your creativity emerges. In a sense, your creativity is like your blood. Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent.
- My own journey
- I learned to get out of the way and let that creative force work through me. I learned to just show up at the page and write down what I heard. Writing became more like eavesdropping and less like inventing a nuclear bomb.
- Get out of the way. Let it work through you. Accumulate pages, not judgments.
- “The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” - Piet Mondrian
- Spiritual Electricity
- “The music of this opera [Madame Butterfly] was dictated to me by God; I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public.” - Giacomo Puccini
- “Straight away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God.” - Johannes Brahms
- “We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God’s creative pulse itself.” - Joseph Chilton Pearce
- “It is the creative potential itself in human beings that is the image of God.” - Mary Daly
- “Leap, and the net will appear.”
- When we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance.
- Basic principles
1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
- “Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”” - The Talmud
- “Great improvisors are like priests. They are thinking only of their god.” - Stéphane Grappelli
- “Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.” - Peter Koestenbaum
- “I paint not by sight but by faith. Faith gives you sight.” - Amos Ferguson
- “Why should we all use our creative power ... ? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.” - Brenda Ueland
- How to use this book for your creative recovery
- Begin by reading the chapter of the week on Sunday night. After you’ve read the chapter, speed-write through the exercises. The exercises in each week are critical. So are the morning pages and the artist date. (More about these in the next chapter.) You probably won’t have time to complete all of the other tasks in any given week. Try to do about half. Know that the rest are there for use when you are able to get back to them. In choosing which half of the tasks to do, use two guidelines. Pick those that appeal to you and those you strongly resist. Leave the more neutral ones for later. Just remember, in choosing, that we often resist what we most need.
- In all, make a time commitment of about seven to ten hours a week—an hour a day, or slightly more if you choose.
- What to expect
- “The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate—it is life, intensified, brilliant life.” - Alain Arias-Misson
- “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Many of us find that we have squandered our own creative energies by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others. Their lives have obscured and detoured our own.
- The morning pages
- In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it.
- The morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness: “Oh, god, another morning. I have NOTHING to say. I need to wash the curtains. Did I get my laundry yesterday? Blah, blah, blah ...” They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions.
- “Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.” - Ingrid Bengis
- “You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.” - Anne-Wilson Schaef
- There is no wrong way to do morning pages.
- As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn’t right. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth.
- Make this a rule: always remember that your Censor’s negative opinions are not the truth.
- “A mind too active is no mind at all.” - Theodore Roethke
- Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. Your mood doesn’t matter.
- We meditate to discover our own identity, our right place in the scheme of the universe. Through meditation, we acquire and eventually acknowledge our connection to an inner power source that has the ability to transform our outer world. In other words, meditation gives us not only the light of insight but also the power for expansive change.
- “It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.” - May Sarton
- Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And “What’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page.
- The Artist Date
- An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.
- In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers.
- You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child.
- What that child wants is attention, not expensive outings. What that child does not want is to share the precious parent with someone like the new significant other.
- “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” - C. G. Jung
- “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” - Pablo Picasso
- You are likely to find yourself avoiding your artist dates. Recognize this resistance as a fear of intimacy—self-intimacy.
- The morning pages acquaint us with what we think and what we think we need. We identify problem areas and concerns. We complain, enumerate, identify, isolate, fret.
- Filling the well, stocking the pond
- In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should do—spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.
- In filling the well, follow your sense of the mysterious, not your sense of what you should know more about. A mystery can be very simple: if I drive this road, not my usual road, what will I see? Changing a known route throws us into the now. We become refocused on the visible, visual world. Sight leads to insight.
- “Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” - Georgia O'Keeffe
- “So you see, imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” - Brenda Ueland
- Filling the well needn’t be all novelty. Cooking can fill the well.
- Any regular, repetitive action primes the well.
- Contract
- I, _______________, understand that I am undertaking an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the twelve- week duration of the course. I, _______________, commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfillment of each week’s tasks.
I, _______________, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with. I, ______________, commit myself to excellent self-care—adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering—for the duration of the course.
- Artists can be sober, sane, solvent, responsible, user-friendly, saved, happy, discovered and recovered
- “Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about .... Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.” - Jalai Ud-Din Rumi
- Creativity Contract
- Buy a nice notebook for your pages; hire your babysitter ahead of time for the weekly artist dates. Read the contract on the preceding page. Amend it, if you like; then sign and date it. Come back to it when you need encouragement to go on.
- Week 1: Recovering a sense of safety
- Shadow artists
- Caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure, shadow artists are born.
- “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” - C. G. Jung
- All too often the artistic urges of the artist child are ignored or suppressed. Often with the best intentions, parents try to foster a different, more sensible self for the child.
- Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist—hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.
- “We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.” - Susan Jeffers
- It takes nurturing to make an artist. Shadow artists did not receive sufficient nurturing. They blame themselves for not acting fearlessly anyhow.
- “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” - Joseph Chilton Pearce
- “When you are feeling depreciated, angry or drained, it is a sign that other people are not open to your energy.” - Sanaya Roman
- Protecting the artist child within
- Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.
- Too far, too fast, and we can undo ourselves.
- Creative recovery is like marathon training. We want to log ten slow miles for every one fast mile.
- It is an awkward, tentative, even embarrassing process. There will be many times when we won’t look good— to ourselves or anyone else. We need to stop demanding that we do.
- It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.
- Your enemy within: core negative beliefs
- Negative beliefs are exactly that: beliefs, not facts. The world was never flat, although everyone believed it was. You are not dumb, crazy, egomaniacal, grandiose, or silly just because you falsely believe yourself to be.
- Your ally within: affirmative weapons
- You could do it better if only you would let yourself do it!
- An affirmation is a positive statement of (positive) belief, and if we can become one-tenth as good at positive self-talk as we are at negative self-talk, we will notice an enormous change.
- “Affirmations are like prescriptions for certain aspects of yourself you want to change.” - Jerry Frankhauser
- Affirmations help achieve a sense of safety and hope.
- Where do your blurts come from? Mom? Dad? Teachers? Using your list of blurts, scan your past for possible sources.
- “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” - C. G. Jung
- Creative affirmations
1. I am a channel for God’s creativity, and my work comes to good.
2. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.
3. As I create and listen, I will be led.
4. Creativity is the creator’s will for me.
5. My creativity heals myself and others.
6. I am allowed to nurture my artist.
7. Through the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish.
8. Through the use of my creativity, I serve God.
9. My creativity always leads me to truth and love.
10. My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
11. There is a divine plan of goodness for me.
12. There is a divine plan of goodness for my work.
13. As I listen to the creator within, I am led.
14. As I listen to my creativity I am led to my creator.
15. I am willing to create.
16. I am willing to learn to let myself create.
17. I am willing to let God create through me.
18. I am willing to be of service through my creativity.
19. I am willing to experience my creative energy.
20. I am willing to use my creative talents.
- “An affirmation is a strong, positive statement that something is already so.” - Shakti Gawain
- Tasks
1. Every morning, set your clock one-half hour early; get up and write three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness morning writing. Do not reread these pages or allow anyone else to read them. Ideally, stick these pages in a large manila envelope, or hide them somewhere. Welcome to the morning pages. They will change you.
- “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” - Henry David Thoreau
- “Make your own recovery the first priority in your life.” - Robin Norwood
- This week, please be sure to work with your affirmations of choice and your blurts at the end of each day’s morning pages. Convert all blurts into positive affirmations.
2. Take yourself on an artist date. You will do this every week for the duration of the course. A sample artist date: take five dollars and go to your local five-and-dimc. Buy silly things like gold stick-em stars, tiny dinosaurs, some postcards, sparkly sequins, glue, a kid’s scissors, crayons. You might give yourself a gold star on your envelope each day you write. Just for fun.
3. Time Travel: List three old enemies of your creative self-worth. Please be as specific as possible in doing this exercise. Your historic monsters are the building blocks of your core negative beliefs. (Yes, rotten Sister Ann Rita from fifth grade does count, and the rotten thing she said to you does matter. Put her in.) This is your monster hall of fame. More monsters will come to you as you work through your recovery. It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue and block your growth.
4. Time Travel: Select and write out one horror story from your monster hall of fame. You do not need to write long or much, but do jot down whatever details come back to you—the room you were in, the way people looked at you, the way you felt, what your parent said or didn’t say when you told about it. Include whatever rankles you about the incident: “And then I remember she gave me this real fakey smile and patted my head....”
5. Write a letter to the editor in your defense. Mail it to yourself. It is great fun to write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child: “To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!”
