In 2018, I experienced a tremendous amount of personal change and shifting, not unlike my current soul’s journey. When asking for advice from a talented psychic medium, she relayed that one of my spirit guides, my main man, was with me to foster my writing talents and I was to get to work! She suggested using The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to help me get started on my path. I bought the book straight away but did not actually begin the work until a few months later, after I ran myself ragged taking care of everyone except myself. In August of 2018, the Universe slammed me into the sofa with a broken foot and said “SIT YOUR ASS DOWN”!
So, given really no choice, I sat my ass down and started doing The Artist’s Way, a three-month course in recovering one’s inner artist, or
inner child. Now, I had been told my entire life that I was not
creative, I couldn’t carry a tune and really didn’t have an artistic bone in
my body. Perfectionism began very early in my life, so this also meant I never tried
to do anything creative, especially those things mentioned above, because I
already knew I was not, and could not be, any good at them. Ferchrissakes,
I would purposely be “sick” on ART Day in elementary school because it was
just too stressful to be such a disappointment. Art day…Oh. My. God.
Just in case…Bless you, Mrs.
Hazelton! You were the only art teacher who celebrated my terrified attempts at
grade school art. You made me feel safe enough to try and I even enjoyed
Art days with you! I consider you an Earth Angel, for real.
Julia Cameron says that we are all creative and that working through the process of The Artist’s Way, a spiritual path in and of itself, is "spiritual chiropractic" – it unblocks all the kinks our creative being has taken on throughout our lives and allows us to align with our creativity.
“What you are
doing is creating pathways in your consciousness through which the creative
forces can operate.” Cameron explains that this process of “creative recovery”
stretches and alters your consciousness, whether or not you call it a spiritual
awakening, it is happening.
The Artist’s Way includes working through one chapter each week for three months, doing the exercises at the end of each chapter, and committing to the regular practice of:
- The Morning Pages – No matter what your creative medium, you must commit to writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness every morning…longhand. This simply gets creative flow running through you. I still do my morning pages daily. Well, with a few breaks here and there.
- The Artist’s Date – Once a week you take your inner artist child out on a date doing whatever your artist’s heart desires. No one else is invited. It is the time spent with one’s inner artist that is important, not money spent doing something extravagant. My favorite artist’s dates were the beach, the library, and the Driftless Writing Center, which I will talk about in a future post.
- The Creativity Contract – When teaching this course in person, Cameron requires each student to sign a contract promising this gift to themselves and the work required of this…way. I knew this was something special the first time I signed my contract, but I had no idea how life-changing this work, this gift, would be!
Since completing The Artist’s Way at the end of 2018, my entire life has changed - in all the ways! Yes, some of it has been downright hellish, but I am emerging on the other side, a whole person, embracing my creative gifts, and am experiencing real joy on a daily basis for the first time in my life! For me, this book has been nothing short of miraculous and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who is blocked in any way from their creative dreams.
In fact, if this is something you would like to do in a group setting, let me know! Friends and I started meeting weekly a while back to discuss our experiences doing The Artist's Way, but the timing just wasn't right. This work is a solo endeavor, for the most part, but meeting regularly to discuss and process has been invaluable to me in many different contexts and I would LOVE to facilitate that if there is any interest.
Thanks to a dear soul friend, I surrendered to my love of Lord Huron in early 2019. While not about anything specific to this post, it was my anthem during this "season of me" experience I had during that year. Much gratitude to Ben and the boys of Lord Huron - to this day, "Hurricane" shakes my whole being alive and served as a musical bridge to my soul, along with most of their other tunes. Best with good speakers and space to dance, my friends.😊
