Week #5 "Recovering a Sense of Possibility"

"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." The theme of this week is “Recovering a Sense of Possibility”. Julia writes on page 91, “This week you are being asked to examine your payoffs in remaining stuck. You will explore how you curtail your own possibilities by placing limits on the good you can receive. You will examine the cost of settling for appearing good instead of being authentic. You may find yourself thinking about radical changes, no longer ruling out your growth by making others the cause of your constriction.

Tasks for Week #5 (pages 103-104)

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 you image file.

4. If I were twenty and had money…List five adventures. Again, add images of these to you 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 imaged for ten years.

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, over exercise. You name it. Whether you can draw or, 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.

Help to create as well as to benefit from the group energy.Go to our new bulletin board at http://www.phpbbforfree.com/forums/theartistsway.html and 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."