6. Time Travel: List three old champions of your creative self-worth. This is your hall of champions, those who wish you and your creativity well. Be specific. Every encouraging word counts. Even if you disbelieve a compliment, record it. It may well be true.
If you are stuck for compliments, go back through your time-travel log and look for positive memories. When, where, and why did you feel good about yourself? Who gave you affirmation?
7. Time Travel: Select and write out one happy piece of encouragement. Write a thank-you letter. Mail it to yourself or to the long-lost mentor.
8. Imaginary Lives: If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I would be a pilot, a cowhand, a physicist, a psychic, a monk. You might be a scuba diver, a cop, a writer of children’s books, a football player, a belly dancer, a painter, a performance artist, a history teacher, a healer, a coach, a scientist, a doctor, a Peace Corps worker, a psychologist, a fisherman, a minister,
an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a sculptor, a lawyer, a painter, a computer hacker, a soap-opera star, a country singer, a rock-and-roll drummer. Whatever occurs to you, jot it down. Do not overthink this exercise.
The point of these lives is to have fun in them— more fun than you might be having in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week. For instance, if you put down country singer, can you pick a guitar? If you dream of being a cowhand, what about some horseback riding?
9. In working with affirmations and blurts, very often injuries and monsters swim back to us. Add these to your list as they occur to you. Work with each blurt individually. Turn each negative into an affirmative positive.
10. Take your artist for a walk, the two of you. A brisk twenty-minute walk can dramatically alter consciousness.
- Check-in
- The purpose of check-ins is to give you a journal of your creative journey. It is my hope that you will later share the tools with others and in doing so find your own notes invaluable: “Yes, I was mad in week four. I loved week five....”
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Seven out of seven, we always hope. How was the experience for you?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Yes, of course, we always hope. And yet artist dates can be remarkably difficult to allow yourself. What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 2: Recovering a sense of identity
- Going sane
- “All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.” - Doris Lessing
- “Snipers are people who undermine your efforts to break unhealthy relationship patterns.” - Jody Hayes
- Do not let your self-doubt turn into self-sabotage.
- Poisonous playmates
- Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance.
- Your artist, like a small child, is happiest when feeling a sense of security.
- As our artist’s protective parent, we must learn to place our artist with safe companions. Toxic playmates can capsize our artist’s growth.
- Do not expect your blocked friends to applaud your recovery. That’s like expecting your best friends from the bar to celebrate your sobriety. How can they when their own drinking is something they want to hold on to?
- “To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.” - Robert Louis Sevenson (1 like)
- “Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” - Shakti Gawain
- It is very important to understand that the time given to morning pages is time between you and God. You best know your answers. You will be led to new sources of support as you begin to support yourself.
- Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people’s plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people.
- The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves. Through self-nurturance we nurture our inner connection to the Great Creator. Through this connection our creativity will unfold. Paths will appear for us. We need to trust the Great Creator and move out in faith.
- The Great Creator has gifted us with creativity. Our gift back is our use of it. Do not let friends squander your time.
- The best thing you can do for your friends is to be an example through your own recovery. Do not let their fears and second thoughts derail you.
- Give yourself the gift of faith. Trust that you are on the right track. You are.
- You will learn to enjoy the process of being a creative channel and to surrender your need to control the result. You will discover the joy of practicing your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus.
- Your own healing is the greatest message of hope for others.
- Crazymakers
- Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers. They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive, and powerfully persuasive. You know the type: charismatic but out of control, long on problems and short on solutions.
- Crazymakers like drama. If they can swing it, they are the star.
- “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.” - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- “What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly.” - Shakti Gawain
- “Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast—you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.” - Eddie Cantor
- Crazymakers are often blocked creatives themselves. Afraid to effectively tap their own creativity, they are loath to allow that same creativity in others. It makes them jealous. It makes them threatened. It makes them dramatic—at your expense.
- “Whatever God’s dream about man may be, it seems certain it cannot come true unless man cooperates.” - Stella Terrill Mann
- Your crazymaker is a block you chose yourself, to deter you from your own trajectory. As much as you are being exploited by your crazymaker, you, too, are using that person to block your creative flow.
- The next time you catch yourself saying or thinking, “He/ she is driving me crazy!” ask yourself what creative work you are trying to block by your involvement.
- Skepticism
- Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism.
- Many times, in trying to be good sports we stuff our feelings of doubt. We need to stop doing that and explore them instead.
- “To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information with. With our own eyes we see, and with our skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.” - Sophy Burnham
- In creative recovery, it is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs. It is necessary that we examine them.
- More than anything else, creative recovery is an exercise in open- mindedness. Again, picture your mind as that room with the door slightly ajar. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness. Begin, this week, to consciously practice opening your mind.
- Attention
- A creative life involves great swathes of attention. Attention is a way to connect and survive.
- “Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” - Henry Miller
- Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.
- Success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
- The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, “unutterably alone.” More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.
- In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right. Yesterday the marriage may have ended. Tomorrow the cat may die. The phone call from the lover, for all my waiting, may not ever come, but just at the moment, just now, that’s all right. I am breathing in and out. Realizing this, I began to notice that each moment was not without its beauty.
- “The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” - Jackson Pollock
- Rules of the road
- In order to be an artist, I must:
1. Show up at the page. Use the page to rest, to dream, to try.
2. Fill the well by caring for my artist.
3. Set small and gentle goals and meet them.
4. Pray for guidance, courage, and humility.
5. Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.
6. Be alert, always, for the presence of the Great Creator leading and helping my artist.
7. Choose companions who encourage me to do the work, not just talk about doing the work or why I am not doing the work.
8. Remember that the Great Creator loves creativity.
9. Remember that it is my job to do the work, not judge the work.
10. Place this sign in my workplace: Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.
- Tasks
1. Affirmative Reading: Every day, morning and night, get quiet and focused and read the Basic Principles to yourself (See page 3.) Be alert for any attitudinal shifts. Can you see yourself setting aside any skepticism yet?
2. Where does your time go? List your five major activities this week. How much time did you give to each one? Which were what you wanted to do and which were shoulds? How much of your time is spent helping others and ignoring your own desires? Have any of your blocked friends triggered doubts in you?
3. List twenty things you enjoy doing (rock climbing, roller-skating, baking pies, making soup, making love, making love again, riding a bike, riding a horse, playing catch, shooting baskets, going for a run, reading poetry, and so forth). When was the last time you let yourself do these things? Next to each entry, place a date. Don’t be surprised if it’s been years for some of your favorites. That will change. This list is an excellent resource for artist dates.
4. From the list above, write down two favorite things that you’ve avoided that could be this week’s goals. These goals can be small: buy one roll of film and shoot it. Remember, we are trying to win you some autonomy with your time. Look for windows of time just for you, and use them in small creative acts. Get to the record store at lunch hour, even if only for fifteen minutes. Stop looking for big blocks of time when you will be free. Find small bits of time instead.
5. Dip back into Week One and read the affirmations. Note which ones cause the most reaction. Often the one that sounds the most ridiculous is the most significant. Write three chosen affirmations five times each day in your morning pages; be sure to include the affirmations you made yourself from your blurts.
6. Return to the list of imaginary lives from last week. Add five more lives. Again, check to see if you could be doing bits and pieces of these lives in the one you are living now. If you have listed a dancer’s life, do you let yourself go dancing? If you have listed a monk’s life, are you ever allowed to go on a retreat? If you are a scuba diver, is there an aquarium shop you can visit? A day at the lake you could schedule?
7. Life Pie: Draw a circle. Divide it into six pieces of pie. Label one piece spirituality, another exercise, another play, and so on with work, friends, and romance/ adventure. Place a dot in each slice at the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area (outer rim indicates great; inner circle, not so great). Connect the dots. This will show you where you are lopsided.
8. Ten Tiny Changes: List ten changes you’d like to make for yourself, from the significant to the small or vice versa (“get new sheets so I have another set, go to China, paint my kitchen, dump my bitchy friend Alice”). Do it this way: I would like to ______________.
9. Select one small item and make it a goal for this week.
10. Now do that item.
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you? How did the morning pages work for you? Describe them (for example, “They felt so stupid. I’d write all these itty-bitty disconnected things that didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another or with anything ...”). Remember, if you are writing morning pages, they are working for you. What were you surprised to find yourself writing about? Answer this question in full on your check-in page. This will be a weekly self-scan of your moods, not your progress. Don’t worry if your pages are whiny and trite. Sometimes that’s the very best thing for you.
