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As Artists, We Belong To An Ancient And Holy Tribe. We Are The Carriers Of The Truth That Spirit Moves Through Us All. When We Deal With One Another, We Are Dealing Not Merely With Our Own Human Personalities But Also With The Unseen But Ever-present Throng Of Ideas, Visions, Stories, Poems, Songs, Sculptures, Art-as-facts That Crowd The Temple Of Consciousness Waiting Their Turn To Be Born.

-Julia Cameron

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As Artists, We Belong

Julia Cameron

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As Artists, We Belong To An Ancient And Holy Tribe. We Are The Carriers Of The Truth That Spirit Moves Through Us All. When We Deal With One Another, We Are Dealing Not Merely With Our Own Human Personalities But Also With The Unseen But Ever-present Throng Of Ideas, Visions, Stories, Poems, Songs, Sculptures, Art-as-facts That Crowd The Temple Of Consciousness Waiting Their Turn To Be Born.

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There Is A Connection Between Self-nurturing And Self-respect.

We Are Ourselves Creations. We Are Meant To Continue Creativity By Being Creative Ourselves. This Is The God-force Extending Itself Through Us. Creativity Is God's Gift To Us. Using Creativity Is Our Gift Back To God.

When You Are Feeling Too Dull And Too Domesticated Get On A Horse, Sit Tall In The Saddle, And For A Moment Live In A World That Feels Like Risk And Adventure.

When We Let God Be God And Work Through Us, We Experience Both A Sense Of Serenity And Excitement.

When We Seek Daily Spiritual Guidance, We Are Guided Toward The Next Step Forward For Our Art. Sometimes The Step Is Very Small. Sometimes The Step Is, "wait. Not Now." Sometimes The Step Is, "work On Something Else For A While." When We Are Open To Divine Guidance, We Will Receive It. It Will Come To Us As The Hunch, The Inkling, The Itch. It Will Come To Us As Timely Conversations With Others. It Will Come To Us In Many Ways--but It Will Come.

Divine Guidance

In Recovering From Our Creative Blocks, It Is Necessary To Go Gently And Slowly... These Are Baby Steps. Progress, Not Perfection, Is What We Should Be Asking Of Ourselves.

Progress Not Perfection

Art Is Born In Attention.

We Waste A Lot Of Time And A Lot Of Talent Trying To Write For The Common Reader, Whom We Will Never Meet. Instead We Should Be Writing For Our Ideal Reader.

Just As A Good Rain Clears The Air, A Good Writing Day Clears The Psyche.

You Do Not Need To Work To Become Spiritual. You Are Spiritual; You Need Only To Remember That Fact. Spirit Is Within You. God Is Within You. (67)

Perfectionism Doesn't Believe In Practice Shots. It Doesn't Believe In Improvement. Perfectionism Has Never Heard That Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly--and That If We Allow Ourselves To Do Something Badly We Might In Time Become Quite Good At It. Perfectionism Measures Our Beginner's Work Against The Finished Work Of Masters. Perfectionism Thrives On Comparison And Competition. It Doesn't Know How To Say, "good Try," Or "job Well Done." The Critic Does Not Believe In Creative Glee--or Any Glee At All, For That Matter. No, Perfectionism Is A Serious Matter.

Creativity Is A Spiritual Issue.

Writing Responds Well To Some Gentle Scheduling. A Day Job Not Only Promotes Solvency, It Promotes Creativity As Well.

We Are Meant To Midwife Dreams For One Another. Success Occurs In Clusters

I Ask To Be Made Beautiful Like The Trees Are Beautiful, Each Growing According To A Unique Plan. Lop Off A Limb And And The Tree Will Accommodate It's Loss, Still Growing And Still Beautiful. It Is My Hope To Be Able To Flourish In A Similar Fashion, Taking On The Shape And Dimensions That Is Intended For Me.

Procrastination Is Not Laziness", I Tell Him. "it Is Fear. Call It By Its Right Name, And Forgive Yourself.

Procrastination

You Are On The Look Out For Experience, Strength, And Hope. You Want To Hear From The Horse's Mouth Exactly How Disappointments Have Been Survived. It Helps To Know That The Greats Have Had Hard Times Too And That Your Own Hard Times Merely Make You Part Of The Club.

