The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (29 page)

2. 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.

Some examples: I’m afraid the work will be rotten and I won’t know it.... I’m afraid the work will be good and they won’t know it.... I’m afraid all my ideas are hackneyed and outdated.... I’m afraid my ideas are ahead of their time.... I’m afraid I’ll starve.... I’m afraid I’ll never finish.... I’m afraid I’ll never start.... I’m afraid I will be embarrassed (I’m already embarrassed).... The list goes on.

3. Ask yourself if that is all. Have you left out any itsy fear? Have you suppressed any “stupid” anger? Get it on the page.

4. Ask yourself what you stand to gain by not doing this piece of work.

Some examples: If I don’t write the piece, no one can hate it.... If I don’t write the piece, my jerk editor will worry.... If I don’t paint, sculpt, act, sing, dance, I can criticize others, knowing I could do better.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.

CHARLIE PARKER

5. 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.

A word of warning: this is a very powerful exercise; it can do fatal damage to a creative block.

Be really whole
And all things will come to you.

LAO-TZU

TASKS

1. 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. Yes, 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.

2. Visualizing: You have already done work with naming your goal and identifying true north. The following exercise asks you to fully imagine having yourgoal 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.

Learning is movement from moment to moment.

J. KRISHNAMURTI

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.

4. Creative U-Turns: All of us have taken creative U-turns. Name one of yours. Name three more. Name the one that just kills you.

Forgive yourself Forgive yourself for all failures of nerve, timing, and initiative. Devise a personalized list of affirmations to help you do better in the future.

Very gently,
very gently,
consider whether any aborted, abandoned, savaged, or sabotaged brainchildren can be rescued. Remember, you are not alone. All of us have taken creative U-turns.

Choose one creative U-turn. Retrieve it. Mend it.

Do not take a creative U-turn now. Instead, notice your resistance. Morning pages seeming difficult? Stupid? Pointless? Too obvious? Do them anyway.

What creative dreams are lurching toward possibility? Admit that they frighten you.

Choose an artist totem. It might be a doll, a stuffed animal, a carved figuring, or a wind-up toy. The point is to choose something you immediately feel a protective fondness toward. Give your totem a place of honor and then honor it by not beating up on your artist child.

CHECK-IN

We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.

JOHN HOLT
EDUCATOR

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.

WEEK 10

Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

T
his week we explore the perils that can ambush us on our creative path. Because creativity is a spiritual issue, many of the perils are spiritual perils. In the essays, tasks, and exercises of this week, we search out the toxic patterns we cling to that block our creative flow

DANGERS OF THE TRAIL

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.

Every creative person has myriad ways to block creativity. Each of us favors one or two ways particularly toxic to us because they block us so effectively.

For some people, food is a creativity issue. Eating sugar or fats or certain carbohydrates may leave them feeling dulled, hung over, unable to focus—blurry. They use food to block energy and change. As the shaky feeling comes over them that they are going too fast and God knows where, that they are about to fly apart, these people reach for food. A big bowl of ice cream, an evening of junk food, and their system clogs: What was I thinking? What ... ? Oh, never mind....

Saying no can be the ultimate self-care.

CLAUDIA BLACK

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. They can’t take a half hour’s walk. “What a waste of time!” Must-dos and multiple projects are drawn to them like flies to a soda can in the sun. They go, “Buzz, buzz, buzz,
swat!”
as they brush aside the stray thought that was the breakthrough insight.

For others, an obsession with painful love places creative choice outside their hands. Reaching for the painful thought, they become instant victims rather than feel their own considerable power. “If only he or she would just love me ...”

This obsessive thought drowns out the little voice that suggests rearranging the living room, taking a pottery class, trying a new top on that story that’s stymied. The minute a creative thought raises its head, it is lopped off by the obsession, which blocks fear and prevents risk. Going out dancing? Redoing the whole play with an inner-city theme? “If only he or she would love me ...” So much for
West Side Story.

Sex is the great block for many. A mesmerizing, titillating hypnotic interest slides novel erotic possibilities in front of the real novel. The new sex object becomes the focus for creative approaches.

Now, note carefully that food, work, and sex are all good in themselves. It is the
abuse
of them that makes them creativity issues. Knowing yourself as an artist means acknowledging which of these you abuse when you want to block yourself If creativity is like a burst of the universe’s breath through the straw that is each of us, we pinch that straw whenever we pick up one of our blocks. We shut down our flow. And we do it on purpose.

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.

Line up the possibilities. Which one makes you angry to even think about giving up? That explosive one is the one that has caused you the most derailment. Examine it. When asked to name our poison, most of us can. Has food sabotaged me? Has workaholism sabotaged me? Has sex or love obsession blocked my creativity?

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Mix and match is a common recipe for using blocks: use one, add another, mix in a third, wear yourself out. The object of all of this blocking is to alleviate fear. We turn to our drug of choice to block our creativity whenever we experience the anxiety of our inner emptiness. It is always fear—often disguised but
always
there—that leads us into grabbing for a block.

Usually, we experience the choice to block as a coincidence. She happened to call ... I felt hungry and there was some ice cream ... He dropped by with some killer dope.... The choice to block always works in the short run and fails in the long run.

The choice to block is a creative U-turn. We turn back on ourselves. Like water forced to a standstill, we turn stagnant. The self-honesty lurking in us all always knows when we choose against our greater good. It marks a little jot on our spiritual blackboard: “Did it again.”

It takes grace and courage to admit and surrender our blocking devices. Who wants to? Not while they are still working! Of course, long after they have stopped working, we hope against hope that this time they will work again.

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?