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Remember that artist dates are a necessary frivolity. What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 3: Recovering a sense of power
- Anger
- Anger is fuel. But we are nice people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but listen to it.
- Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows us what our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. It lets us see where we’ve been and lets us know when we haven’t liked it. Anger points the way, not just the finger. In the recovery of a blocked artist, anger is a sign of health.
- Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.
- “I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” - Duke Ellington
- Sloth, apathy, and despair are the enemy. Anger is not. Anger is our friend. Not a nice friend. Not a gentle friend. But a very, very loyal friend. It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interests.
- Anger is not the action itself It is action’s invitation.
- Synchronicity
- Answered prayers are scary. They imply responsibility. You asked for it. Now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do?
- “Watch out for what you pray for; you just might get it”
- “When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in the worlds of time.” - The Work of the Chariot
- “The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf.” - Shakti Gawain
- God knows that the sky’s the limit. Anyone honest will tell you that possibility is far more frightening than impossibility, that freedom is far more terrifying than any prison. If we do, in fact, have to deal with a force beyond ourselves that involves itself in our lives, then we may have to move into action on those previously impossible dreams.
- “A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
- “Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind.” - Louis Pasteur
- Life is what we make of it. Whether we conceive of an inner god force or an other, outer God, doesn’t matter. Relying on that force does.
- Is it any wonder we discount answered prayers? We call it coincidence. We call it luck. We call it anything but what it is—the hand of God, or good, activated by our own hand when we act in behalf of our truest dreams, when we commit to our own soul.
- “Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.” - Ovid
- I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.
- Understand that the what must come before the how. First choose what you would do. The how usually falls into place of itself.
- “Desire, ask, believe, receive.” - Stella Terrill Mann
- We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.
- Seeing, after all, is believing. And if you see the results of your experiments, you will not need to believe me.
- “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.” - Goethe
- “Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities.” - William Bridges
- Shame
- Shaming someone is an attempt to prevent the person from behaving in a way that embarrasses us.
- “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” - Henry David Thoreau
- “We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples’ models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.” - Shakti Gawain
- A well-meaning friend who constructively criticizes a beginning writer may very well end that writer.
- Not all criticism is shaming. In fact, even the most severe criticism when it fairly hits the mark is apt to be greeted by an internal Ah- hah! if it shows the artist a new and valid path for work.
- The criticism that damages is that which disparages, dismisses, ridicules, or condemns. It is frequently vicious but vague and difficult to refute. This is the criticism that damages.
- As artists, we must learn when criticism is appropriate and from whom. Not only the source but the timing is very important here. A first draft is seldom appropriately shown to any but the most gentle and discerning eye. It often takes another artist to see the embryonic work that is trying to sprout. The inexperienced or harsh critical eye, instead of nurturing the shoot of art into being, may shoot it down instead.
- “Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.” - Brenda Ueland
- “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” - Albert Camus
- It is “God’s will” for us to be creative.
- Dealing with criticism
- Useful criticism ultimately leaves us with one more puzzle piece for our work.
- “The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels.” - Hazrat Inayat Khan
- Useless criticism leaves us with a feeling of being bludgeoned. As a rule, it is withering and shaming in tone; ambiguous in content; personal, inaccurate, or blanket in its condemnations. There is nothing to be gleaned from irresponsible criticism.
- Rules of the road useful in dealing with any form of criticism.
1. Receive the criticism all the way through and get it over with.
2. Jot down notes to yourself on what concepts or phrases bother you.
3. Jot down notes on what concepts or phrases seem useful.
4. Do something very nurturing for yourself—read an old good review or recall a compliment.
5. Remember that even if you have made a truly rotten piece of art, it may be a necessary stepping-stone to your next work. Art matures spasmodically and requires ugly-duckling growth stages.
6. Look at the criticism again. Does it remind you of any criticism from your past—particularly shaming childhood criticism? Acknowledge to yourself that the current criticism is triggering grief over a long- standing wound.
7. Write a letter to the critic—not to be mailed, most probably. Defend your work and acknowledge what was helpful, if anything, in the criticism proffered.
8. Get back on the horse. Make an immediate commitment to do something creative.
9. Do it. Creativity is the only cure for criticism.
- “Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” - Eugène Delacroix
- Detective work, an exercise
1. My favorite childhood toy was ...
2. My favorite childhood game was ...
3. The best movie I ever saw as a kid was ...
4. I don’t do it much but I enjoy ...
5. If I could lighten up a little, I’d let myself ...
6. If it weren’t too late, I’d ...
7. My favorite musical instrument is ...
8. The amount of money I spend on treating myself to entertainment each month is ...
9. If I weren’t so stingy with my artist, I’d buy him/ her ...
10. Taking time out for myself is ...
11. I am afraid that if I start dreaming ...
12. I secretly enjoy reading ...
13. If I had had a perfect childhood I’d have grown up to be ...
14. If it didn’t sound so crazy, I’d write or make a ...
15. My parents think artists are ...
16. My God thinks artists are ...
17. What makes me feel weird about this recovery is ...
18. Learning to trust myself is probably ...
19. My most cheer-me-up music is ...
20. My favorite way to dress is ...
- “Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.” - Erica Jong
- Growth
- Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself. A creative recovery is a healing process.
- Easy does it is actually a modus operandi.
- Practice being kind to yourself in small, concrete ways.
- “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” - Martha Graham
- If you do one nice thing a day for yourself, God will do two more.
- More than anything else, experiment with solitude. You will need to make a commitment to quiet time. Try to acquire the habit of checking in with yourself. Several times a day, just take a beat, and ask yourself how you are feeling. Listen to your answer. Respond kindly. If you are doing something very hard, promise yourself a break and a treat afterward.
- Tasks
1. Describe your childhood room. If you wish, you may sketch this room. What was your favorite thing about it? What’s your favorite thing about your room right now? Nothing? Well, get something you like in there—maybe something from that old childhood room.
- “Whenever I have to choose between two evils, I always like to try the one I haven’t tried before.” - Mae West
2. Describe five traits you like in yourself as a child.
3. List five childhood accomplishments. (straight A’s in seventh grade, trained the dog, punched out the class bully, short-sheeted the priest’s bed).
- And a treat: list five favorite childhood foods. Buy yourself one of them this week. Yes, Jell-O with bananas is okay.
4. Habits: Take a look at your habits. Many of them may interfere with your self-nurturing and cause shame. Some of the oddest things are self-destructive. Do you have a habit of watching TV you don’t like? Do you have a habit of hanging out with a really boring friend and just killing time (there’s an expression!)? Some rotten habits are obvious, overt (drinking too much, smoking, eating instead of writing). List three obvious rotten habits. What’s the payoff in continuing them?
- Some rotten habits are more subtle (no time to exercise, little time to pray, always helping others, not getting any self-nurturing, hanging out with people who belittle your dreams). List three of your subtle foes. What use do these forms of sabotage have? Be specific.
5. Make a list of friends who nurture you—that’s nurture (give you a sense of your own competency and possibility), not enable (give you the message that you will never get it straight without their help). There is a big difference between being helped and being treated as though we are helpless. List three nurturing friends. Which of their traits, particularly, serve you well?
6. Call a friend who treats you like you are a really good and bright person who can accomplish things. Part of your recovery is reaching out for support. This support will be critical as you undertake new risks.
7. Inner Compass: Each of us has an inner compass. This is an instinct that points us toward health. It warns us when we are on dangerous ground, and it tells us when something is safe and good for us. Morning pages are one way to contact it. So are some other artist- brain activities—painting, driving, walking, scrubbing, running. This week, take an hour to follow your inner compass by doing an artist- brain activity and listening to what insights bubble up.
8. List five people you admire. Now, list five people you secretly admire. What traits do these people have that you can cultivate further in yourself?
9. List five people you wish you had met who are dead. Now, list five people who are dead whom you’d like to hang out with for a while in eternity. What traits do you find in these people that you can look for in your friends?
10. Compare the two sets of lists. Take a look at what you really like and really admire—and a look at what you think you should like and admire. Your shoulds might tell you to admire Edison while your heart belongs to Houdini. Go with the Houdini side of you for a while.
- “Creative work is play. It is free speculation using the materials of one’s chosen form.” - Stephen Nachmanovitch
- “Creativity is ... seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God.” - Michele Shea
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you? If you skipped a day, why did you skip it?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? (Yes, yes, and it was awful.) What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 4: Recovering a sense of integrity
- Honest Changes
- Just as an athlete accustomed to running becomes irritable when he is unable to get his miles in, so, too, those of us accustomed now to morning pages will notice an irritability when we let them slide.
