Devadasi

New Group Starting 12-30-05

2005-11-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

"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."

I'm now llooking to 1-3 people that are interested in doing a “The Artist’s Way” telegroup.

It would start on Friday, 12-30-05, and go for 24 weeks – spending 2 weeks on each chapter and having a 90 minute group internet phone conference call in the middle of each 2 week period. If you’re interested, e-mail me at akpobome@sbcglobal.net

Week # 12 "Recovering a Sense of Faith"

2005-10-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

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 #11 "Recovering a Sense of Autonomy"

2005-10-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

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 #10 "Recovering a Sense of Self-Proteciton"

2005-10-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

"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 Self-Protection”. Julia writes on page 163, “This week we explore the perils that can ambush us on our creative path. Because creativity is a spiritual issue, many of the perils are spiritual perils. In the essays, tasks, and exercises of this week, we search out the toxic patterns we cling to that block our creative flow.

Tasks for Week #10 (pages 175 - 178):

1. The Deadlies: Take a piece of paper and cut seven small strips from it. On each strip write one of the following words: alcohol, drugs, sex, work, money, food, family/friends. Fold these strips of paper and place them in an envelope. We call these folded slips the deadlies. You’ll see why in a minute. Now draw one of the deadlies from the envelope and write five ways in which it has had a negative impact on your life. (If the one you choose seems difficult or inapplicable to you, consider this resistance.) You will do this seven times, each time putting back the previous slip of paper so that you are always drawing from seven possible choices. Yes, you may draw the same deadly repeatedly. Yes, this may be significant. Very often, it is the last impact on the final list of an annoying “Oh no, not again” that yields a break, through denial, into clarity.
2. Touchstones” Make a quick list of things you love, happiness touchstones for you. River rocks worn smooth, willow trees, cornflowers, chicory, real Italian bread, homemade vegetable soup, the Bo Deans’ music, black beans and rice, the smell of new-mown grass, blue velvet (the cloth and the song), Aunt Minnie’s crumb pie. Post this list where it can console you and remind you of your own personal touchstones. You may want to draw one of the items on your list – or acquire it. If you love blue velvet, get a remnant and use it as a runner on a sideboard or dresser, or tack it to the wall and mount images on it. Play a little.
3. The Awful Truth: Answer the following questions:
Tell the truth. What habit do you have the gets in the way of your creativity?
Tell the truth. What do you think might be a problem? It is.
What do you plan to do about the habit or problem?
What is your payoff in holding on to this block?
If you can’t figure out your payoff, ask a trusted friend.
Tell the truth. Which friends make you doubt yourself? (The self-doubt is yours already, but they trigger it.)
Tell the truth. Which friends believe in you and your talent? (The talent is yours, but they make your feel it.)
Which destructive habits do your destructive friends share with your destructive self?
Which constructive habits do your constructive friends share with your constructive self?
4. Setting a Bottom Line: Working with your answers to the questions above, try setting a bottom line for yourself. Begin with five of your most painful behaviors. You can always add more latter.
If you notice that your evenings are typically gobbled by your boss’s extra assignments, then a rule must come into play: no work after six.
If you wake at six and could write for an hour if you were not interrupted to look for socks and make breakfast and do ironing, the rules might be “No interrupting Mommy before 7:00A.M.”
If you are working too many jobs and too many hours, you may need to look at your billing. Are you pricing yourself appropriately? Do some footwork. What are others in your field receiving? Raise your prices and lower your work load.
Bottom Line:
I will no longer work weekends.
I will no longer bring work with me on social occasions.
I will no longer place my work before my creative commitments. (No more canceling piano lessons or drawing class because to a sudden new deadline from my boss the workaholic.)
I will not longer postpone lovemaking to do late night reading for work.
I will no longer accept business calls at home after six.
5. Cherishing:
List five small victories.
List three nurturing actions you took for your artist.
List three actions you could take to comfort your artist.
Make three nice promises to yourself. Keep them.
Do one lovely thing for yourself each day this week.

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 #9 "Recovering a Sense of Compassion"

2005-10-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

"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 Compassion”. Julia writes on page 151, “This week finds us facing the internal blocks to creativity. It may be tempting to abandon ship at this point. Don’t! We will explore and acknowledge the emotional difficulties that beset us in the past as we made creative efforts. We will undertake healing the shame of past failures. We will gain in compassion as we reparent the frightened artist child who yearns for creative accomplishment. We will learn tools to dismantle emotional blocks and support renewed risk.