I Honor My Importance And The Importance Of Others. None Of Us Is Dispensable, None Of Us Is Replacable. In The Chorus Of Life Each Of Us Brings A True Note, A Perfect Pitch That Adds To The Harmony Of The Whole. I Act Creatively And Consciously To Actively Endorse And Encourage The Expansion Of Those Whose Lives I Touch. Believing In The Goodness Of Each, I Add To The Goodness Of All. We Bless Each Other Even In Passing.

I Plant The Seeds Of Love In My Heart. I Plant The Seeds Of Love In The Hearts Of Others.

It Is All Too Easy As An Artist To Allow The Shape Of Our Career To Be Dictated To Us By Others. We Can So Easily Wait To Be Chosen. Such Passivity Invites Despair. To Remain Healthy And Vital, Artists Must Stay Proactive In Their Own Behalf.

There Is No Such Thing As Being Done With An Artistic Life. Frustrations And Rewards Exist At All Levels On The Path.

As A Writer, I Find Holidays Often Disturbing, Not Liberating, In Their Disruption Of Tempo, Their Open-ended Time.

If We Have Plain Old Ordinary Fear Then We Are Within Reach Of A Solution. Fear Has Been With Humankind For Millennia And We Do Know What To Do About It-pray About It, Talk About It, Feel The Fear, And Do It Anyway. Artistic Fear, On The Other Hand, Sounds Somehow Nastier And More Virulent, Like It Just Might Not Yield To Ordinary Solutions-and Yet It Does, The Moment We Become Humble Enough To Try Ordinary Solutions.

Become Willing To See The Hand Of God And Accept It As A Friend's Offer To Help You With What You Are Doing.

I Am Breathing In And Out. Realizing This, I Began To Notice That Each Moment Was Not Without Its Beauty.

Soul Is Not About Function; It's About Beauty, Form, And Memory.

All Too Often Too Often We Try To Push, Pull, Outline And Control Our Ideas Instead Of Letting Them Grow Organically. The Creative Process Is A Process Of Surrender, Not Control.mystery Is At The Heart Of Creativity. That, And Surprise.

Each Of Us Has An Inner Dream That We Can Unfold If We Will Just Have The Courage To Admit What It Is, And The Faith To Trust Our Own Admission. The Admitting Is Often Very Difficult.

As Children We Hoard And Gloat Over Words. Words Give Ownership: We Name Our World And We Claim It...children Trust The Power Of Words.

You Will Learn To Enjoy The Process... And To Surrender Your Need To Control The Result. You Will Discover The Joy Of Practising Your Creativity. The Process, Not The Product, Will Become Your Focus.

We Don't Always Know What Makes Us Happy. We Know, Instead, What We Think Should. We Are Baffled And Confused When Our Attempts At Happiness Fail.

Artists Are Visionaries. We Routinely Practice A Form Of Faith, Seeing Clearly And Moving Toward A Creative Goal That Shimmers In The Distance - Often Visible To Us, But Invisible To Those Around Us.

Creativity Is The Life Force That Dylan Thomas Called 'the Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower.

People Frequently Believe The Creative Life Is Grounded In Fantasy. The More Difficult Truth Is That Creativity Is Grounded In Reality, In The Particular, The Focused, The Well Observed Or Specifically Imagined.

Anger Is Meant To Be Acted On. It Is Not Meant To Be Acted Out. Anger Points The Direction. We Are Meant To Use Anger As Fuel To Take The Actions We Need To Move Where Our Anger Points Us. With A Little Thought, We Can Usually Translate The Message That Our Anger Is Sending Us.

At It's Essence, Art Is An Alchemical Process. Alchemy Is A Process Of Transformation.

Writing Is A Spiritual Practice In That People That Have No Spiritual Path Can Undertake It And, As They Write, They Begin To Wake Up To A Larger Connection. After A While, People Tend To Find That There Is Some Muse That They Are Connecting To.

Apologies Are The Art Of Spiritual Housekeeping. They Help To Put And Keep Our Lives In Order.

Creativity Is Always A Leap Of Faith. You're Faced With A Blank Page, Blank Easel, Or An Empty Stage.

As You Explore Your Inner World, Your Outer World Will Come More Sharply Into Focus. As You Face Your Imagined Barriers, You Will Encounter Real Ones, As Well.

When I Talk About A Writing Life, I'm Talking About A Life In Which Writing Is The Dominant Response To Living.

If You Are Too Busy To Develop Your Talents, You Are Too Busy.

Art Is A Spiritual Practice. We May Not, And Need Not, Do It Perfectly.

Writing-and This Is The Big Secret-wants To Be Written. Writing Loves A Writer The Way God Loves A True Devotee. Writing Will Fill Your Heart If You Let It. It Will Fill Your Pages And Help To Fill Your Life.

