Week #2 "Recovering a Sense of Identity"

"Remember, there is a creative energy that wants to express itself through you"; "Don't judge the work or yourself. You can sort it out later"; "Let the divine work through you."

Check out our new "The Artist's Way" bulletin board that Dasi, so kindly set up. Just click the link to it on the left and register there so you can be included in the private group forum for this blogsite's 12 week "The Artist's Way" that started 12 August 2005..

Tasks for Week #2 (pages 41-59) are:

1. Affirmative Reading: Every day, morning and night, get quiet and focused and read the Basic Principles to yourself. (See page 3.) Be alert for any attitudinal shifts. Can you see yourself setting aside any skepticism yet?

2. Where does your time go? List your five major activities this week. How much time did you give to each one? Which were what you wanted to do and which were shoulds? How much of your time is spent helping others and ignoring your own desires? Have any of your blocked friends triggered doubts in you?

Take a sheet of paper. Draw a circle. Inside that circle, place topics you need to protect. Place the names of those you find to be supportive. Outside the circle, place the names of those you must be self-protective around just now. Place this safety map near where you write your morning pages. Use this map to support your autonomy. Add names to the inner and outer spheres as appropriate: "Oh! Derek is somebody I shouldn't talk to about this right now."

3. List twenty things you enjoy doing (rock climbing, roller-skating, baking pies, making soup, making love, making love again, ridng 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.

4. 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.

5. Dip back into Week One and read the affirmations. Note which ones cause the most reaction. Often the one that sounds the most ridiculous is the most significant. Write three chosen affirmations five times each day in your morning pages; be sure to include the affirmations you made yourself from your blurts.

6. Return to the list of imaginary lives from last week. Add five more lives. Again, check to see if you could be doing bits and pieces of these lives in the one you are living now. If you have listed a dancer's life, do you let yourself go dancing? If you have listed a monk's life, are you ever allowed to go on a retreat? If you are a scuba diver, is there an aquarium shop you can visit? A day at the lake your could schedule?

7. Life Pie: Draw a circle. Divide it into six peices 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.

As you begin the course, it is not uncommon for your life pie to look like a tarantula. As recovery progresses, your tarantula may become a mandala. Working with this tool, you will notice that there are areas of your life that feel impoverished and on which you spend little or no time. Use the time tid-bits you are finding to alter this.

If your spiritual life is minimal, even a five-minute pit stop into a synagogue or cathedral can restore a sense of wonder. Many of us find that five minutes of drum music can put us in touch with our spiritual core. For others, it's a trip to a greenhouse. The point is that even the slightest attention to our impoverished areas can nurture them.

8. Ten Tiny Changes: List ten changes you'd like to make for yourself, from the significant to the small or vice versa ("get new sheets so I have another set, go to China, paint my kitchen, dump my bitchy friend Alice"). Do it this way:

I would like to_________________________________
I would like to_________________________________

As the morning pages nudge us increasingly into the present, where we pay attention to our current lives, a small shift like a newly painted bathroom can yield a luxuriously large sense of self-care.

9. Select one small item and make it a goal for the week.

10. Now do that item.

Help to create as well as to benefit from the group energy.

Go to our new bulletin board - just click the link on the left. Share your "The Artist's Way" experiences, successes, thoughts, difficulties and/or questions.

Also please e-mail me any ideas and/or suggestions you might have for improving this blog.

The intention here is to support each other and as Julia says to "build a sacred circle of believing mirrors to potentiate each other's growth, to mirror a "yes" to each other's creativity."