- “If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” - Chekhov
- In order to have self-expression, we must first have a self to express.
- The process of identifying a self inevitably involves loss as well as gain. We discover our boundaries, and those boundaries by definition separate us from our fellows. As we clarify our perceptions, we lose our misconceptions. As we eliminate ambiguity, we lose illusion as well. We arrive at clarity, and clarity creates change.
- “Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure.” - Piero Ferrucci
- “No pain, no gain.”
- Thanks to the morning pages we learn what we want and ultimately become willing to make the changes needed to get it.
- “Stop thinking and talking about it and there is nothing you will not be able to know.” - Zen Paradigm
- Kriya, a Sanskrit word meaning a spiritual emergency or surrender.
- Creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined.
- As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered.
- “All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.” - M. C. Richards
- “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” - Seneca
- “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.” - Giorgio de Chirico
- Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV , undersleep—many and varied forms of junk food for the soul. The pages help us to see these smears on our consciousness.
- “The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.” - W. H. Auden
- “All you need to do to receive guidance is to ask for it and then listen.” - Sanaya Roman
- “I receive your good willingly” and “Thy will be done” are two short affirmations that when written in the morning remind us to be open to increased good during the day.
- “I trust my perceptions” is another powerful affirmation to use as we undergo shifts in identity. “A stronger and clearer me is emerging.”
- Buried Dreams, An Exercise
1. List five hobbies that sound fun.
2. List five classes that sound fun.
3. List five things you personally would never do that sound fun.
4. List five skills that would be fun to have.
5. List five things you used to enjoy doing.
6. List five silly things you would like to try once.
- If you feel stuck in your life or in your art, few jump starts are more effective than a week of reading deprivation.
- It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually filling the well. Without distractions, we are once again thrust into the sensory world.
- We often cannot hear our own inner voice, the voice of our artist’s inspiration, above the static.
- “We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.” - Brenda Ueland
- “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” - Theodore Roethke
- Tasks
1. Environment: Describe your ideal environment. Town? Country? Swank? Cozy? One paragraph. One image, drawn or clipped, that conveys this. What’s your favorite season? Why? Go through some magazines and find an image of this. Or draw it. Place it near your working area.
2. Time Travel: Describe yourself at eighty. What did you do after fifty that you enjoyed? Be very specific. Now, write a letter from you at eighty to you at your current age. What would you tell yourself? What interests would you urge yourself to pursue? What dreams would you encourage?
3. Time Travel: Remember yourself at eight. What did you like to do? What were your favorite things? Now, write a letter from you at eight to you at your current age. What would you tell yourself?
4. Environment: Look at your house. Is there any room that you could make into a secret, private space for yourself? Convert the TV room? Buy a screen or hang a sheet and cordon off a section of some other room? This is your dream area. It should be decorated for fun and not as an office. All you really need is a chair or pillow, something to write on, some kind of little altar area for flowers and candles. This is to help you center on the fact that creativity is a spiritual, not an ego, issue.
5. Use your life pic (from Week One) to review your growth. Has that nasty tarantula changed shape yet? Haven’t you been more active, less rigid, more expressive? Be careful not to expect too much too soon. That’s raising the jumps. Growth must have time to solidify into health. One day at a time, you are building the habit patterns of a healthy artist. Easy does do it. List ongoing self-nurturing toys you could buy your artist: books on tape, magazine subscriptions, theater tickets, a bowling ball.
6. Write your own Artist’s Prayer. (See pages 207-208.) Use it every day for a week.
7. An Extended Artist Date: Plan a small vacation for yourself. (One weekend day. Get ready to execute it.)
☆ Open your closet. Throw out—or hand on, or donate—one low-self-worth outfit. (You know the outfit.) Make space for the new.
9. Look at one situation in your life that you feel you should change but haven’t yet. What is the payoff for you in staying stuck?
10. If you break your reading deprivation, write about how you did it. In a tantrum? A slipup? A binge? How do you feel about it? Why?
- “When the soul wishes to experience something she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own Image.” - Meister Eckhart
- “I learned that the real creator was my inner Self, the Shakti…. That desire to do something is God inside talking through us.” - Michele Shea
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? (Tantrums often show up as skipping the morning pages.) How was the experience for you?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? (Does your artist get to do more than rent a movie?) What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
- One of the chief barriers to accepting God’s generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish.
- Remembering that God is my source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. Most of us never consider how powerful the creator really is. Instead, we draw very limited amounts of the power available to us. We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us. We are stingy with ourselves. And if we receive a gift beyond our imagining, we often send it back. (2 likes)
- “Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually.” - Eileen Caddy
- Since everyone can draw on the universal supply, we deprive no one with our abundance. If we learn to think of receiving God’s good as being an act of worship—cooperating with God’s plan to manifest goodness in our lives—we can begin to let go of having to sabotage ourselves.
- One reason we are miserly with ourselves is scarcity thinking. We don’t want our luck to run out. We don’t want to overspend our spiritual abundance. Again, we are limiting our flow by anthropomorphizing God into a capricious parent figure. Remembering that God is our source, an energy flow that likes to extend itself, we become more able to tap our creative power effectively.
- God has lots of money. God has lots of movie ideas, novel ideas, poems, songs, paintings, acting jobs. God has a supply of loves, friends, houses that are all available to us. By listening to the creator within, we are led to our right path. On that path, we find friends, lovers, money, and meaningful work. Very often, when we cannot seem to find an adequate supply, it is because we are insisting on a particular human source of supply. We must learn to let the flow manifest itself where it will—not where we will it.
- “Look and you will find it—what is unsought will go undetected.” - Sophocles
- Any progress is made by leaps of faith, some small and some large.
- As each idea comes to us, we must in good faith clear away our inner barriers to acting on it and then, on an outer level, take the concrete steps necessary to trigger our synchronous good.
- “It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve him. Serving him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create.” - Leo Tolstoy
- God as my source is a simple but completely effective plan for living. It removes negative dependency—and anxiety—from our lives by assuring us that God will provide. Our job is to listen for how. (1 like)
- One way we listen is by writing our morning pages. At night, before we fall asleep, we can list areas in which we need guidance. In the morning, writing on these same topics, we find ourselves seeing previously unseen avenues of approach. Experiment with this two-step process: ask for answers in the evening; listen for answers in the morning. Be open to all help.
- The morning pages, a flow of stream of consciousness, gradually loosens our hold on fixed opinions and short-sighted views. We see that our moods, views, and insights are transitory. We acquire a sense of movement, a current of change in our lives. This current, or river, is a flow of grace moving us to our right livelihood, companions, destiny.
- Dependence on the creator within is really freedom from all other dependencies. Paradoxically, it is also the only route to real intimacy with other human beings. Freed from our terrible fears of abandonment, we are able to live with more spontaneity. Freed from our constant demands for more and more reassurance, our fellows are able to love us back without feeling so burdened.
- “Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.” - Margaret Young
- As we come to trust and love our internal guide, we lose our fear of intimacy because we no longer confuse our intimate others with the higher power we are coming to know. In short, we are learning to give up idolatry— the worshipful dependency on any person, place, or thing. Instead, we place our dependency on the source itself. The source meets our needs through people, places, and things.
- An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is.
- For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without it, the artist in us feels vexed, angry, out of sorts. If such deprivation continues, our artist becomes sullen, depressed, hostile. We eventually became like cornered animals, snarling at our family and friends to leave us alone and stop making unreasonable demands.
- We expect our artist to be able to function without giving it what it needs to do so. An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the healing of time alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted. Over time, it becomes something worse than out of sorts. Death threats are issued.
- “We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I’m not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for that.” - Toni Morrison
- For an artist, virtue can be deadly. The urge toward respectability and maturity can be stultifying, even fatal.
- We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone. When we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we’re there. We may act like we’re there. But our true self has gone to ground.
- The question “Are you self-destructive?” is asked so frequently that we seldom hear it accurately. What it means is Are you destructive of yourself? And what that really asks us is Are you destructive of your true nature?
- “There is the risk you cannot afford to take, [and] there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.” - Peter Drucker
☆ The Virtue-trap quiz
1. The biggest lack in my life is _________________________
2. The greatest joy in my life is _________________________
3. My largest time commitment is _______________________
4. As I play more, I work ____________________________
5. I feel guilty that I am ______________________________
6. I worry that _______________________________________
7. If my dreams come true, my family will _________________
8. I sabotage myself so people will ______________________
9. If I let myself feel it, I’m angry that I ___________________
10. One reason I get sad sometimes is ____________________
- “You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” - Colette
- List ten things you love and would love to do but are not allowed to do.
