Last chapter of Artists Way....Week 12
Week 12 Recovering a Sense of Faith-
In this final week, we acknowledge the inherently mysterious spiritual heart of
creativity. We address the fact that creativity requires receptivity and
profound trust-capacities we have developed through our work in this course. We
set our creative aims and take a special look at last minute sabotage. We renew
our commitment to the use of the tools.
Trusting- Our
resistance to our creativity is a rom of self-destruction. We throw up road
blocks on our own path. Why do we do this? In order to maintain an illusion of
control.
Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will
just have the courage to admit what it is. And faith is trust of our own
admission. The admitting is often difficult. A clearing affirmation can often
open the channel. “I know the things I know.”
“I trust my own inner guide” Eventually yielding us a sense of our own
direction.
“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.
There is a path for each of us. When we are on our right
path, we have a sure footedness. We know the next right action although not
necessarily what is just around the bend. By trusting, we learn to trust.
Mystery-Creative-like
human life itself-begins in darkness. It is true that insights ma come to us as
flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however
also true that such bright idea are preceded by gestation period that is
interior, murky, and completely necessary.
We must wait for an idea to hatch…Or, to use a gardening
image; we must learn to not pull our ideas up by the roots to see if they are
growing. 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.
Mystery is at the heart of creativity. Truth is that this is
how to raise the best ideas. Let them grow in dark and mystery. Let them form
on the roof of our consciousness. Let them hit the page in droplets. Trusting
this slow and seemingly random drip, we will be startled on day by the flash of
“ Oh! That’s it!
The Imagination at
Play-We are an ambitious society, and it is often difficult of 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.
Many hobbies involve a form of artist-brain mulling that
lead to enormous creative breakthroughs.
Spiritual benefits accompany the practice of a hobby. As we
serve our hobby, we are freed from our ego’s demands and allowed the experience
of merging with a greater source.
We must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. We must
work at learning to play. Creativity must be freed from the narrow parameters
of capital A art and recognized as having much broader play.
As we write, digging ourselves out of denial, our memories
dreams, and creative plans all move to the surface. We discover anew that we
are creative beings.
We are intended to create. We want to do something but we
think it needs to be the right something, by which we mean something important.
We are what’s important, and the something that we do can be something festive
but small.
Life is meant to be an Artist Date.
Escape Velocity-When
you’re going to leave them, they know. “There’s a time for blast-off, like a
NASA space launch, and you’re heading for it when wham, you draw to you the
Test.” Yeah, the Test, It’s like when you’re all set to marry the nice guy, the
who treats you right, and Mr. Poison gets wind of it and phones you up.
The whole trick is to avoid the Test. We all draw to us the
one test that’s our nemesis.
As recovering creative, many of us find that every time our
career heats up, we reach for our nearest Wet Blanket. We blurt out our
enthusiasm to our most skeptical friend-in fact, we call him up. If we don’t,
he calls us this is the Test.
The trick is not to let them be that way. How? Zip the lip. Button up. Keep a lid on
it. Don’t give away the gold.
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 won counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among
our allies, and to name our allies accurately.
Escape velocity requires the sword of steely intention and
the shield of self-determination. “Set your goals and set your boundaries.”
There's that word again, Faith.
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