The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (20 page)

We listen to other people’s ideas of what is self-destructive without ever looking at whether their self and our self have similar needs. Caught in the Virtue Trap, we refuse to ask ourselves, “What are my needs? What would I do if it weren’t too selfish?”

Are you self-destructive?

This is a very difficult question to answer. To begin with, it requires that we know something of our true self (and that is the very self we have been systematically destroying).

One quick way to ascertain the degree of drift is to ask yourself this question: what would I try if it weren’t too crazy?

1. Sky diving, scuba diving.

2. Belly dancing, Latin dancing.

3. Getting my poems published.

4. Buying a drum set.

5. Bicycling through France.

If your list looks pretty exciting, even if crazy, then you are on the right track. These crazy notions are actually voices from our true self. What would I do if it weren’t too selfish?

1. Sign up for scuba lessons.

2. Take the Latin dancing class at the Y.

3. Buy
The Poet’s Market
and make a submission a week.

4. Get the used drum set my cousin is trying to sell.

5. Call my travel agent and check out France.

By seeking the creator within and embracing our own gift of creativity, we learn to be spiritual in this world, to trust that God is good and so are we and so is all of creation. In this way, we avoid the Virtue Trap.

THE VIRTUE-TRAP QUIZ

1. The biggest lack in my life is_________________________ .

2. The greatest joy in my life is _________________________.

3. My largest time commitment is _______________________.

4. As I play more, I work ____________________________.

5. I feel guilty that I am ______________________________.

6. I worry that . _______________________________________

7. If my dreams come true, my family will _________________

8. I sabotage myself so people will ______________________

9. If I let myself feel it, I’m angry that I ___________________

10. One reason I get sad sometimes is ____________________

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

COLETTE

Does your life serve you or only others? Are you self-destructive?

FORBIDDEN JOYS, AN EXERCISE

One of the favored tricks of blocked creatives is saying no to ourselves. It is astonishing the number of small ways we discover to be mean and miserly with ourselves. When I say this to my students, they often protest that this is not true—that they are very good to themselves. Then I ask them to do this exercise.

List ten things you love and would love to do but are not allowed to do. Your list might look like this:

1. Go dancing.

2. Carry a sketch book.

3. Roller-skate.

4. Buy new cowboy boots.

5. Streak your hair blond.

6. Go on vacation.

7. Take flying lessons.

8. Move to a bigger place.

9. Direct a play.

10. Take life-drawing class.

Very often, the mere act of writing out your list of forbidden joys breaks down your barriers to doing them.

Post your list somewhere highly visible.

WISH LIST, AN EXERCISE

One of the best ways we can evade our Censor is to use the technique of speed writing. Because wishes are just wishes, they are allowed to be frivolous (and frequently should be taken very seriously). As quickly as you can, finish the following phrases.

1. I wish ___________________________________.

2. I wish ____________________________________.

3. I wish ____________________________________.

4. I wish ____________________________________.

5. I wish ____________________________________.

6. I wish ____________________________________.

7. I wish ____________________________________.

8. I wish ____________________________________.

9. I wish ____________________________________.

10. I wish ____________________________________.

11. I wish ____________________________________.

12. I wish ____________________________________.

13. I wish . ____________________________________

14. I wish ____________________________________.

15. I wish . ___________________________________

16. I wish ____________________________________.

17. I wish ____________________________________.

18. I wish ____________________________________.

19. I most especially wish _______________________.

The specific meaning of God depends on what is the most desirable good for a person.

ERICH FROMM

TASKS

The following tasks explore and expand your relationship to the source.

1. The reason I can’t really believe in a
supportive
God is ... List five grievances. (God can take it.)

2. Starting an Image File: If I had either faith or money I would try ... List five desires. For the next week, be alert for images of these desires. When you spot them, clip them, buy them, photograph them, draw them,
collect them somehow.
With these images, begin a file of dreams that speak to you. Add to it continually for the duration of the course.

3. One more time, list five imaginary lives. Have they changed? Are you doing more parts of them? You may want to add images of these lives to your image file.

4. If I were twenty and had money ... List five adventures. Again, add images of these to your visual image file.

5. If I were sixty-five and had money ... List five postponed pleasures. And again, collect these images. This is a very potent tool. I now live in a house that I
imaged
for ten years.

To accept the responsibility of being a child of God is to accept the best that life has to offer you.

STELLA TERRILL MANN

6. Ten ways I am mean to myself are ... Just as making the positive explicit helps allow it into our lives, making the negative explicit helps us to exorcise it.

7. Ten items I would like to own that I don’t are ... And again, you may want to collect these images. In order to boost sales, experts in sales motivation often teach rookie salesmen to post images of what they would like to own. It works.

8. Honestly, my favorite creative block is ... TV, over-reading, friends, work, rescuing others, overexercise. You name it. Whether you can draw or not, please cartoon yourself indulging in it.

9. My payoff for staying blocked is ... This you may want to explore in your morning pages.

10. The person I blame for being blocked is ... Again, use your pages to mull on this.

CHECK-IN

1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Are you starting to like them—at all? How was the experience for you? Have you discovered the page-and-a-half
truthpoint
yet? Many of us find that pay dirt in our writing occurs after a page and a half of vamping.

2. Did you do your artist date this week? Have you had the experience of hearing answers during this leisure time? What did you do for your date? How did it feel? Have you taken an artist date yet that really felt adventurous ?

3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it? Try inaugurating a conversation on synchronicity with your friends.

4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.

WEEK 6

Recovering a Sense of Abundance

T
his week you tackle a major creative block—money. You are asked to really look at your own ideas around God, money, and creative abundance. The essays will explore the ways in which your attitudes limit abundance and luxury in your current life. You will be introduced to counting, a block-busting tool for clarity and right use of funds. This week may feel volatile.

THE GREAT CREATOR

“I’m a believer,” Nancy declares. “I just don’t believe God gets involved with money.” Although she doesn’t recognize it, Nancy carries two self-sabotaging beliefs. She believes not only that God is good—too good to do money—but also that money is bad. Nancy, like many of us, needs to overhaul her God concept in order to fully recover her creativity.

For many of us, raised to believe that money is the real source of security, a dependence on God feels foolhardy, suicidal, even laughable. When we consider the lilies of the fields, we think they are quaint, too out of it for the modern world. We’re the ones who keep clothes on our backs. We’re the ones who buy the groceries. And we will pursue our art, we tell ourselves, when we have enough money to do it easily.

And when will that be?

We want a God that feels like a fat paycheck and a license to spend as we please. Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, “You’re enough.”

“Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all things will be added to it,” we have been told, often since childhood, by people quoting from the Bible. We don’t believe this. And we certainly don’t believe it about art. Maybe God would feed and clothe us, in a pinch, but painting supplies? A museum tour of Europe, dance classes? God’s not about to spring for those, we tell ourselves. We cling to our financial concerns as a way to avoid not only our art but also our spiritual growth. 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.”

Money is God in action.

RAYMOND CHARLES
BARKER

The more we learn to operate in the world based on trust in our intuition, the stronger our channel will be and the more money we will have.

SHAKTI GAWAIN

Money will come when you are doing the right thing.

MIKE PHILLIPS