Serious Art Is Born From Serious Play.

The Face Of Love Is Variable. I Am Able To Love Without Demanding That My Relationships Assume The Structures And Forms I Might Choose For Them. My Love Is Fluid, Flexible, Committed, Creative. My Love Allows People And Events To Unfold As They Need. My Love Is Not Controlling. It Does Not Dictate Or Demand. My Love Allows Those I Love The Freedom To Assume The Forms Most True To Them. I Release All Those I Love From My Preconceptions Of Their Path. I Allow Them The Dignity Of Self-definition While I Offer Them A Constant Love That Is Every Variable In Shape.

It Hurts Like Hell When The World Won't Invest In You. But It's Excruciating, Almost More Than You Can Bear, When You Don't Believe And Invest In Yourself.

Just As Blood Is A Fact Of Your Physical Body And Nothing You Invented, Creativity Is A Fact Of Your Spiritual Body And Nothing You Must Invent.

Creativity Occurs In The Moment, And In The Moment We Are Timeless.

If You Think Of The Universe As A Vast Electrical Sea In Which You Are Immersed And From Which You Are Formed, Opening To Your Creativity Changes You From Something Bobbing In That Sea To A More Fully Functioning, More Conscious, More Cooperative Part Of That Ecosystem.

Creativity Is The Natural Order Of Life. Life Is Energy: Pure Creative Energy.

Often It Is Tenacity, Not Talent, That Rules The Day.

All Of Us Are Far Richer Than We Imagine. None Of Us Possesses A Life Devoid Of Magic.

It Takes Constant Vigilance Not To Slip Into Negativity Or Simple Apathy. It Takes Courage To Believe Over Any Given Period Of Time That We Are Getting Better And Not Sliding Into Decline.

Water Seeks Its Own Level And Water Rises Collectively

All Change Can Be Expansive In Potential. The Choice Is Ours.

When I Listen To Love, I Am Listening To My True Nature. When I Express Love, I Am Expressing My True Nature. All Of Us Love. All Of Us Do It More And More Perfectly. The Past Has Brought Us Both Ashes And Diamonds. In The Present We Find The Flowers Of What We've Planted And The Seeds Of What We Are Becoming. I Plant The Seeds Of Love In My Heart. I Plant The Seeds Of Love In The Hearts Of Others.

Progress, Not Perfection, Is What We Should Be Asking Of Ourselves.

Progress Not Perfection

Making Art Is A Rite Of Initiation. People Change Their Souls.

In A Sense, As We Are Creative Beings, Our Lives Become Our Work Of Art.

Many Of Us Believe That 'real Artists' Do Not Experience Self-doubt. In Truth, Artists Are People Who Have Learned To Live With Doubt And Do The Work Anyway.

When We Stop Playing God, God Can Play Through Us.

Exercise Often Moves Us Straight From Stagnation To Inspiration, From Problem To Solution, From Self-pity To Self-respect.

There Is A Treadmill Quality To Workaholism.

We Need To Bridge Our Sense Of Loneliness And Disconnection With A Sense Of Community And Continuity Even If We Must Manufacture It From Our Time On The Web And Our Use Of Calling Cards To Connect Long Distance. We Must “log On” Somewhere, And If It Is Only In Cyberspace, That Is Still Far Better Than Nowhere At All. (264)

What We Really Want To Do Is What We Are Really Meant To Do.

I Am Compassionate. I Allow My Heart And Imagination To Embrace The Difficulties And Concerns Of Others. While Maintaining My Own Balance, I Find It Within Myself To Extend Sympathy, Attention, And Support. When They Are Grieved, I Listen With Openness And Gentle Strength. I Offer Loyalty, Friendship, And Human Understanding. Without Undermining Or Enabling, I Aid And Assist Others To Find Their Strength. I Allow The Healing Power Of The Universe To Flow Through Me, Soothing The Hearts And Feelings Of Those I Encounter.

When Writing Becomes Too Dominant, It Gets Leached Of Its Own Power. We Spend More And More Time Writing And We Have Less And Less To Write About.

Wherever You Are Is Always The Right Place. There Is Never A Need To Fix Anything, To Hitch Up The Bootstraps Of The Soul And Start At Some Higher Place. Start Right Where You Are.

Judging Your Early Artistic Efforts Is Artist Abuse.

Don't Try To 'fix' The Child's Boredom - Rather, Let The Child Find His Or Her Inner Resources.

