a sense of boundaries...

Discovering a Sense of Boundaries
Creativity requires vigilant self-nurturing. the damaging impact of toxic inflow must be countered and neutralized. This week's readings and tasks focus on helping us to interact with the world in ways that minimize negativity and maximize productive stimulation.

The self-nurturing part and minimize the negativity and maximize the productive.  That caught my attention right way. I seem to have strayed from the on-line group a bit mainly for this self-nurturing, I found I wasn't at the same places some were and not that I couldn't relate but I found that my personal needs, took president to what was going on with the group..so I did the Lone thing again...have a pattern of doing that...be it protective or just self-care.  I really can't stray from projects that are just about to get started and others that are in motion already...so I walk this journey with the artist way, Walking in the world a lone...which I'm finding great strength and self knowing..So now to the first section to the week 6 chapter.

Containment, lies in our connection, personal and private to the divine.  Well for me, my creating is a process that does connection with the good orderly direction or some call God...  I've heard of the word EGO...which stands for Easy God Out and I sure can tell when I get a bit of that happening in my work..so I would like to just stick with what works..the connection made passionately and intimately with my creator and  creating. Julia shares: Making a piece of art requires two very different forms of intelligence-the largeness of vision to conceptualize a project and the precision and specificity to bring that project fully and carefully to focused form.

Material-song, book, painting, needs time to evolve and find it's own feet. As artists, we must be very careful to protect ourselves and our work from premature questions and assumptions. In order for a persons or projects to grow, they require a safe container. Both person and a project need a roof over their head. both a person and project need walls for privacy. Just as it is uncomfortable to have people enter your home when it is in chaotic disarray ("Oh, my Lord! what is my red lace bra doing on the piano?!") it creates embarrassment and discomfort to show a project too early to too many people. What's worse, it's risky. Projects are brainchildren. They deserve our protection.

I'm fortunate to have the young adults in the homestead still where I can show them something that is in process and feel safe with that.. And my Oldest will say what she feels about the piece, which I can handle.. at the time of showing a piece I'm working on in a very early stage. It's usually to show a new technique that worked or something like that.. my family is my believing mirrors whom I trust.
Our creations, there our brainchildren and we are part growing along with it too.

it's best to find some people that really are where you are at or have walked that path before to show your young piece of art, song, or book to. As those that are their mean well, honestly they just don't understand...and not that I would be looking only for the people that could say the right words I'm seeking to here..I'm looking for others that have walked before and really feel the path I'm about to take, with my piece of art or a new venture/event...and when I can't find someone then I have to trust in all that I know and have gone through and wing it..and seek good orderly direction along the way..stopping and taking breaks and asking from my heart what the next move would be..

As artists, we are open-minded but we need not be gullible. Julia states, many of the people purporting to be able to help us shape our craft have very little experience with crafting something themselves. What we are looking for is people who have done what we want to do..not someone who has watched others do it...hard sometimes to find that someone.

It is experience that teaches what a tremor means and what it does not. As artists, we must find people who can share actual experience rather than a sanitized, dramatized, glorified or press-filtered version. "Am I opening myself  or my art to early and improper input, input that is ungrounded or inappropriate? "Do they really know more about what I am doing than I do?" 

Cooking images are very apt and very clear: "too many cooks spoil the broth," being a homelier way of saying "practice containment." Keep your creative ingredients your own. Julia says: you do not want people prematurely tasting your project and making worried little murmurs. You do not want their ingredients added before you have done what you want with the ingredients you yourself chose.
One of the most useful creative laws I know is this: "The first rule of magic is containment"

Practicing containment
Most blocked creatives are blocked not by the lack of talent but by a lack of containment. Rather than practice decrement and discretion in whom we choose to show a project to, we throw open the doors and welcome comments from all corners. if we look closely at why we have abandoned certain projects and dreams, we can often find the offender-the ruthless commentator that caused us to lose heart.
Julia's suggest is to create a God Jar...and anything that your incubating creatively you should write on a piece of paper and out into that God Jar...

I've got one of those God Jars on my drawing table with some really neat things in there.. what's so funny is I put stuff in there and how things all worked out from where I was a year ago with putting a project in there at it's early stages till how it turned out...kind of fun to see..