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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.

-Julia Cameron

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When We Seek Daily

Julia Cameron

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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.

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Divine Guidance

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

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

Stop Telling Yourself That Dreams Don't Matter, That They Are Only Dreams And That You Should Be More Sensible.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Selecting A Challenge And Meeting It Creates A Sense Of Self-empowerment That Becomes The Ground For Further Successful Challenges.

A Working Artist Is A Playing 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.

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

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 We Do What We Really Love, Money Will Come, The Door Will Open. We Feel Useful And Work As A Game That

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

And [now] I Think I’ll Probably Write A Lot About Birds. My New House Has A Deck That Wraps Around My Writing Room; My Writing Room Has Many Windows, And Outside The Windows I’ve Hung Bird Feeders … For Enticing Different Species. So I Imagine I Will Be Writing About That.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

... 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.

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.

Anger Is Meant To Be Acted Upon. It Is Not Meant To Be Acted Out.

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

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

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

Art Is Born In Attention.

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

We Imagine That If We Had Time We Would Quiet Our More Shallow Selves And Listen To A Deeper Flow Of Inspiration. Again, This Is A Myth That Lets Us Off The Hook - If I Wait For Enough Time To Listen, I Don't Have To Listen Now, I Don't Have To Take Responsibility For Being Available To What Is Trying To Bubble Up Today.

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

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

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

Did You Write Today? Then You're A Writer Today.

Making Art Is An Act Of Faith.

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

Progress Not Perfection

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.

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

Creativity - Like Human Life Itself - Begins In Darkness.

Gestation Period

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

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

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

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?

There Is A Treadmill Quality To Workaholism.

Judging Your Early Artistic Efforts Is Artist Abuse.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

It's Impossible To Get Better And Look Good At The Same Time.

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.

We Have This Idea That We Need To Be In The Mood To Write. We Don't.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Workaholism Is A Block, Not A Building Block.

Building Blocks

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Our Tears Prepare The Ground For Our Future Growth.

I Have Learned, As A Rule Of Thumb, Never To Ask Whether You Can Do Something. Say, Instead, That You Are Doing It. Then Fasten Your Seat Belt. The Most Remarkable Things Follow.

Creativity Is A Fact Of Your Spiritual Body

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

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 .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Order To Thrive As Artists We Need To Be Available To The Universal Flow. When We Put A Stopper On Our Capacity For Joy By Anorectically Declining The Small Gifts Of Life, We Turn Aside The Larger Gifts As Well.

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

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.

It Is The Use Of Creativity Which Heals The Creative Wound.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

My Heart Holds The World In Tender Awe.

Agendas Tend To Drain The Life Out Of Relationships.

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

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.

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

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.

The Reward For Attention Is Always Healing.

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.

What We Focus On, We Empower And Enlarge. Good Multiplies When Focused Upon. Negativity Multiplies When Focused Upon. The Choice Is Ours: Which Do We Want More Of?

Next To Morning Pages And Artist Dates, The Most Potent Tool For Contacting Inner Guidance And Creativity Is Walking.

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.

Serious Art Is Born From Serious Play.

Money Cannot Fill An Empty Soul.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Treating Myself Like A Precious Object Will Make Me Strong.

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.

Love Is The Greatest Medicine. I Ask To Be Healing Medicine For Others. I Ask My Heart To Expand Its Boundaries And To Love Others As They Wish To Be Loved. I Ask My Heart To Expand Its Boundaries And Open To My Being Loved As I Wish To Be Loved.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

Procrastination

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

It Is Important To Remember That At First Blush, Going Sane Feels Just Like Going Crazy.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Do Not Call Procrastination Laziness. Call It Fear.

Procrastination

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Leap, And The Net Appears.

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.

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Lawrence Clark Powell

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