When We Open Ourselves To Exploring Our Creativity, We Open Ourselves To God: Good, Orderly Direction.

Making Art Is An Act Of Faith.

I Bless The Wisdom Of My Loving Heart. Love Is A Form Of Listening. I Listen With A Loving Heart. I Listen To The Love Within My Heart And I Hear The Love In The Hearts Of Others.

An Artist Requires The Upkeep Of Creative Solitude. An Artist Requires The Healing Of Time Alone. Without This Period Of Recharging, Our Artist Becomes Depleted. Until We Experience The Freedom Of Solitude, We Cannot Connect Authentically. We May Be Enmeshed, But We Are Not Encountered. Art Lies In The Moment Of Encounter. We Meet Our Truth And We Meet Ourselves And We Meet Our Self-expression.

Growth Is An Erratic Forward Movement: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. Remember That And Be Very Gentle With Yourself.

We Don't Often Talk About The Fact That Writing Is All About Rhythm. When You Get Too Up In Your Head, You Can Lose A Lot Of Your Writing. Sometimes What A Writer Really Needs To Do Is Go Dancing.

All Too Often, It Is Audacity And Not Talent That Moves An Artist To Center Stage.

Art Is The Imagination At Play In The Field Of Time. Let Yourself Play.

By Listening To The Creator Within, We Are Led To Our Right Path.

The Voice Of Our Original Self Is Often Muffled, Overwhelmed, Even Strangled, By The Voices Of Other People’s Expectations.

Our Moods And Insights Are Transitory. This Current Is A Flow Of Grace Moving Us To Our Right Livelihood, Companions, Destiny.

Writing Is Like Listening To A Melody Line In My Head. Note By Note, It Knows Where It Wants To Go. I Follow It And Lay It Down. I Can Pare It, Shape It, And Polish It Later...my Job Is To Take Down The Dribs And Drabs - To Free-associate, If You Will, Knowing That The Associations Have Their Own Plans For Where We're Going With All This.

The Growth Of One Blesses All. I Am Commited To Grow In Love. All That I Touch, I Leave In Love. I Move Through This World Consciously And Creatively.

In Our Human Lives, We Are Often Impatient, Ill-tempered, Inappropriate. We Find It Difficult To Treat Our Intimates With The Love We Really Hold For Them. Despite This, They Bear With Us Because Of The Larger, Higher Level Of Family That They Honor Even In Our Outbursts. This Is Their Commitment.

In Order To Create, We Draw From Our Inner Well. This Inner Well, An Artistic Reservoir, Is Ideally Like A Well Stocked Fish Pond... If We Don't Give Some Attention To Upkeep, Our Well Is Apt To Become Depleted, Stagnant, Or Blocked... As Artists, We Must Learn To Be Self Nourishing. We Must Become Alert Enough To Consciously Replenish Our Creative Resources As We Draw On Them - To Re-stock The Trout Pond, So To Speak.

If You Want To Write A Novel, It's The Divine Mind Wanting To Express.

Sometimes The Dying Live More Fiercely And Wisely Than The Rest Of Us. (146)

Left To It's Own Devices, Writing Is Like Weather. It Has A Drama, A Form, A Force To It That Shapes The Day. Just As Good Rain Clears The Air, A Good Writing Day Clears The Psyche. There Is Something Very Right About Simply Letting Yourself Write. And The Way To Do That Is To Begin, To Begin Where You Are.

What We Really Want To Do Is What We Are Really Meant To Do. When We Do What We Are Meant To Do, Money Comes To Us, Doors Open For Us, We Feel Useful, And The Work We Do Feels Like Play To Us.

There Is Not One Pink Flower, Or Even Fifty Pink Flowers, But Hundreds. Snowflakes, Of Course, Are The Ultimate Exercise In Sheer Creative Glee. No Two Alike. This Creator Looks Suspiciously Like Someone Who Just Might Send Us Support For Our Creative Ventures.

Love Is Not Love If It Is Compelled By Reason And Driven By Logic - Love Exists In Spite Of Those Things, Not Because Of Them. It Is A Emotion Which Needs No Fuel To Fire It Or Oxygen To Feed It; If You Have To Look For The Why, Then Stop Looking; It Was Never There At All.

Artists Love Other Artists. Shadow Artists Are Gravitating To Their Rightful Tribe But Cannot Yet Claim Their Birthright. Very Often Audacity, Not Talent, Makes One Person An Artist And Another A Shadow Artist-hiding In The Shadows, Afraid To Step Out And Expose The Dream To The Light, Fearful That It Will Disintegrate To The Touch.

