Week #3 "Recovering a Sense of Power"

"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."

Click on the "new bulletin board" link on the left. .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.

Julia writes on page 61, “This week may find you dealing with unaccustomed bursts of energy and sharp peaks of anger, joy, and grief. You are coming into your power as the illusory hold of your previously accepted limits is shaken. You will be asked to consciously experiment with spiritual open-mindedness.”

Tasks for Week #3 (pages 75-77) are:

1. Describe your childhood room. If you wish, you may sketch this room. What was your favorite thing about it? What’s your favorite thing about your room right now? Nothing? Well, get something you like in there—maybe something from that old childhood room.


2. Describe five traits you like in yourself as a child.


3. List five childhood accomplishments, (straight A’s in seventh grade, trained the dog, punched out the class bully, short-sheeted the priest’s bed). And a treat: list five favorite childhood foods. Buy yourself one of them this week. Yes, Jell-O with bananas is okay.


4. Habits: Take a look at your habits. Many of them may interfere with your self-nurturing and cause shame. Some of the oddest things are self-destructive. Do you have a habit of watching TV you don’t like? Do you have a habit of hanging out with a really boring friend and just killing time (there’s an expression!)? Some rotten habits are obvious, overt (drinking too much, smoking, eating instead of writing). List three obvious rotten habits. What’s the payoff in continuing them? Some rotten habits are more subtle (no time to exercise, little time to pray, always helping others, not getting any self-nurturing, hanging out with people who belittle your dreams). List three of your subtle foes. What use do these forms of sabotage have? Be specific.


5. Make a list of friends who nurture you—that’s nurture (give you a sense of your own competency and possibility), not enable (give you the message that you will never get it straight without their help). There is a big difference between being helped and being treated as though we are helpless. List three nurturing friends. Which of their traits, particularly, serve you well?


6. Call a friend who treats you like you are a really good and bright person who can accomplish things. Part of your recovery is reaching out for support. This support will be critical as you undertake new risks.


7. Inner Compass: Each of us has an inner compass. This is an instinct that points us toward health. It warns us when we are on dangerous ground, and it tells us when something is safe and good for us. Morning pages are one way to contact it. So are some other artist-brain activities—painting, driving, walking, scrubbing, running. This week, take an hour to follow your inner compass by doing an artist-brain activity and listening to what insights bubble up.


8. List five people you admire. Now, list five people you secretly admire. What traits do these people have that you can cultivate further in yourself?


9. List five people you wish you had met who are dead. Now, list five people who are dead whom you’d like to hang out with for a while in eternity. What traits do you find in these people that you can look for in your friends?


10. Compare the two sets of lists. Take a look at what you really like and really admire—and a look at what you think you should like and admire. Your shoulds might tell you to admire Edison while your heart belongs to Houdini. Go with the Houdini side of you for a while.

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."

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."

Week #1 "Recovering a Sense of Safety"

"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."

Tasks for Week #1 (pages 37-40) are:

1. Every morning, set your clock 1/2 hour early; get up and write 3 pages of longhand, stream-of-conscioucness morning pages. Do not reread these pages or allow anyone to read them. Ideally, stick these pages in a large manila envelope, or hide them somewhere. Welcome to the morning pages. They will change you.

This week please be sure to work with your affirmations of choice and your blurts (negative core beliefs) at the end of each day's morning pages. Convert all those blurts into positive affirmations.

2. Take yourself on an artist date. You will do this every week for the duration of the course. A sample artist date: take five dollars and go to your local five-and-dime. Buy silly things like gold stick'em stars, tiny dinosaurs, some postcards, sparkly sequins, glue, a kid's scissors, crayons. You might give yourself a gold star on your envelope each day your write. Just for fun.

3. Time Travel: List three old enemies of your creative self-worth. Please be as specific as possible in doing this exercise. Your historical monsters are the building blocks of your core negative beliefs. (Yes, rotten Sister Ann Rita from fifth grade does count, and the rotten thing she said to you does matter. Put her in.) This is your monster hall of fame. More monsters will come to you as you work through your recovery. It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue and block your growth.

4. Time Travel: Select and write out one horror story from you monster hall of fame. You do not need to write long or much, but do jot down whatever details come back to you--the room you were in, the way people looked at you , the way you felt, what your parent said or didn't say when you told about it. Include whatever rankles you about the incident: "And then I remember she gave me this real fakey smile and patted my head...." You may find it cathartic to draw a sketch of your old monster or to clip out an image that evokes the incident for you. Cartoon trashing your monster, or at least draw a nice red X through it.

5. Write a letter to the editor in your defense. Mail it to yourself. It is great fun to write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child: "To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!"

6. Time Travel: List three old champions of your creataive self-worth. This is your hall of champions, those who wish you and your creativitiy well. Be specific. Every encouraging word counts. Even if you disbelieve a compliment, record it. It may well be true.

7. Time Travel: Select and write out one happy piece of encouragement. Write a thank-you letter. Mail it to yourself or to the long-lost mentor.

8. Imanginary Lives: If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I would be a pilot, a cowhand, a physicist, a psychic, a monk. You might be a scuba diver, a cop, a writer of children's books, a football player, a belly dancer, a painter, a performance artist, a history teacher, a healer, a coach, a scientist, a doctor, a Peace Corps worker, a psychologist, a hacker, a soap-opera star, a country singer, a rock- and-roll drummer. Whatever occurs to you, jot it down. Do not over think this exercise.

The point of these lives is to have fun in them--more fun than you might be havng in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week. For instance, if you put down "country singer" can you pick a guitar? If you dream of being a cowhand, what about some horseback riding?

9. In working with affirmations and blurts, very often injuries and monsters swim back to us. Add these to your list as they occur to you. Work with each blurt individually. Turn each negative into an affirmative positive.

10. Take your artist for a walk, the two of you. A brisk twenty-minute walk can dramatically alter consciousness.

Help to create as well as to benefit from the group energy. Pick at least one of the above tasks and make a comment to this post about it to share your 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."

Deva Dasi Rules

I love this blog.

Welcome to Devadasi

Creativity and community are two of my favorite passions. I've invited you here to see if you might like to give your creativity a boost by participating in this "Artist's Way" blog group idea that I've got.

"The Artist's Way - A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" is a book written by Julia Cameron. It consists of a 12 week program that can help anyone increase creativity in any area of their life. You will need to purchase the book ($15.95, I think), and then, we'll all be working through it together week by week and using this blog to express our creativity as well as to support each other along the journey.

The target date to start the first week's theme - "Recovering a Sense of Safety" is, Friday, August 12th.

Each creative week will start on a Friday and end on a Thursday.

Get the book and read the Introduction and the first chapter "Spiritual Electricity - The Basic Principles". Start with week 1 on August 12th, work at your own pace and use this blog to communicate and contribute to the group energy to help keep yourself progressing and having fun!

You can get to this blog directly by typing www.devadasi.blogspot.com into your web browser.

Click on the "comment" link below to read the comments others have made on this blog post and also to add your comment on this blog post. Click on the envelope icon below to send this blog post to a friend and invite them to join the party.

If you want to make a post (as opposed to making a comment on an existing post) to this blog, you need to first create your own free blogspot blog. Email me at akpobome@sbcglobal.com with any questions or confusions you might have as to how this "Artist's Way" blog adventure will work.