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October 4 - November 8, 2023
BASIC PRINCIPLES Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we open ourselves to exploring
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Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” THE TALMUD
Pick those that appeal to you and those you strongly resist. Leave the more neutral ones for later. Just remember, in choosing, that we often resist what we most need.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us. RALPH WALDO EMERSON
We ourselves are the substance we withdraw to, not from, as we pull our overextended and misplaced creative energy back into our own core.
We begin to excavate our buried dreams. This is a tricky process. Some of our dreams are very volatile, and the mere act of brushing them off sends an enormous surge of energy bolting through our denial system. Such grief! Such loss! Such pain! It is at this point in the recovery process that we make what Robert Bly calls a “descent into ashes.” We mourn the self we abandoned. We greet this self as we might greet a lover at the end of a long and costly war. To effect a creative recovery, we must undergo a time of mourning. In dealing with the suicide of the “nice” self we have been making do
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THERE ARE TWO PIVOTAL tools in creative recovery: the Morning Pages and the artist date. A lasting creative awakening requires the consistent use of both.
Although occasionally colorful, the Morning Pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland—even silly sounding. Good!
Make this a rule: always remember that your Censor’s negative opinions are not the truth. This takes practice.
Make no mistake: the Censor is out to get you. It’s a cunning foe. Every time you get smarter, so does it. So you wrote one good play? The Censor tells you that’s all there is. So you drew your first sketch? The Censor says, “It’s not Picasso.” Think of your Censor as a cartoon serpent, slithering around your creative Eden, hissing vile things to keep you off guard.
Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance. M. C. RICHARDS
Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. AARON COPLAND
We meditate to discover our own identity, our right place in the scheme of the universe. Through meditation, we acquire and eventually acknowledge our connection to an inner power source that has the ability to transform our outer world. In other words, meditation gives us not only the light of insight but also the power for expansive change.
It is impossible to write Morning Pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power. Although I used them for many years before I realized this, the pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self. They are a trail that we follow into our own interior, where we meet both our own creativity and our creator.
It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action. The pages lead us out of despair and into undreamed-of solutions.
Anyone who faithfully writes Morning Pages will be led to a connection with a source of wisdom within. When I am stuck with a painful situation or problem that I don’t think I know how to handle, I will go to the pages and ask for guidance. To do this, I write “LJ” as a shorthand for me, “Little Julie,” and then I ask my question. LJ: What should I tell them about this inner wisdom? (Then I listen for the reply and write that down, too.) ANSWER: YOU should tell them everyone has a direct dial to God. No one needs to go through an operator. Tell them to try this technique with a problem of
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Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. PABLO PICASSO Experience, even for a painter, is not exclusively visual. WALTER MEIGS
Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And “What’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair.
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH
An Artist Date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. C. G. JUNG
You are likely to find yourself avoiding your artist dates. Recognize this resistance as a fear of intimacy—self-intimacy.
Remember, art is an artist-brain pursuit. This brain is reached through rhythm—through rhyme, not reason.
So you see, imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. BRENDA UELAND
We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. SUSAN JEFFERS
Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse. This happens in any number of ways: beginning work is measured against the masterworks of other artists; beginning work is exposed to premature criticism, shown to overly critical friends. In short, the fledgling artist behaves with well-practiced masochism. Masochism is an art form long ago mastered, perfected during the years of self-reproach; this habit is the self-hating bludgeon with which a shadow artist can beat himself right back into the shadows.
As blocked creatives, we often sit on the sidelines critiquing those in the game. “He’s not so talented,” we may say of a currently hot artist. And we may be right about that. All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.
Just try picking an affirmation. For example “I, ________________ (your name), am a brilliant and prolific potter (painter, poet, or whatever you are).” Write that ten times in a row. While you are busy doing that, something very interesting will happen. Your Censor will start to object. “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t say all that positive stuff around me.” Objections will start to pop up like burnt toast. These are your blurts.
Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage. CLAUDE M. BRISTOL
Not surprisingly, the most poisonous playmates for us as recovering creatives are people whose creativity is still blocked. Our recovery threatens them.
Daddy Howard, an elegant rascal with a gambler’s smile and a loser’s luck, had made and lost several fortunes, the last of them permanently. He drank them away, gambled them away, tossed them away the way she threw crumbs to her birds. He squandered life’s big chances the way she savored the small ones. “That man,” my mother would say.
The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
List twenty things you enjoy doing (rock climbing, roller-skating, baking pies, making soup, making love, making love again, riding a bike, riding a horse, playing catch, shooting baskets, going for a run, reading poetry, and so forth). When was the last time you let yourself do these things? Next to each entry, place a date. Don’t be surprised if it’s been years for some of your favorites. That will change. This list is an excellent resource for artist dates.
From the list above, write down two favorite things that you’ve avoided that could be this week’s goals. These goals can be small: buy one roll of film and shoot it. Remember, we are trying to win you some autonomy with your time. Look for windows of time just for you, and use them in small creative acts. Get to the record store at lunch hour, even if only for fifteen minutes. Stop looking for big blocks of time when you will be free. Find small bits of time instead.
Life Pie: Draw a circle. Divide it into six pieces of pie. Label one piece spirituality, another exercise, another play, and so on with work, friends, and romance/ adventure. Place a dot in each slice at the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area (outer rim indicates great; inner circle, not so great). Connect the dots. This will show you where you are lopsided.
Anger is the firestorm that signals the death of our old life. Anger is the fuel that propels us into our new one. Anger is a tool, not a master. Anger is meant to be tapped into and drawn upon.
Anger is not the action itself. It is action’s invitation.
Anyone honest will tell you that possibility is far more frightening than impossibility, that freedom is far more terrifying than any prison. If we do, in fact, have to deal with a force beyond ourselves that involves itself in our lives, then we may have to move into action on those previously impossible dreams.
Often we are wrongly shamed as creatives. From this shaming we learn that we are wrong to create. Once we learn this lesson, we forget it instantly. Buried under it doesn’t matter, the shame lives on, waiting to attach itself to our new efforts. The very act of attempting to make art creates shame.
Art requires a safe hatchery. Ideally, artists find this first in their family, then in their school, and finally in a community of friends and supporters. This ideal is seldom a reality. As artists, we must learn to create our own safe environments. We must learn to protect our artist child from shame. We do this by defusing our childhood shamings, getting them on the page, and sharing them with a trusted, nonshaming other.
Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. ERICA JONG
Marathon runners suggest you log ten slow miles for every fast one. The same holds true for creativity.
If you do one nice thing a day for yourself, God will do two more. Be alert for support and encouragement from unexpected quarters. Be open to receiving gifts from odd channels: free tickets, a free trip, an offer to buy you dinner, a new-to-you old couch. Practice saying yes to such help.
In short, extreme emotions of any kind—the very thing that Morning Pages are superb for processing—are the usual triggers for avoiding the pages themselves.
To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
In other words, pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.
Our faith is in the dollar. “I have to keep a roof over my head,” we say. “Nobody’s going to pay me to be more creative.” We are awfully sure about that. Most of us harbor a secret belief that work has to be work and not play, and that anything we really want to do—like write, act, dance—must be considered frivolous and be placed a distant second. This is not true.
Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play.
When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting’s own plan. This is often expressed as “The brush takes the next stroke.” In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.
We’ve all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.