- Write down 20 wishes. I wish ... The last one is I most especially wish...
- “The specific meaning of God depends on what is the most desirable good for a person.” - Erich Fromm
- Tasks
1. The reason I can’t really believe in a supportive God is … List five grievances. (God can take it.)
2. Starting an Image File: If I had either faith or money I would try … List five desires. For the next week, be alert for images of these desires. When you spot them, clip them, buy them, photograph them, draw them, collect them somehow. With these images, begin a file of dreams that speak to you. Add to it continually for the duration of the course.
☆ One more time, list five imaginary lives. Have they changed? Are you doing more parts of them? You may want to add images of these lives to your image file.
☆ If I were twenty and had money … List five adventures. Again, add images of these to your visual image file.
☆ If I were sixty-five and had money … List five postponed pleasures. And again, collect these images. This is a very potent tool. I now live in a house that I imaged for ten years.
☆ Ten ways I am mean to myself are … Just as making the positive explicit helps allow it into our lives, making the negative explicit helps us to exorcise it.
☆ Ten items I would like to own that I don’t are … And again, you may want to collect these images. In order to boost sales, experts in sales motivation often teach rookie salesmen to post images of what they would like to own. It works.
☆ Honestly, my favorite creative block is … TV , over-reading, friends, work, rescuing others, overexercise. You name it. Whether you can draw or not, please cartoon yourself indulging in it.
☆ My payoff for staying blocked is … This you may want to explore in your morning pages.
☆ The person I blame for being blocked is … Again, use your pages to mull on this.
- “To accept the responsibility of being a child of God is to accept the best that life has to offer you.” - Stella Terrill Mann
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Are you starting to like them—at all? How was the experience for you? Have you discovered the page-and-a-half truthpoint yet? Many of us find that pay dirt in our writing occurs after a page and a half of vamping.
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Have you had the experience of hearing answers during this leisure time? What did you do for your date? How did it feel? Have you taken an artist date yet that really felt adventurous ?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it? Try inaugurating a conversation on synchronicity with your friends.
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
- “Money is God in action.” - Raymond Charles Barker
- “The more we learn to operate in the world based on trust in our intuition, the stronger our channel will be and the more money we will have.” - Shakti Gawain
- “Money will come when you are doing the right thing.” - Mike Phillips
- Most of us harbor a secret belief that work has to be work and not play, and that anything we really want to do—like write, act, dance—must be considered frivolous and be placed a distant second. This is not true.
☆ This week, in your morning pages, write about the god you do believe in and the god you would like to believe in. For some of us, this means, “What if God’s a woman and she’s on my side?” For others, it is a god of energy. For still others, a collective of higher forces moving us toward our highest good.
- “Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor .” - Paul Hawken
- Creativity is not and never has been sensible. Why should it be? Why should you be? Do you still think there is some moral virtue in being martyred? If you want to make some art, make some art.
- Remember, you are the cheapskate, not God. As you expect God to be more generous, God will be able to be more generous to you.
- What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.
- “Explore daily the will of God.” - C. G. Jung
- “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” - Leo Tolstoy
- Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play.
- Often our spending differs from our real values. We fritter away cash on things we don’t cherish and deny ourselves those things we do. For many of us, counting is a necessary prelude to learning creative luxury.
☆ Money madness, an exercise
- Complete the following phrases.
1. People with money are __________________________
2. Money makes people _____________________________
3. I’d have more money if ________________________
4. My dad thought money was ________________________
5. My mom always thought money would _______________
6. In my family, money caused _____________________
7. Money equals _________________________________
8. If I had money, I’d ____________________________
9. If I could afford it, I’d _________________________
10. If I had some money, I’d _______________________
11. I’m afraid that if I had money I would _____________
12. Money is ____________________________________
13. Money causes ________________________________
14. Having money is not ___________________________
15. In order to have more money, I’d need to _______
16. When I have money, I usually _________________
17. I think money ________________________________
18. If I weren’t so cheap I’d _____________________
19. People think money __________________________
20. Being broke tells me __________________________
- Tasks
1. Natural Abundance: Find five pretty or interesting rocks. I enjoy this exercise particularly because rocks can be carried in pockets, fingered in business meetings. They can be small, constant reminders of our creative consciousness.
2. Natural Abundance: Pick five flowers or leaves. You may want to press these between wax paper and save them in a book. If you did this in kindergarten, that’s fine. Some of the best creative play is done there. Let yourself do it again.
☆ Clearing: Throw out or give away five ratty pieces of clothing.
4. Creation: Bake something. (If you have a sugar problem, make a fruit salad.) Creativity does not have to always involve capital-A art. Very often, the act of cooking something can help you cook something up in another creative mode. When I am stymied as a writer, I make soups and pies.
5. Communication: Send postcards to five friends. This is not a goody-two-shoes exercise. Send to people you would love to hear from.
6. Reread the Basic Principles. (See page 3.) Do this once daily. Read an Artist’s Prayer—yours from Week Four or mine on pages 207-208. Do this once daily.
7. Clearing: Any new changes in your home environment? Make some.
8. Acceptance: Any new flow in your life? Practice saying yes to freebies.
9. Prosperity: Any changes in your financial situation or your perspective on it? Any new—even crazy—ideas about what you would love doing? Pull images around this and add to your image file.
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? (Have you used them yet to think about creative luxury for yourself?) How was the experience for you?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? (Have you considered allowing yourself two?) What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection
- Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.
- If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that’s just beyond our grasp, “up there, in the stratosphere, where art lives on high….” When we get something down, there is no strain. We’re not doing; we’re getting. Someone or something else is doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we are engaged in listening.
- “Listening is a form of accepting.” - Stella Terrill Mann
- Once you accept that it is natural to create, you can begin to accept a second idea—that the creator will hand you whatever you need for the project. The minute you are willing to accept the help of this collaborator, you will see useful bits of help everywhere in your life. Be alert: there is a second voice, a higher harmonic, adding to and augmenting your inner creative voice. This voice frequently shows itself in synchronicity.
- Learn to accept the possibility that the universe is helping you with what you are doing. Become willing to see the hand of God and accept it as a friend’s offer to help with what you are doing. Because many of us unconsciously harbor the fearful belief that God would find our creations decadent or frivolous or worse, we tend to discount this creator-to-creator help.
- Expect the universe to support your dream. It will.
- Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop—an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole. Instead of creating freely and allowing errors to reveal themselves later as insights, we often get mired in getting the details right. We correct our originality into a uniformity that lacks passion and spontaneity. “Do not fear mistakes,” Miles Davis told us. “There are none.” (1 like)
- We’ve all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.
- “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark” - Agnes De Mille
- “We cannot escape fear . We can only transform it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures…. Take a risk a day-one small or bold stroke that will make you feel great once you have done it.” - Susan Jeffers
- Once we are willing to accept that anything worth doing might even be worth doing badly our options widen.
- “There is no must in art because art is free.” - Wassily Kandinsky
- “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” - Les Brown
☆ If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would try …
- Jealousy is always a mask for fear: fear that we aren’t able to get what we want; frustration that somebody else seems to be getting what is rightfully ours even if we are too frightened to reach for it. At its root, jealousy is a stingy emotion. It doesn’t allow for the abundance and multiplicity of the universe. Jealousy tells us there is room for only one—one poet, one painter, one whatever you dream of being.
- “With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.” - Keshavan Nair
- The truth, revealed by action in the direction of our dreams, is that there is room for all of us. But jealousy produces tunnel vision. It narrows our ability to see things in perspective. It strips us of our ability to see other options. The biggest lie that jealousy tells us is that we have no choice but to be jealous. Perversely, jealousy strips us of our will to act when action holds the key to our freedom.
- The Jealousy Map, an exercise
☆ Your jealousy map will have three columns. In the first column, name those whom you are jealous of. Next to each name write why. Be as specific and accurate as you can. In the third column, list one action you can take to move toward creative risk and out of jealousy.
- Archeology, an exercise
- “I don’ t have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It’ s what you do with it that counts.” - Martin Ritt
☆ Complete these phrases.
1. As a kid, I missed the chance to ____________________
2. As a kid, I lacked ________________________________
3. As a kid, I could have used ________________________
4. As a kid, I dreamed of being ________________________
5. As a kid, I wanted a ______________________________
6. In my house, we never had enough __________________
7. As a kid, I needed more __________________________
8. I am sorry that I will never again see _______________
9. For years, I have missed and wondered about ________
10. I beat myself up about the loss of _____________
☆ Finish these phrases.
