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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.

-Julia Cameron

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Writing Is A Spiritual

Julia Cameron

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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.

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

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.

The Essential Element In Nurturing Our Creativity Lies In Nurturing Ourselves.

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

Leap, And The Net Appears.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Creativity - Like Human Life Itself - Begins In Darkness.

Gestation Period

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.

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

Procrastination

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Creativity Is Not And Never Has Been Sensible.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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 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.

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

Judging Your Early Artistic Efforts Is Artist Abuse.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Making Art Is An Act Of Faith.

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

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

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

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

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.

Writing Just For The Hell Of It Is Heaven.

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

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

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

Passing Moments

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.

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

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.

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.

There Is A Treadmill Quality To Workaholism.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Expect The Universe To Support Your Dream. It Will.

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

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.

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

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

Agendas Tend To Drain The Life Out Of Relationships.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Creativity Is A Fact Of Your Spiritual Body

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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)

Our Tears Prepare The Ground For Our Future Growth.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Am Due At The Page.

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.

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.

In Creativity, As In Running, You Have To Start Where You Are.

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.

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

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

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

Clock Is Ticking

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

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.

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

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.

Art Is Born In Attention.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Workaholism Is A Block, Not A Building Block.

Building Blocks

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

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?

Creativity Requires Faith. Faith Requires That We Relinquish Control.

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.

Remembering That God Is My Source, We Are In The Spiritual Position Of Having An Unlimited Bank Account. Most Of Us Never Consider How Powerful The Creator Really Is. Instead, We Draw Limited Amounts Of The Power Available To Us. We Decide How Powerful God Is For Us. We Unconsciously Set A Limit On How Much God Can Give Us Or Help Us. We Are Stingy With Ourselves. And If We Receive A Gift Beyond Our Imagining, We Often Send It Back.

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

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 A Connection Between Self-nurturing And Self-respect.

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

"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.

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

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.

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

... 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Our Internal Artist Is Always Our Creative Child.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Progress Not Perfection

Serious Art Is Born From Serious Play.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

For Today, All You Need Is The Grace To Begin Beginning.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Water Seeks Its Own Level And Water Rises Collectively

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Robert Falcon Scott

Neil Patrick Harris

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