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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.

-Julia Cameron

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I Am Compassionate. I

Julia Cameron

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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.

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Creativity Requires Faith. Faith Requires That We Relinquish Control.

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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.

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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 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.

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

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

It Is The Inner Commitment To Be True To Ourselves And Follow Our Dreams That Triggers The Support Of The Universe.

Art Is Born In Attention.

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.

An Artist Paints, Dances, Draws, Writes, Designs, Or Acts At The Expanding Edge Of Consciousness. We Press Into The Unknown Rather Than The Known. This Makes Life Lovely And Lively.

I Believe That The Dark Night Of The Soul Is A Common Spiritual Experience. I Believe, Too, That The Answer Is Continued Seeking And Perseverance. It Helps To Know That Others Have Endured A Loss Of Faith.

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

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.

Expect The Universe To Support Your Dream. It Will.

The Artist's Way Is A Spiritual Journey, A Pilrimage Home To The Self.

As An Experienced Artist, I Carry My Work Like A Secret Pregnancy. I Am Always Aware Of Inner Life And The Need To Protect It.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

"god Does Not Give Us More Than We Can Handle," I Am Told But I Wonder If God Doesn't Overestimate Me Just A Little. Or Perhaps, And This Is Likely, I Underestimate God.

Life Is A Spiritual Dance And That Our Unseen Partner Has Steps To Teach Us If We Will Allow Ourselves To Be Led. The Next Time You Are Restless, Remind Yourself It Is The Universe Asking 'shall We Dance?

One Of Our Chief Needs As Creative Beings Is Support. Unfortunately, This Can Be Hard To Come By. Ideally, We Would Be Nurtured And Encourages First By Our Nuclear Family And Then By Ever-widening Circles Of Friends, Teachers, Well-wishers. As Young Artists, We Need And Want To Be Acknowledged For Our Attempts And Efforts As Well As For Our Achievements And Triumphs. Unfortunately, Many Artists Never Receive This Critical Early Encouragement. As A Result, They May Not Know They Are Artists At All.

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.

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

As You Move Toward A Dream, The Dream Moves Toward You.

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

When I Listen To Love, I Am Listening To My True Nature. When I Express Love, I Am Expressing My True Nature

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.

I Am A Gate For God To Accomplish Great Things. Through Me And With Me, New Life Enters The World.

You Are Asked To Keep A Ledger - A Small Notebook Will Do - Of Money In And Money Out. Counting Brings Clarity, And Clarity Is One Of The First And Finest Fruits Of Prosperity.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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No Matter How Sophisticated Our Lives May Be We Need To Think Of Ourselves As Creative Children.

Nothing Dies Harder Than A Bad Idea. And Few Ideas Are Worse Than The Ones We Have About Art.

Treating Myself Like A Precious Object Will Make Me Strong.

The Heart Of Creativity Is An Experience Of The Mystical Union; The Heart Of The Mystical Union Is An Experience Of Creativity.

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.

Adversity Is A Misperception As All Works Toward The Good.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Need To Create Pathways In Your Consciousness Through Which The Creative Forces Operate.

A Working Artist Is A Playing Artist.

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

When I Went In, My Editor Said, ‘i Hope You Don’t Think You’re A Writer.’ And I Said, ‘i Hope You Don’t Think I’m A Journalist.’ And, Uh, Turned Out We Were Both Right.

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.

We Tend To Think Being Hard On Ourselves Will Make Us Strong. But It Is Cherishing Ourselves That Gives Us Strength

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

Creativity - Like Human Life Itself - Begins In Darkness.

Gestation Period

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

Creativity - Like Human Life Itself - Begins In Darkness... Bright Ideas Are Preceded By A Gestation Period That Is Interior, Murky, And Completely Necessary.

Gestation Period

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

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Workaholism Is An Addiction, And Like All Addictions, It Blocks Creative Energy.

Most Artists, Ashamed Of Their Need For Encouragement, Try To Carry Their Work To Term Like A Secret Pregnancy.

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.

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

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

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

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

Our Internal Artist Is Always Our Creative Child.

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

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.

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

Faith Is Almost The Bottom Line Of Creativity; It Requires A Leap Of Faith Any Time We Undertake A Creative Endeavor, Whether This Is Going To The Easel, Or The Page, Or Onto The Stage.

We Must Learn To Let The Flow Manifest Itself Where It Will.....not Where We Will It.

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.

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

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.

Mystery Is At The Heart Of Creativity. As Creative Channels, We Need To Trust The Darkness.

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

Judging Your Early Artistic Efforts Is Artist Abuse.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Survival Lies In Sanity, And Sanity Lies In Paying Attention...the Capacity For Delight Is The Gift Of Paying Attention.

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

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.

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

As We Lose Our Vagueness About Ourself, Our Values, Our Life Situation, We Become Available To The Moment. It Is There, In The Particular, That We Contact The Creative Self. Art Lies In The Moment Of Encounter: We Meet Our Truth And We Meet Ourselves; We Meet Ourselves And We Meet Our Self-expression .

When We Survey Our Lives, Seeking To Fulfil Our Creativity, We Often See We Had A Dream That Went Glimmering Because We Believed, And Those Around Us Believed, That The Dream Was Beyond Our Reach.