1. I have a loyal friend in __________________
2. One thing I like about my town is ______________
3. I think I have nice _________________________
4. Writing my morning pages has shown me I can ___
5. I am taking a greater interest in ________________
6. I believe I am getting better at __________________
7. My artist has started to pay more attention to _________
8. My self-care is _________________________________
9. I feel more ___________________________________
10. Possibly, my creativity is __________________________
- “Trust in yourself. Your perceptions are often far more accurate than you are willing to believe.” - Claudia Black
- Tasks
1. Make this phrase a mantra: Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.
- We tend to think being hard on ourselves will make us strong. But it is cherishing ourselves that gives us strength.
2. Give yourself time out to listen to one side of an album, just for joy. You may want to doodle as you listen, allowing yourself to draw the shapes, emotions, thoughts you hear in the music. Notice how just twenty minutes can refresh you. Learn to take these mini—artist dates to break stress and allow insight.
3. Take yourself into a sacred space—a church, synagogue, library, grove of trees—and allow yourself to savor the silence and healing solitude. Each of us has a personal idea of what sacred space is. For me, a large clock store or a great aquarium store can engender a sense of timeless wonder. Experiment.
4. Create one wonderful smell in your house—with soup, incense, fir branches, candles—whatever.
5. Wear your favorite item of clothing for no special occasion.
6. Buy yourself one wonderful pair of socks, one wonderful pair of gloves—one wonderfully comforting, self-loving something.
7. Collage: Collect a stack of at least ten magazines, which you will allow yourself to freely dismember. Setting a twenty-minute time limit for yourself, tear (literally) through the magazines, collecting any images that reflect your life or interests. Think of this collage as a form of pictorial autobiography. Include your past, present, future, and your dreams. It is okay to include images you simply like. Keep pulling until you have a good stack of images (at least twenty). Now take a sheet of newspaper, a stapler, or some tape or glue, and arrange your images in a way that pleases you. (This is one of my students’ favorite exercises.)
8. Quickly list five favorite films. Do you see any common denominators among them? Are they romances, adventures, period pieces, political dramas, family epics, thrillers? Do you see traces of your cinematic themes in your collage?
9. Name your favorite topics to read about: comparative religion, movies, ESP , physics, rags-to-riches, betrayal, love triangles, scientific breakthroughs, sports… Are these topics in your collage?
10. Give your collage a place of honor. Even a secret place of honor is all right—in your closet, in a drawer, anywhere that is yours. Y ou may want to do a new one every few months, or collage more thoroughly a dream you are trying to accomplish.
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Have you allowed yourself to daydream a few creative risks? Are you coddling your artist child with childhood loves?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Did you use it to take any risks? What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength
- “I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice.” - Erich Fromm
- “Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.” - Fyodor Dostoyevski
- “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Albert Einstein
- “Surround yourself with people who respect and treat you well.” - Claudia Black
- “To the rationally minded the mental processes of the intuitive appear to work backwards.” - Frances Wickes
- “Trust that still, small voice that says,
“This might work and I’ll try it.”” - Diane Mariechild
- “Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.” - Claude Bernard
- “I cannot expect even my own art to provide all of the answers—only to hope it keeps asking the right questions.” - Grace Hartigan
- Whenever I am willing to ask “What is necessary next?” I have moved ahead. Whenever I have taken no for a final answer I have stalled and gotten stuck. I have learned that the key to career resiliency is self-empowerment and choice.
- “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” - Jean-Jaques Rousseau
- When faced with a loss, immediately take one small action to support your artist. Even if all you are doing is buying a bunch of tulips and a sketch pad, your action says, “I acknowledge you and your pain. I promise you a future worth having. ” Like a small child, our artist needs mommying. “Ouch. That hurt. Here’s a little treat, a lullaby, a promise …”
- “I’m too old for that” ranks with “I don’t have money for it” as a Great Block Lie we use to prevent further exploration. “I’m too old” is something we tell ourselves to save ourselves from the emotional cost of the ego deflation involved in being a beginner.
- “Satisfaction of one’ s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.” - Linus Pauling
- In a sense, no creative act is ever finished. Y ou can’t learn to act because there is always more to learn.
- Fixated on the need to have something to show for our labors, we often deny our curiosities. Every time we do this, we are blocked.
- What do I mean by filling the form? I mean taking the next small step instead of skipping ahead to a large one for which you may not yet be prepared.
- Filling the form means that you write your daily pages. It means that when obsession strikes—as it will—about how the damn thing is not any good, you tell yourself that this is a question for later and turn back to doing what is the next right thing. And that means you write the pages of the day.
- As a rule of thumb, it is best to just admit that there is always one action you can take for your creativity daily. This daily-action commitment fills the form.
- “No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.” - Agnes de Mille
☆ Early patternings, an exercise
1. As a kid, my dad thought my art was _____. That made me feel ______.
2. I remember one time when he _____________
3. I felt very __________ and __________ about that. I never forgot it.
4. As a kid, my mother taught me that my daydreaming was _________________________________________
5. I remember she’d tell me to snap out of it by reminding me _____________________________________
6. The person I remember who believed in me was ______
7. I remember one time when _________________________
8. I felt ___ and __________ about that. I never forgot it.
9. The thing that ruined my chance to be an artist was ________________________________________________
10. The negative lesson I got from that, which wasn’t logical but I still believe, is that I can’t ___ and be an artist.
11. When I was little, I learned that __________ and ___ were big sins that I particularly had to watch out for.
12. I grew up thinking artists were __________ people.
13. The teacher who shipwrecked my confidence was __________________________________________
14. I was told _________________________________
15. I believed this teacher because _________________
16. The mentor who gave me a good role model was ___
17. When people say I have talent I think they want to ________________________________________________
18. The thing is, I am suspicious that ___________
19. I just can’t believe that _____________________
20. If I believe I am really talented, then I am mad as hell at ____ and ______ and ____ and _____ and ___.
- “I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.” - Franz Schubert
- Affirmations
- I am a talented person.
- I have a right to be an artist.
- I am a good person and a good artist.
- Creativity is a blessing I accept.
- My creativity blesses others.
- My creativity is appreciated.
- I now treat myself and my creativity more gently.
- I now treat myself and my creativity more generously.
- I now share my creativity more openly.
- I now accept hope.
- I now act affirmatively.
- I now accept creative recovery.
- I now allow myself to heal.
- I now accept God’ s help unfolding my life.
- I now believe God loves artists.
- Tasks
1. Goal Search: You may find the following exercise difficult. Allow yourself to do it anyway. If multiple dreams occur to you, do the exercise for each one of them. The simple act of imagining a dream in concrete detail helps us to bring it into reality. Think of your goal search as a preliminary architect’s drawing for the life you would wish to have.
- The Steps
☆ Name your dream. That’s right. Write it down. “In a perfect world, I would secretly love to be a _____”
☆ Name one concrete goal that signals to you its accomplishment. On your emotional compass, this goal signifies true north. (Note: two people may want to be an actress. They share that dream. For one, an article in People magazine is the concrete goal. To her, glamour is the emotional center for her dream; glamour is true north. For the second actress, the concrete goal is a good review in a Broadway play. To her, respect as a creative artist is the emotional center of her dream; respect is true north. Actress one might be happy as a soap star. Actress two would need stage work to fulfill her dream. On the surface, both seem to desire the same thing.)
☆ In a perfect world, where would you like to be in five years in relation to your dream and true north?
☆ In the world we inhabit now, what action can you take, this year, to move you closer?
☆ What action can you take this month? This week? This day? Right now?
☆ List your dream (for example, to be a famous film director). List its true north (respect and higher consciousness, mass communication.) Select a role model (Walt Disney, Ron Howard, Michael Powell). Make an action plan. Five years. Three years. One year. One month. One week. Now. Choose an action. Reading this book is an action.
☆ New Childhood: What might you have been if you’d had perfect nurturing? Write a page of this fantasy childhood. What were you given? Can you reparent yourself in that direction now?
☆ Color Schemes: Pick a color and write a quick few sentences describing yourself in the first person. (“I am silver, high-tech and ethereal, the color of dreams and accomplishment, the color of half-light and in between, I feel serene.” Or “I am red. I am passion, sunset, anger, blood, wine and roses, armies, murder, lust, and apples.” What is your favorite color? What do you have that is that color? What about an entire room? This is your life and your house.