Tasks for Week #9 (pages 160-161):

1. Read your morning pages! This process is best undertaken with two colored markers, one to highlight insights and another to highlight actions needed. Do not judge your pages or yourself. This is very important. Yes, they will be boring. Yes, they may be painful. Consider them a map. Take them as information, not an indictment.
a. Take Stock: Who have you consistently been complaining about? What have you procrastinated on: What blessedly have you allowed yourself to change or accept?
b. Take Heart: Many of us notice an alarming tendency toward black-and white thinking: “He’s terrible. He’s wonderful. I love him. I hate him. It’s a great job. It’s a terrible job,” and so forth. Don’t be thrown by this.
c. Acknowledge: The pages have allowed us to vent without self-destruction, to plan without interference, to complain without an audience, to dream without restriction, to know our own minds. Give yourself credit for undertaking them. Give them credit for the changes and growth they have fostered.
2. Visualizing: You have already done work with naming your goal and identifying true north. The following exercise asks you to fully imagine having your goal accomplished. Please spend enough time to fill in the juicy details that would really make the experience wonderful for you:
Name your goal: I am ___________________________________
In the present tense, describe yourself dong it at the height of your powers! This is your ideal scene.
Read this aloud to yourself.
Post this above your work area.
Read this aloud, daily!
For the next week collect actual pictures of yourself and combine them with magazine images to collage your ideal scene described above. Remember, seeing is believing, and the added visual cue of your real self in your ideal scene can make it far more real.
3. Priorities: List for yourself your creative goals for the year. List for yourself your creative goals for the month. List for yourself your creative goals for the week.
4. Creative U-Turns: All of us have taken creative U-turns. Name one of yours. Name three more. Name the one that just kills you. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for all failures of nerve, timing, and initiative. Devise a personalize list of affirmations to help you do better in the future. Very gently, very gently, consider whether any aborted, abandoned, savaged, or sabotaged brain-children can be rescued. Remember, you are not alone. All of us have taken creative U-turns. Choose one creative U-turn. Retrieve it. Mend it. Do not take a creative U-turn now. Instead, notice your resistance. Morning pages seeming difficult? Stupid? Pointless? Too obvious? Do them anyway. What creative dreams are lurching toward possibility? Admit that they frighten you. Choose an artist totem. It might be a doll, a stuffed animal, a carved figuring, or a wind-up toy. The point is to choose something you immediately feel a protective fondness toward. Give your totem a place of honor and then honor it by not beating up on your artist child.

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 #8 "Recovering a Sense of Strength"

2005-09-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

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.

Week #7 "Recovering a Sense of Connection"

2005-09-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Make this phrase a mantra: Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong. Watercolor or crayon or calligraph this phrase. Post it where you will see it daily. We tend to think being hard on ourselves will make us strong. But it is cherishing ourselves that gives us strength.

Give yourself time out to listen to one side of an album, just for joy. You may want to doodle as you listen, allowing yourself to draw the shapes, emotions, thoughts you hear in the music. Notice how just twenty minutes can refresh you. Learn to take these mini-artist dates to break stress and allow insight.

Take yourself into a sacred space—a church, synagogue, library, grove of trees—and allow yourself to savor the silence and healing solitude. Each of us has a personal idea of what sacred space is. For me, a large clock store or a great aquarium store can engender a sense of timeless wonder. Experiment.

Create one wonderful smell in your house—with soup, incense, fir branches, candles—whatever.

Wear your favorite item of clothing for no special occasion.

Buy yourself one wonderful pair of socks, one wonderful pair of gloves—one wonderfully comforting, self-loving something.

Collage: Collect a stack of at least ten magazines, which you will allow yourself to freely dismember. Setting a twenty-minute time limit for yourself, tear (literally) through the magazines, collecting any images that reflect your life of interests. Think of this collage as a form of pictorial autobiography. Include your past, present, future, and your dreams. It is okay to include images you simply like. Keep pulling until you have a good stack of images (at least twenty). Now take a sheet of newspaper, a stapler, or some tape or glue, and arrange your images in a way that pleases you. (This is one on my students’ favorite exercises.)

Quickly list five favorite films. Do you see any common denominators among them? Are they romances, adventures, period pieces, political dramas, family epics, thrillers? Do you see traces of your cinematic themes in your collage?

Name your favorite topics to read about: comparative religion, movies, ESP, physics, rags-to-riches, betrayal, love triangles, scientific breakthroughs, sports… Are these topics in your collage?

Give your collage a place of honor. Even a secret place of honor is all right—in your closet. In a drawer, anywhere that is yours. You may want to do a new one every few months, or collage more thoroughly a dream you are trying to accomplish.

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 #6 "Recovering a Sense of Abundance"

2005-09-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

Week #5 "Recovering a Sense of Possibility"

2005-09-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

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

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.

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."

Week #4 "Recovering a Sense of Integrity"

2005-09-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

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.

The bulletin board server has been down, but should be up and working again, Saturday, September 3rd..

.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 #3 "Recovering a Sense of Power"

2005-08-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

"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:

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.

Describe five traits you like in yourself as a child.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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"

2005-08-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

"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"

2005-08-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

"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

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I love this blog.

Welcome to Devadasi

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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.