Week #8 "Recovering a Sense of Strength"

"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 Strength”. Julia writes on page 129, “This week tackles another major creative block: time. You will explore the ways in which you have used your perception of time to preclude taking creative risks. You will identify immediate and practical changes you can make in your current life. You will excavate the early conditioning that may have encouraged you to settle for far less than you desire creatively.

Tasks for Week #8 (pages 146-149):

1. Goal Search: You may find the following exercise difficult. Allow yourself to do it any way. If multiple dreams occur to you, do the exercise for each one of them. The simple act of imagining a dream in concrete detail helps us to bring it into reality. Think of your goal search as a preliminary architect’s drawing for the life you would wish to have. The Steps:

• Name your dream. That’s right. Write it down. “In a perfect world, I would secretly love to be a_______.”
• Name one concrete goal that signals to you its accomplishment. On your emotional compass, the goal signifies true north. (Note: two people may want to be an actress. They share that dream. For one, an article in People magazine is the concrete goal. To her, glamour is the emotional center for her dream; glamour is true north. For the second actress, the concrete goal is a good review in a Broadway play. To her, respect as a creative artist is the emotional center of her dream; respect is true north. Actress two would need stage work to fulfill her dream. On the surface, both seem to desire the same thing.)
• In a perfect world, where would you like to be in five years in relation to your dream and true north?
• In the world we inhabit now, what action can you take, this year, to move you closer?
• What action can you take this month? This week? This day? Right now?
• List your dream (for example, to be a famous film director). list its true north (respect and higher consciousness, mass communication.) Select a role model (Walt Disney, Ron Howrad, Michael Powell). Make an action plan. Five years. Three years. One year. One month. One week. Now. Choose an action. Reading this book is an action.
  

2. New Childhood: What might you have been if you'd had perfect nurturing? Write a page of this fantasy childhood. What were you given? Can you reparent yourself in that direction now?
3. Color Schemes: Pick a color and write a quick few sentences describing yourself in the first person. (“I am silver, high-tech and ethereal, the color of dreams and accomplishment, the color of half-light and in between, I feel serene.” Or, “I am red. I am passion, sunset, anger, blood, wine and roses, armies, murder, lust, and apples,” What is your favorite color? What do you have that is that color? What about an entire room? This is your life and your house.
4. List five things you are not allowed to do: kill your boss, scream in church, go outside naked, make a scene, quit your job. Now do that thing on paper. Write it, draw it, paint it, act it out, collage it. Now put some music on and dance to it.
5. Style Search: List twenty things you like to do. (Perhaps the same twenty you listed before, perhaps not.) Answer these questions for each item.

• Does it cost money of is it free?
• Expensive of cheap?
• Alone of with somebody?
• Job related?
• Physical risk?
• Fast-paced or slow?
• Mind, body, or spiritual?

6. Ideal Day: Plan a perfect day in your life as it is now constituted, using the information gleaned from above.
7. Ideal Ideal Day: Plan a perfect day in your life as you wish it were constituted. There are no restrictions. Allow yourself to be and to have whatever your heart desires. Your ideal environment, job, home, circle of friends, intimate relationship, stature in your art form—your wildest dreams.
8. Choose one festive aspect from your ideal day. Allow yourself to live it. You may not be able to move to Rome yet, but even in a still-grungy apartment you can enjoy a homemade cappuccino and a croissant.

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."