The Grace To Be A Beginner Is Always The Best Prayer For An Artist.

Perfectionism Has Nothing To Do With Getting It Right. It Has Nothing To Do With Fixing Things. It Has Nothing To Do With Standards. Perfectionism Is A Refusal To Let Yourself Move Forward. It Is A Loop-an Obsessive, Debilitating Closed System That Causes You To Get Stuck In The Details Of What You Are Writing Or Painting Or Making And To Lose Sight Of The Whole.

Any Little Bit Of Experimenting In Self-nurturance Is Very Frightening For Most Of Us.

Treating Myself Like A Precious Object Will Make Me Strong.

What Payoff Are You Getting For Remaining Stuck At This Point In Your Expansion?

Do What Intrigues You, Explore What Interests You; Think Mystery, Not Mastery.

You Are Your Own Promised Land, Your Own New Frontier.

Spirituality Can Release Blocks, Lead You To Ideas, And Make Your Life Artful. Sometimes When We Pray For Guidance, We're Guided In Unexpected Directions. We May Want A Lofty Answer And We Get The Intuition To Clean Our Bedroom. It Can Seem So Humble And Picky And That You Don't Necessarily Think Of It Spiritual Guidance.

Creativity Makes Life Useful To Us. It Also Makes Us Useful To Life.

Writing Is Medicine. It Is An Appropriate Antidote To Injury. It Is An Appropriate Companion For Any Difficult Change.

As We Move Toward Our Dreams, We Move Toward Our Divinity.

I Am Due At The Page.

Making Art Has Taught Me That The Tiniest Smidgen Of Progress Is Something To Be Cherished.

Our Internal Artist Is Always Our Creative Child.

Far From Making Me Feel Different And Special, My [spiritual] Experiences Made Me Feel The Same, Ordinary, And Interconnected. If I Felt More Spiritual, Everyone Else Felt More Spiritual As Well. (276)

When I Ask For Help With My Creativity, I Get It.

You Are Either Losing Your Mind -- Or Gaining Your Soul.

Clock Is Ticking

We Are Not Accustomed To Thinking That God's Will For Us And Our Own Inner Dreams Can Coincide.

We Should Write Because Writing Brings Clarity And Passion To The Act Of Living. Writing Is Sensual, Experiential, Grounding. We Should Write Because Writing Is Good For The Soul. We Should Write Because Writing Yields Us A Body Of Work, A Felt Path Through The World We Live In.

Here's What I Like About God: Trees Are Crooked, Mountains Are Lumpy, A Lot Of His Creatures Are Funny Looking, And He Made It All Anyway. He Didn't Let The Aardvark Convince Him He Had No Business Designing Creatures. He Didn't Make A Puffer Fish And Get Discouraged, No, The Maker Made Things - And Still Does.

Writing Is Like Breathing, It's Possible To Learn To Do It Well, But The Point Is To Do It No Matter What.

Life Is What We Make Of It. Whether We Conceive Of An Inner God Force Or An Other, Outer God, Doesn't Matter. Relying On That Force Does.

Writing Is An Act Of Cherishing... It Is An Act Of Love.

We Talk About Self-expression But Need To Pause And Remember That Self-expression Requires A Self To Express.

Balance Is The Key To My Serenity. I Attain Balance By Listening To My Inner Wisdom And To The Wisdom Of Others. There Is No Situation In Which I Cannot Find A Point Of Balance. There Is No Circumstance In Which I Cannot Find Inner Harmony. As I Ask To Be Led Into Equilibrium And Clarity, I Will Find That My Answers Come To Me. I Am Wiser Than I Know, More Capable Of Right Action And Attitudes Than I Yet Believe. In Every Event, I Seek The Balance Point Of God's Action Through Me.

When We Put The Pen To Paper, We Articulate Things In Our Life That We May Have Felt Vague About. Before You Write About Something, Somebody Says, 'how Do You Feel?' And You Say, 'oh, I Feel Okay.' Then You Write About It, And You Discover You Don't Feel Okay.

Our Modern Ideas Of 'functioning' Through Things Are Really Quite Inhuman. We Have This Idea That No Matter What Is Going On We Still Have To Color Between The Lines, Act Normal.

The Creative Process Is A Process Of Surrender, Not Control.

Your Mood Doesn't Really Matter. Some Of The Best Creative Work Gets Done On The Days When You Feel That Everything You're Doing Is Just Plain Junk.