We Will Experience The Life We Have The Faith To Experience.

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

Progress Not Perfection

Creativity Flourishes When We Have A Sense Of Safety And Self-acceptance.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Making Art Is An Act Of Faith.

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.

Some People Find It Easier To Picture The Stream Of Inspiration As Being Like Radio Waves Of All Sorts Being Broadcast At All Times. With Practice, We Learn To Hear The Desired Frequency On Request. We Tune In To The Frequency We Want.

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.

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.

Workaholism Is A Block, Not A Building Block.

Building Blocks

Judging Your Early Artistic Efforts Is Artist Abuse. . . Remember That In Order To Recover As An Artist, You Must Be Willing To Be A Bad Artist. Give Yourself Permission To Be A Beginner. By Being Willing To Be A Bad Artist, You Have A Chance To Be An Artist, And Perhaps, Over Time, A Very Good One

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.

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

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)

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.

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

Mystery Is At The Heart Of Creativity. That, And Surprise.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

We All Have Time To Write. We Have Time To Write The Minute We Are Willing To Write Badly, To Chase A Dead End, To Scribble A Few Words, To Write For The Hell Of It Instead Of For The Perfect And Polished Result.

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

I Am Due At The Page.

Doing Work Points The Way To New And Better Work To Be Done.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Creativity Is Not And Never Has Been Sensible.

I Surrender My Anxiety And My Sense Of Urgency. I Allow God To Guide Me In The Pacing Of My Life. I Open My Heart To God's Timing. I Release My Deadlines, Agendas, And Stridency To The Gentle Yet Often Swift Pacing Of God. As I Open My Heart To God's Unfoldings, My Heart Attains Peace. As I Relax Into God's Timing, My Heart Contains Comfort. As I Allow God To Set The Tone And Schedule Of My Days, I Find Myself In The Right Time And Place, Open And Available To God's Opportunities.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

Taking The Time To Write In Our Lives Gives Us The Time Of Our Lives. As We Describe Our Environments, We Begin To Savor Them. Even The Most Rushed And Pell-mell Life Begins To Take On The Patina Of Being Cherished.

I Started Writing Morning Pages Just To Keep My Hand In, You Know, Just Because I Was A Writer And I Didn't Know What Else To Do But Write. And Then One Day As I Was Writing, A Character Came Sort Of Strolling In And I Realized, Oh My God, I Don't Have To Be Just A Screenwriter. I Can Write Novels.

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

Passing Moments

Money Cannot Fill An Empty Soul.

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.

When It Was Suggested That I Write A Memoir I Said, 'i'm Not Old Enough. I'm Not Distinguished Enough.' But I Went Home And Sat Down To Write, And The Material For The Book Just Came Flooding Into My Hands.

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.

To Write Is To Right Things. A Path Will Emerge.

Serious Art Is Born From Serious Play.

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

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

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

The Doing Of Something Productive Regardless Of The Outcome Is An Act Of Faith. The Doing Of A Small Something When A Large Something Is Too Much For Us Is Perhaps Especially An Act Of Faith. Faith Means Going Forward By Whatever Means We Can.

Creativity Is God's Gift To Us. Using Our Creativity Is Our Gift Back To God.

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)

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

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.

Perfectionism Is Not A Quest For The Best. It Is A Pursuit Of The Worst In Ourselves, The Part That Tells Us That Nothing We Do Will Ever Be Good Enough - That We Should Try Again.

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.

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

Creativity Is A Spiritual Issue.

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

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

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.

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

It Is On These (20min) Walks That My Best Ideas Come To Me. It Is While Walking That Difficult Clarity Emerges. It Is While Walking That I Experience A Sense Of Well-being And Connection, And It Is In Walking That I Live Most Prayerfully.

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.

There Is A Treadmill Quality To Workaholism.

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

Pray To Catch The Bus, Then Run As Fast As You Can.

When We Are On Our Right Path, We Have A Surefootedness.

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.

Because If You're Trying To Write And You Have Unlimited Time, You Can Procrastinate An Unlimited Account, But If You Have Limited Time, You Rush To The Page Trying To Get Something Down In The Little Bit Of Fragment Of Time That You Have, And You May Write A Great Deal That Way.

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.

So Much Of An Artist's Career Hinges On The Sense That We Are Going Somewhere, That We Are Not Just Trapped By The Four Walls Of Wherever We Are. For Creative Sanity, I Must Believe That If I Just Do The Next Right Thing, A Path Will Unfold For Me.

What Would A Nontoxic God Think Of Your Creative Goals? Might Such A God Really Exist?

Rather Than Being Taught To Ask Ourselves Who We Are, We Are Schooled To Ask Others. We Are, In Effect, Trained To Listen To Others’ Versions Of Ourselves.

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

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.

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

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.

Art Is An Act Of The Soul, Not The Intellect. When We Are Dealing With People's Dreams - Their Visions, Really - We Are In The Realm Of The Sacred. We Are Involved With Forces And Energies Larger Than Our Own. We Are Engaged In A Sacred Transaction Of Which We Know Only A Little: The Shadow, Not The Shape.

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Benjamin Banneker

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