The Artist’s Way
Week 10 Reflection Week 11 Instructions
This week I’ve copied quite a lot of text from the chapter. You can jump straight to the tasks for the week by scrolling down. In particular, the guidance to get in touch with your body really resonated with me. Playmates have cycled hundreds of kilometres, hiked across countries, and already know the value of walking/running — we move forward step by step, turn by turn, stroke by stroke.
Great news Playmates…
I love me!
I wrote morning pages about four days last week. The promise to prioritise my body first, combined with work meetings at 4am and 5am, bumps morning pages out the way. That’s no excuse — I could do the writing a little later, as I did today. I don’t think reading my pages changed my writing — I write them freely, free-writing is not new to me as a concept, the only newness is that I see morning pages as a “brain flush” of my morning consciousness.
I did not complete my Artist’s Date this week. I was supposed to do an online session of orgasmic yoga but I mixed up the timezones — I was ready to wake at 4am to do it, but just before I went to sleep, I discovered it was at midnight. I set the alarm for 11:35pm but my body said sleep was needed, I was waking at 5am for another work meeting. The next morning, I was so disappointed in myself as I’d been looking forward to this session since the course began. I’d failed to do the session, the artist’s date, yet I’d succeeded in joining the 5am work meeting. “Don’t be hard on yourself” said the course coordinator — “your body knows best”. Ultimately that’s the point of the course. Whereas other sessions were video-recorded for those who missed out, for obvious reasons, this one was not. Fortunately I received an audio recording so I can still get a taster of what on earth orgasmic yoga is!
Did I experience any synchronicity this week? For some reason, I brought up the topic of the raven with a friend, who immediately asked me when I first saw the raven; she has a friend who lost their pet raven a while back. The next evening, she took her friend to my sister’s house to make further enquiries — trying to identify whether it has any connection. I was able to date raven’s first appearance through my emails, which was actually before their pet raven went missing. I found it curious that the tale of the raven continues to meander in this peculiar way!
The energy of the friend I visited is very special — she’s a friend I don’t know yet. We have been connected through creativity for quite some time. We walked in the woods, spoke about important topics openly, and she shared some of her creative outputs — she does woodblock printing on bags, tea towels, wrapping paper and all sorts. Beautiful stuff and I feel inspired by her, the kind of person I like to share more time with. I noticed a book called “I Love Me: The Science of Self-Love” by David Hamilton on her bookshelf. She offered to lend it to me — I’ve been on the long journey of learning to love myself for quite some time. The first chapter introduces three phases; “I’m not enough. I’ve had enough. I am enough.” I’ve decided I’m in phase three. The book has exercises, including “self-love gym”, like most things, it’s like a muscle you can flex and train, make new neural connections in the way of your choosing. We can let go of the things that no longer serve us, and create new connections, narratives, and ways of being. The first self-love gym exercise considered our similarities with our parents. I was glad to see that thanks to my progress so far, I was dissimilar to my mum in various aspects, attitudes, and behaviour patterns.
One task in week 10 was to “do something lovely for yourself each day this week”. I only noticed that task near the end of the week so I’m carrying it over to this week. Skip the next section to go straight to week 11 tasks.
Week 11 Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
This week we focus on our artistic autonomy. We examine the ongoing ways in which we must nurture and accept ourselves as artists. We explore the behaviours that can strengthen our spiritual base, and therefore our creative power. We take a special look at the ways in which success must be handled in order that we do not sabotage our freedom.
Acceptance: I am an artist. As an artist, I may need a different mix of stability and flow from other people. I may find that a nine-to-five job steadies me and leaves me freer to create. Or I may find that a nine-to-five drains me of energy and leaves me unable to create. I must experiment with what works for me.
An artist’s cash flow is typically erratic. No law says we must be broke all the time, but the odds are good we may be broke some of the time. Good work will sometimes not sell. I have to free myself from determining my value and the value of my work by my work’s market value. The idea that money validates my credibility is very hard to shake.
Sometimes I will write badly, draw badly, paint badly, perform badly. I have a right to do that to get to the other side. Creativity is its own reward.
As an artist, I must be very careful to surround myself with people who nurture my artist — not people who try to overly domesticate it for my own good.
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. One performance at a time. Two and a half years to make one 90-minute piece of film. Five drafts of one play. Two years working on a musical.
As an artist, I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it. My life will show it. My temperament will show it.
There is a connection between self-nurturing and self-respect.
Creativity is oxygen for our souls.
If you are happier writing than not writing, painting than not painting, singing than not singing, acting than not acting, directing than not directing, for God’s sake let yourself do it.
To kill your dreams because they are irresponsible is to be irresponsible to yourself. Credibility lies with you — not with a vote of your friends and acquaintances.
As artists, we are spiritual sharks. The ruthless truth is that if we don’t keep moving, we sink to the bottom and die. The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew. It is this willingness to once more be a beginner that distinguishes a creative career.
Creativity is not a business, although it may generate much business. An artist cannot replicate a prior success indefinitely. Those who attempt to work too long with a formula, even their own formula, eventually leach themselves of their creative truths. As artists, we are asked to repeat ourselves and expand on the market we have built. Sometimes this is possible for us. Other times it is not. As a successful artist, the trick is to not mortgage the future too heavily.
If we ignore out inner commitment, the cost rapidly becomes apparent in the outer world. A certain lacklustre tone, a rote inevitability, evicts creative excitement from our lives and, eventually, our finances. Attempting to insure our finances by playing it safe, we lose our cutting edge. Artists can and do responsibly meet the demands of their business partnerships. What is more difficult and more critical is for us artists to continue to meet the inner demand of our own artistic growth.
Exercise teaches the reward of process. Exercise is often the going that moves us from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect. We do learn by going. We learn we are stronger than we thought. We learn to look at things with a new perspective. We learn to solve our problems by tapping our own resources and listening for inspiration, not only from others but from ourselves. Seemingly without effort, our answers come while we swim or stride or ride or run.
Building your artist’s altar:
This haven can be a corner of a room, a nook under the stairs, even a window ledge. It is a reminder and an acknowledgment of the fact that our creator unfolds our creativity. Fill it with things that make you happy. Remember that your artist is fed by images. We need to unlearn our old notion that spirituality and sensuality don’t mix. An artist’s altar should be a sensory experience. We are meant to celebrate the good things of this earth. Pretty leaves, rocks, candles, sea treasures — all these remind us of our creator. The artist child speaks the language of the sould: muysic, dance, scent, shells.
Week 11 Tasks
1. Audio record your own voice reading the Basic Principles (scroll down to bottom of week 2’s instructions to see the Basic Principles) or choose a favourite essay from this book and record that too. Use this recording as a meditation.
2. Write out your Artist’s Prayer from week 4 and keep it in your wallet.
3. Buy yourself a special creativity notebook. Give one page each to the following categories: health, possessions, leisure, relationships, creativity, career, and spirituality. With no thought to practicality, list 10 wishes in each area. Yes, it’s a lot…let yourself dream!
4. Working with the Honest Changes section in week four, inventory yourself the ways you have changed since beginning your recovery.
5. List five ways you will change as you continue.
6. Life 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 (banana) concept. Does your belief system limit or support your creative expansion? Are you open-minded about altering your God-concept?
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 artists date this week? Have you considered scheduling an entire artists’s day? Whew! What did you do? 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?