Possibility Is Far More Frightening Than Impossibility.

Do Not Call Procrastination Laziness. Call It Fear.

Procrastination

I Learned, When Hit By Loss, To Ask The Right Question: "what Next?" Instead Of "why Me?" . . . Whenever I Am Willing To Ask "what Is Necessary Next?" I Have Moved Ahead. Whenever I Have Taken No For A Final Answer I Have Stalled And Gotten Stuck.

I Believe That What We Want To Write Wants To Be Written. I Believe That As I Have An Impulse To Create, The Something I Want To Create Has An Impulse To Want To Be Born. My Job, Then, Is To Show Up On The Page And Let That Something Move Through Me, In A Sense, What Wants To Be Written Is None Of My Business.

The Creator Made Us Creative. Our Creativity Is Our Gift From God. Our Use Of It Is Our Gift To God. Accepting This Bargain Is The Beginning Of True Self-acceptance.

The Artist Brain Is The Sensory Brain: Sight And Sound, Smell And Taste, Touch. These Are The Elements Of Magic, And Magic Is The Elemental Stuff Of Art. In Filling The Well, Think Magic. Think Delight. Think Fun. Do Not Think Duty. Do Not Do What You Should Do-spiritual Sit-ups Like Reading A Dull But Recommended Critical Text. Do What Intrigues You, Explore What Interests You; Think Mystery, Not Mastery.

I Am What I Am Again: A Writer. I Have Metabolized The Injury Into Art.

We Undertake Certain Spiritual Exercises To Achieve Alignment With The Creative Energy Of The Universe.

Writing Is A Combination Of Being Alert To Your Outer Surroundings And Alive To Your Inner Reality.

By Being Willing To Be A Bad Artist, You Have A Chance To Be An Artist, And Perhaps, Over Time, A Very Good One.

We Always Do The Best We Can By The Light We Have To See By.

Being In The Mood To Write, Like Being In The Mood To Make Love, Is A Luxury That Isn't Necessary In A Long-term Relationship. Just As The First Caress Can Lead To A Change Of Heart, The First Sentence, However Tentative And Awkward, Can Lead To A Desire To Go Just A Little Further.

My Heart Holds The World In Tender Awe.

We Are The Origin Of Our Art, Its Homeland. Viewed This Way, Originality Is The Process Of Remaining True To Ourselves.

I Honor The Wisdom Of Life. I Learn From Life In All Its Forms. The Tree Teaches Me. The Sparrow And The Wren Sing My Song. I Am Open To The Lessons Life Brings Me From The Earth. I Learn From The Wind, From The Sun, From The Small Flowers, And From The Stars. I Walk Without Arrogance. I Learn From All I Encounter. I Open My Mind And Heart To The Guidance And Love That Come To Me From The Natural World.

I Think Of Making Love And Making Art As Being Very Parallel. Even The Most Amateur Attempt Can Be Thrilling.

Creativity Is Our True Nature; Blocks Are An Unnatural Thwarting Of A Process At Once As Normal And As Miraculous As The Blossoming Of A Flower At The End Of A Slender Green Stem.

Creativity Is God's Will For Us And Should Be Practiced Like Any Other Spiritual Practice -a Day At A Time.

The Need To Be A Great Artist Makes It Hard To Be An Artist. The Need To Produce A Great Work Of Art Makes It Hard To Produce Any Art At All. . . Fear Is What Blocks An Artist. The Fear Of Not Being Good Enough. The Fear Of Not Finishing. The Fear Of Failure And Of Success. The Fear Of Beginning At All.

Art Is One Of The Few Careers Without A Mandatory Retirement Age.

I Believe That When We Ask To Be Led, We Are Led, And There's Nothing Too Small Or Esoteric For Spiritual Help.

Practice Being Kind To Yourself In Small, Concrete Ways. Look At Your Refrigerator. Are You Feeding Yourself Nicely? Do You Have Socdks? An Extra Set Of Sheets? What About A New House Plant? A Thermos For The Long Drive To Work? Allow Yourself To Pitch Out Some Of Your Ragged Clothes. You Don't Have To Keep Everything.

A Career Must Be Husbanded. Care Must Be Taken. Everyday Must Bring Some Small Bit Of Progress. How Would An Artist With Any Self-worth Act? Act That Way.

Art Is Not About Thinking Something Up. It Is The Opposite - Getting Something Down.