☆ List five things you are not allowed to do: kill your boss, scream in church, go outside naked, make a scene, quit your job. Now do that thing on paper. Write it, draw it, paint it, act it out, collage it. Now put some music on and dance it.
☆ Style Search: List twenty things you like to do. (Perhaps the same twenty you listed before, perhaps not.) Answer these questions for each item.
Does it cost money or is it free?
Expensive or cheap?
Alone or with somebody?
Job related?
Physical risk?
Fast-paced or slow?
Mind, body, or spiritual?
☆ Ideal Day: Plan a perfect day in your life as it is now constituted, using the information gleaned from above.
☆ Ideal Ideal Day: Plan a perfect day in your life as you wish it were constituted. There are no restrictions. Allow yourself to be and to have whatever your heart desires. Y our ideal environment, job, home, circle of friends, intimate relationship, stature in your art form—your wildest dreams.
8. Choose one festive aspect from your ideal day. Allow yourself to live it. You may not be able to move to Rome yet, but even in a still- grungy apartment you can enjoy a homemade cappuccino and a croissant.
- “Your desire is your prayer . Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer .” - Dr. Joseph Murphy
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? (Have you been very tempted to abandon them?) How was the experience for you?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? (Have you been allowing workaholism or other commitments to sabotage this practice?) What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion
- Blocked artists are not lazy. They are blocked.
- Do not call the inability to start laziness. Call it fear .
- Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear .
- Fear is what blocks an artist. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of not finishing. The fear of failure and of success. The fear of beginning at all. There is only one cure for fear. That cure is love.
- Stop yelling at yourself. Be nice. Call fear by its right name.
- Over any extended period of time, being an artist requires enthusiasm more than discipline. Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us.
- Enthusiasm (from the Greek, “filled with God”) is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself. Enthusiasm is grounded in play, not work. Far from being a brain-numbed soldier, our artist is actually our child within, our inner playmate. As with all playmates, it is joy, not duty, that makes for a lasting bond.
- “Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.” - Stendhal
- “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’ s courage.” - Anaïs Nin
☆ List any resentments (anger) you have in connection with this project. It does not matter how petty, picky, or irrational these resentments may appear to your adult self. To your artist child they are real big deals: grudges.
☆ Ask your artist to list any and all fears about the projected piece of work and/or anyone connected to it. Again, these fears can be as dumb as any two-year-old’s. It does not matter that they are groundless to your adult’s eye. What matters it that they are big scary monsters to your artist.
☆ Ask yourself if that is all. Have you left out any itsy fear? Have you suppressed any “stupid” anger? Get it on the page.
☆ Ask yourself what you stand to gain by not doing this piece of work.
☆ Make your deal. The deal is: “Okay, Creative Force, you take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity.” Sign your deal and post it.
- “Be really whole. And all things will come to you.” - Lao-Tzu
- Tasks
☆ Read your morning pages! This process is best undertaken with two colored markers, one to highlight insights and another to highlight actions needed. Do not judge your pages or yourself. This is very important. Yes, they will be boring. Y es, they may be painful. Consider them a map. Take them as information, not an indictment.
Take Stock: Who have you consistently been complaining about?
What have you procrastinated on? What blessedly have you allowed yourself to change or accept?
Take Heart: Many of us notice an alarming tendency toward black-and-white thinking: “He’s terrible. He’s wonderful. I love him. I hate him. It’s a great job. It’s a terrible job,” and so forth. Don’t be thrown by this. Acknowledge: The pages have allowed us to vent without self-destruction, to plan without interference, to complain without an audience, to dream without restriction, to know our own minds. Give yourself credit for undertaking them. Give them credit for the changes and growth they have fostered.
☆ Visualizing: You have already done work with naming your goal and identifying true north. The following exercise asks you to fully imagine having your goal accomplished. Please spend enough time to fill in the juicy details that would really make the experience wonderful for you.
Name your goal: I am _______________________
In the present tense, describe yourself doing it at the height of your powers! This is your ideal scene.
Read this aloud to yourself.
Post this above your work area.
Read this aloud, daily!
For the next week collect actual pictures of yourself and combine them with magazine images to collage your ideal scene described
above. Remember, seeing is believing, and the added visual cue of your real self in your ideal scene can make it far more real.
3. Priorities: List for yourself your creative goals for the year. List for yourself your creative goals for the month. List for yourself your creative goals for the week.
- Check-in
1. How many days this week you do your morning pages? Regarding
your U-turns, have you allowed yourself a shift toward compassion, at
least on the page?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Have you kept the emphasis on
fun? What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for
your recovery? Describe them.
- “We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.” - John Holt Educator
- Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection
- CREATIVITY is GOD ENERGY flowing through us, shaped by us, like light flowing through a crystal prism. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain. When we resist what that energy might show us or where it might take us, we often experience a shaky, out-of-control feeling. We want to shut down the flow and regain our sense of control. We slam on the psychic brakes
- “Saying no can be the ultimate self-care.” - Claudia Black (1 like)
- For some people alcohol is the favored block. For others, drugs. For many, work is the block of choice. Busy, busy, busy, they grab for tasks to numb themselves with.
- We begin to sense our real potential and the wide range of possibilities open to us. That scares us. So we all reach for blocks to slow our growth. If we are honest with ourselves, we all know which blocks are the toxic ones for us. Clue: this is the block we defend as our right.
- “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” - Albert Einstein
- Blocking is essentially an issue of faith. Rather than trust our intuition, our talent, our skill, our desire, we fear where our creator is taking us with this creativity. Rather than paint, write, dance, audition, and see where it takes us, we pick up a block. Blocked, we know who and what we are: unhappy people. Unblocked, we may be something much more threatening—happy. For most of us, happy is terrifying, unfamiliar, out of control, too risky! Is it any wonder we take temporary U-turns?
- As we become aware of our blocking devices—food, busyness, alcohol, sex, other drugs—we can feel our U-turns as we make them. The blocks will no longer work effectively. Over time, we will try—perhaps slowly at first and erratically—to ride out the anxiety and see where we emerge. Anxiety is fuel. We can use it to write with, paint with, work with.
- In creative recovery, it is far easier to get people to do the extra work of the morning pages than it is to get them to do the assigned play of an artist date. Play can make a workaholic very nervous. Fun is scary.
- “When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are.” - Cesar Chavez
- There is a difference between zestful work toward a cherished goal and workaholism. That difference lies less in the hours than it does in the emotional quality of the hours spent. There is a treadmill quality to workaholism. We depend on our addiction and we resent it. For a workaholic, work is synonymous with worth, and so we are hesitant to jettison any part of it.
- An alcoholic gets sober by abstaining from alcohol. A workaholic gets sober by abstaining from overwork. The trick is to define overwork—and this is where we often lie to ourselves, bargaining to hold on to those abusive behaviors that still serve us.
- “The life which is not examined is not worth living.” - Plato
- There is never enough of the fame drug. Wanting more will always snap at our heels, discredit our accomplishments, erode our joy at another’s accomplishment.
- “Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” - Meister Eckhart
- “The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.” - Adrienne Rich
- “Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.” - J. Krishnamurti
- Fame is really a shortcut for self-approval. Try approving of yourself just as you are—and spoiling yourself rotten with small kid’s pleasures.
- Showing up for the work is the win that matters.
- “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” - Lao-Tzu
- “I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.” - Brenda Ueland
- “It’ s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” - Somerset Maugham
- Tasks
☆ The Deadlies: Take a piece of paper and cut seven small strips from it. On each strip write one of the following words: alcohol, drugs, sex, work, money, food, family/friends. Fold these strips of paper and place them in an envelope. We call these folded slips the deadlies. You’ll see why in a minute. Now draw one of the deadlies from the envelope and write five ways in which it has had a negative impact on your life. (If the one you choose seems difficult or inapplicable to you, consider this resistance.) You will do this seven times, each time putting back the previous slip of paper so that you are always drawing from seven possible choices. Yes, you may draw the same deadly repeatedly. Yes, this is significant. Very often, it is the last impact on the final list of an annoying “Oh no, not again” that yields a break, through denial, into clarity.
☆ Touchstones: Make a quick list of things you love, happiness touchstones for you. River rocks worn smooth, willow trees, cornflowers, chicory, real Italian bread, homemade vegetable soup, the Bo Deans’ music, black beans and rice, the smell of new-mown grass, blue velvet (the cloth and the song), Aunt Minnie’s crumb pie … Post this list where it can console you and remind you of your own personal touchstones. You may want to draw one of the items on your list—or acquire it. If you love blue velvet, get a remnant and use it as a runner on a sideboard or dresser, or tack it to the wall and mount images on it. Play a little.