Fatigue Can Make It Hard To Have Faith. Too Much Busyness Can Make It Hard To Have Faith. Too Much Of Too Little Solitude Can Impact Faith. For That Matter, So Can A Bout Of Hunger Or Overwork, Anything Carried To An Extreme. Faith Thrives On Routine. Look At Any Monastery And You Will See That. Faith Keeps On Keeping On.

Creativity Is A Fact Of Your Spiritual Body

Try Approving Of Yourself Just As You Are, And Spoiling Yourself Rotten With Small Kid's Pleasures.

Once We Are Willing To Accept That Anything Worth Doing Might Even Be Worth Doing Badly, Our Options Widen.

While There Is No Quick Fix For Instant, Pain-free Creativity, Creative Recovery (or Discovery) Is A Teachable, Trackable Spiritual Process. Each Of Us Is Complex And Highly Individual, Yet There Are Common Recognizable Denominators To The Creative Recovery Process.

Setting Skepticism Aside, Even Briefly, Can Make For Very Interesting Explorations. It Is Not Necessary That We Change Any Of Our Beliefs. It Is Necessary That We Examine Them.

As Artists, We Belong To An Ancient And Holy Tribe. We Are The Carriers Of The Truth That Spirit Moves Through Us All. When We Deal With One Another, We Are Dealing Not Merely With Our Own Human Personalities But Also With The Unseen But Ever-present Throng Of Ideas, Visions, Stories, Poems, Songs, Sculptures, Art-as-facts That Crowd The Temple Of Consciousness Waiting Their Turn To Be Born.

We Should Write, Above All, Because We Are Writers, Whether We Call Ourselves That Or Not.

There Will Be Many Times When We Won't Look Good-to Ourselves Or Anyone Else. We Need To Stop Demanding That We Do. It Is Impossible To Get Better And Look Good At The Same Time.

Doubt Comes To The Door In Darkness, Pretending To Be Alone And In Need Of Your Compassionate Ear. But If You Let Him In, He'll Bring His Friends.

My Will For You Is Not Harsh Or Unpleasant. It Is Gentle And Perfectly Tailored To Your Unique Needs. Do Not Fear My Direction. I Am Your Heart's Happiest Guide.

Answered Prayers Are Scary. They Imply Responsibility. You Asked For It. Now That You've Got It, What Are You Going To Do? Why Else The Cautionary Phrase Watch Out For What You Pray For; You Might Just Get It?

Creativity Requires Faith. Faith Requires That We Relinquish Control.

All Of Us Contain A Divine, Expressive Spark, A Creative Candle Intended To Light Our Path And That Of Our Fellows.

In Order To Have A Real Relationship With Our Creativity, We Must Take The Time And Care To Cultivate It.

The Beginner's Humility And Openness Lead To Exploration. Exploration Leads To Accomplishment. All Of It Begins At The Beginning, With The First Small And Scary Step.

Nothing Dies Harder Than A Bad Idea.

Choice By Choice, Moment By Moment, I Build The Necklace Of My Day, Stringing Together The Choices That Form Artful Living.

It Is Not The Act Of Making Art That Is Painful. It Is The Desire To Make Something And Not Acting On It That Causes Pain....a Day When I Don't Write Is Less Happy. This Is Not Discipline. It Is Affection, Enthusiasm, Adventure-any Number Of Other Words Besides Discipline.

In Times Of Pain, When The Future Is Too Terrifying To Contemplate And The Past Too Painful To Remember, I Have Learned To Pay Attention To Right Now. The Precise Moment I Was In Was Always The Only Safe Place For Me.

Art Opens The Closets, Airs Out The Cellars And Attics. It Brings Healing.

If We Are Forever Yearning For More Time, We Are Forever Discounting What Is Offered.

Creativity Is Not And Never Has Been Sensible.

Sometimes, In Order To Go Forward, You Must First Go Back.

When We Clear The Physical Clutter From Our Lives, We Literally Make Way For Inspiration And 'good, Orderly Direction' To Enter.

When We Write About Our Lives We Respond To Them. As We Respond To Them We Are Rendered More Fluid, More Centered, More Agile On Our Own Behalf. We Are Tendered Conscious.

If You Work On Your Creativity, You Deepen Your Spirituality. And If You Work On Your Spirituality, You Deepen Your Creativity.

As We Open Our Creative Channel To The Creator, Many Gentle But Powerful Changes Are To Be Expected.

When You Feel Yourself To Be In Critical Condition, You Must Treat Yourself As Gently As You Would A Sick Friend.

In Dance, In Composition, In Sculpture, The Experience Is The Same: We Are More The Conduit Than The Creator Of What We Express.

We Don't Always Know What Makes Us Happy. We Know, Instead, What We Think Should. We Are Baffled And Confused When Our Attempts At Happiness Fail...we Are Mute When It Comes To Naming Accurately Our Own Preferences, Delights, Gifts, Talents. The Voice Of Our Original Self Is Often Muffled, Overwhelmed, Even Strangled, By The Voices Of Other People's Expectations. The Tongue Of The Original Self Is The Language Of The Heart.

The Need To Be A Great Artist Makes It Hard To Be An Artist. The Need To Produce A Great Work Of Art Makes It Hard To Produce Any Art At All.

Enthusiasm Is Not An Emotional State. It Is A Spiritual Commitment, A Loving Surrender To Our Creative Process. Enthusiasm - From The Greek, Filled With God - Is An Ongoing Energy Supply Tapped Into The Flow Of Life Itself.

Take A Small Step In The Direction Of A Dream And Watch The Synchronous Doors Flying Open

When We Walk, The Two Halves Of Our Brains Converse.

Love Is The Substance Of All Life. Everything Is Connected In Love, Absolutely Everything.

A Sketch Book Freezes Time. It Is An Instantaneous Form Of Meditation Focusing Us On The Worth Of Every Passing Moment.

Passing Moments

The Opposite Of Prosperity Is Not Poverty. It Is Anxiety.

... Success Or Failure, The Truth Of A Life Really Has Little To Do With Its Quality. The Quality Of Life Is In Proportion, Always, To The Capacity For Delight. The Capacity For Delight Is The Gift Of Paying Attention.

At Root, A Pearl Is A 'disturbance' A Beauty Caused By Something That Isn't Supposed To Be There, About Which Something Needs To Be Done. It Is The Interruption Of Equilibrium That Creates Beauty. Beauty Is A Response To Provocation, To Intrusion. ... The Pearl's Beauty Is Made As A Result Of Insult.

Artistic Anorexia & Sexual Avoidance Have The Same Root Fears – Fear Of Intimacy, Fear Of Exposure, Fear Of Failure”.

No Matter What Your Age Or Your Life Path, Whether Making Art Is Your Career Or Your Hobby Or Your Dream, It Is Not Too Late Or Too Egotistical Or Too Selfish Or Too Silly To Work On Your Creativity.

I Believe That I Am Very Lucky To Have Close Friends Who Are Faithful. From My Friends, I Have Learned The Importance Of Perseverance.

The Refusal To Be Creative Is An Act Of Self-will And Is Counter To Our True Nature. When We Are Open To Our Creativity, We Are Opening To God: Good, Orderly Direction. As We Pursue Our Creative Fulfillment, All Elements Of Our Life Move Toward Harmony. As We Strengthen Our Creativity, We Strengthen Our Connection To The Creator Within. Artists Love Other Artists. Our Relationship To God Is Co-creative, Artist To Artist. It Is God's Will For Us To Live In Creative Abundance.

Accept The Fact That You're An Artist And Stop Second-guessing Yourself. Just Do It.

If We Lean Into What We Love Instead Of Soldiering Toward What We 'should,' Our Pace Quickens, Our Energy Rises, Optimism Sets In. What We Love Is Nutritious For Us.

We Must Attend To What Our Inner Guidance Is Nudging Us Toward.

But Do You Know How Old I Will Be By The Time I Learn To Really Play The Piano / Act / Paint / Write A Decent Play?" Yes . . . The Same Age You Will Be If You Don't.

Pivotal To A Happy Writing Life Is A Practice Of Daily Personal Writing.

Walk With Me To The Edge Of The City, / Take Off Your Shoes And Feel The Earth. / Remember Who You Are. You Are A Star. / A Mountain, That Fountain In The Sun. / Your Heart Is The Velvet Cave / Where Birds Sing.

Adversity Is A Misperception As All Works Toward The Good.

I Learned To Just Show Up At The Page And Write Down What I Heard. Writing Became More Like Eavesdropping And Less Like Inventing A Nuclear Bomb.

And Why Are We Supposed To Be Serious About God? Did God Show Up And Crack The Whip? “you There, Annie In Ohio, I See You Laughing A Lot And Frankly It Really Pisses Me Off . . . “ (50)

We Go Into Parenting, And We Discover That We Don't Have The Answers. We Are At A Loss.

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