☆ The Awful Truth: Answer the following questions. Tell the truth. What habit do you have that gets in the way of your creativity? Tell the truth. What do you think might be a problem? It is. What do you plan to do about the habit or problem? What is your payoff in holding on to this block? If you can’t figure out your payoff, ask a trusted friend. Tell the truth. Which friends make you doubt yourself? (The self-doubt is yours already, but they trigger it.) Tell the truth. Which friends believe in you and your talent? (The talent is yours, but they make you feel it.) What is the payoff in keeping your destructive friends? If the answer is, “I like them,” the next question is, “Why?” Which destructive habits do your destructive friends share with your destructive self? Which constructive habits do your constructive friends share with your constructive self?
☆ Setting a Bottom Line: Working with your answers to the questions above, try setting a bottom line for yourself Begin with five of your most painful behaviors. You can always add more later.
5. Cherishing:
☆ List five small victories.
2. List three nurturing actions you took for your artist.
☆ List three actions you could take to comfort your artist.
☆ Make three nice promises to yourself Keep them.
5. Do one lovely thing for yourself each day this week.
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Has reading your pages changed your writing? Are you still allowing yourself to write them freely?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Let yourself do an extra one. What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
☆ Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
- I must learn that as an artist my credibility lies with me, God, and my work.
- If I have a poem to write, I need to write that poem—whether it will sell or not.
- To a large degree my life is my art, and when it gets dull, so does my work.
- As an artist, my self-respect comes from doing the work.
- “The function of the creative artist consists of making laws, not in following laws already made.” - Ferruccio Busoni
- If I sabotage my artist, I can well expect an eating binge, a sex binge, a temper binge. Check the relationship between these behaviors for yourself When we are not creating, artists are not always very normal or very nice—to ourselves or to others.
- When well-meaning parents and friends push marriage or nine-to-five or anything on us that doesn’t evolve in a way that allows for our art to continue, we will react as if we are fighting for our lives—we are.
- “What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.” - Eugtne Delaxroix
- The creator made us creative. Our creativity is our gift from God. Our use of it is our gift to God. Accepting this bargain is the beginning of true self-acceptance.
- The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew.
- When the mind is focused on other, the self often comes into a far more accurate focus.
- “To keep the body in good health is a duty…. Otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” - Buddha
- “Here in this body are the sacred rivers: here are the sun and moon as well as all the pilgrimage places…. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body.” - Saraha
- “Life is a series of hurdles,” says Libby, a painter whose sport is horseback riding. “I used to see it as a series of obstacles or roadblocks. Now they are hurdles and challenges. How well am I taking them?”
- We learn by going where we have to go. Exercise is often the going that moves us from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect.
- We are meant to celebrate the good things of this earth. Pretty leaves, rocks, candles, sea treasures—all these remind us of our creator.
- Small rituals, self-devised, are good for the soul. Burning incense while reading affirmations or writing them, lighting a candle, dancing to drum music, holding a smooth rock and listening to Gregorian chant—all of these tactile, physical techniques reinforce spiritual growth.
- Remember, the artist child speaks the language of the soul: music, dance, scent, shells … Your artist’s altar to the creator should be fun to look at, even silly. Remember how much little kids like gaudy suff. Y our artist is a little kid, so …
- Tasks
1. Tape your own voice reading the Basic Principles. (See page 3). Choose a favorite essay from this book and tape that as well. Use this tape for meditation.
2. Write out, in longhand, your Artist’s Prayer from Week Four. Place it in your wallet.
3. Buy yourself a special creativity notebook. Number pages one through seven. Give one page each to the following categories: health, possessions, leisure, relationships, creativity, career, and spirituality. With no thought as to practicality, list ten wishes in each area. All right, it’s a lot. Let yourself dream a little here.
4. Working with the Honest Changes section in Week Four, inventory for yourself the ways you have changed since beginning your recovery.
5. List five ways you will change as you continue.
6. List five ways you plan to nurture yourself in the next six months: courses you will take, supplies you will allow yourself, artist’s dates, and vacations just for you.
7. Take out a piece of paper and plan one week’s nurturing for yourself. This means one concrete, loving action every single day for one week: please binge!
8. Write and mail an encouraging letter to your inner artist. This sounds silly and feels very, very good to receive. Remember that your artist is a child and loves praise and encouragement and festive plans.
9. Once more, reexamine your God concept. Does your belief system limit or support your creative expansion ? Are you open minded about altering your concept of God?
10. List ten examples of personal synchronicity that support the possibility of a nurturing creative force.
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you? Have you recommended morning pages to anyone else? Why?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? (Have you considered scheduling an entire artist’s day? Whew!) What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith
- “Adventures don’ t begin until you get into the forest. That first step in an act of faith.” - Mickey Hart
- Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control. This is frightening, and we resist it. Our resistance to our creativity is a form of self-destruction.
- “Do not fear mistakes—there are none.” - Miles Davis
- “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.” - Joseph Campbell
- It is the inner commitment to be true to ourselves and follow our dreams that triggers the support of the universe.
- All too often, we try to push, pull, outline, and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
- We are an ambitious society, and it is often difficult for us to cultivate forms of creativity that do not directly serve us and our career goals. Recovery urges our reexamining definitions of creativity and expanding them to include what in the past we called hobbies. The experience of creative living argues that hobbies are in fact essential to the joyful life.
- We are intended to create.
- “Play is the exultation of the possible.” - Martin Buber
- Always remember: the first rule of magic is self-containment. You must hold your intention within yourself, stoking it with power. Only then will you be able to manifest what you desire.
- In order to achieve escape velocity, we must learn to keep our own counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately.
- Make a list: those friends who will support me. Make another list: those friends who won’t. Name your W.B.’s for what they are—Wet Blankets. Wrap yourself in something else— dry ones. Fluffy heated towels. Do not indulge or tolerate anyone who throws cold water in your direction. Forget good intentions. Forget they didn’t mean it. Remember to count your blessings and your toes. Escape velocity requires the sword of steely intention and the shield of self-determination.
- Tasks
1. Write down any resistance, angers, and fears you have about going on from here. We all have them.
2. Take a look at your current areas of procrastination. What are the payoffs in your waiting? Locate the hidden fears. Do a list on paper.
3. Sneak a peek at Week One, Core Negative Beliefs (see page 30.) Laugh. Yes, the nasty critters are still there. Note your progress. Read yourself the affirmations on pages 36 and 37. Write some affirmations about your continued creativity as you end the course.
4. Mend any mending.
5. Repot any pinched and languishing plants.
6. Select a God jar. A what? Ajar, a box, a vase, a container. Something to put your fears, your resentments, your hopes, your dreams, your worries into.
7. Use your God jar. Start with your fear list from Task I above. When worried, remind yourself it’s in the jar—“God’s got it.” Then take the next action.
8. Now, check how: Honestly, what would you most like to create? Open-minded, what oddball paths would you dare to try? Willing, what appearances are you willing to shed to pursue your dream?
9. List five people you can talk to about your dreams and with whom you feel supported to dream and then plan.
10. Reread this book. Share it with a friend. Remember that the miracle is one artist sharing with another. Trust God. Trust yourself
- Check-in
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Have you accepted them yet as a permanent spiritual practice? How was the experience for you?
2. Did you do your artist date this week? Will you allow yourself these on a permanent basis as well? What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
- Creativity contract
- My name is _______. I am a recovering creative person. To further my growth and my joy, I now commit myself to the following self-nurturing
plans:
Morning pages have been an important part of my self-nurturing and self-discovery. I, ________, hereby commit myself to continuing to work with them for the next ninety days.
Artist’s dates have been integral to my growth in self-love and my deepening joy in living. I, _______, am willing to commit to another ninety days of weekly artist’s dates for self-care.
In the course of following the artist’ s way and healing my artist within, I have discovered that I have a number of creative interests. While I hope to develop many of them, my specific commitment for the next ninety days is to allow myself to more fully explore ___________________________
My concrete commitment to a plan of action is a critical part of nurturing my artist. For the next ninety days, my planned, self-nurturing creative action plan is _________________________
I have chosen ________ as my creative colleague and ________ as my creative back-up. I am committed to a weekly phone check-in.
I have made the above commitments and will begin my new commitment on __________.
- Epilogue
- While the occasional dazzling vista may grace us, it is really best to proceed a step at a time, focusing on the path beneath our feet as much as the heights still before us.
- “Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.” - Henry Miller
- “I learn by going where I have to go.” - Theodore Roethke
#UseTwos ✌️