Poisonous Playmates - Artist's Way/Week 2 – Recovering a Sense of Identity

What are Poisonous Playmates? 

"Not surprisingly, the most poisonous playmates for us as recovering creatives are people whose creativity is still blocked. Our recovery threatens them. As long as we were blocked, we often felt that it was arrogance and self-will to speak of ourselves as creative artists. . . . Your blocked friends may still be indulging in all these comforting self-delusions. If they are having trouble with your recovery, they are still getting a payoff from remaining blocked. Perhaps they still get an anorectic high from the martyrdom of being blocked or they still collect sympathy and wallow in self-pity. Perhaps they still feel smug thinking about how much more creative they could be than those who are out there doing it. These are toxic behaviors for you now. Do not expect your blocked friends to applaud your recovery. That’s like expecting your best friends from the bar to celebrate your sobriety. How can they when their own drinking.

Blocked friends may find your recovery disturbing. Your getting unblocked raises the unsettling possibility that they, too, could become unblocked and move into authentic creative risks rather than bench-sitting cynicism. Be alert to subtle sabotage from friends. 

You cannot afford their well-meaning doubts right now. Their doubts will reactivate your own. Be particularly alert to any suggestion that you have become selfish or different. (These are red-alert words for us. They are attempts to leverage us back into our old ways for the sake of someone else’s comfort, not our own.) 

Blocked creatives are easily manipulated by guilt. Our friends, feeling abandoned by our departure from the ranks of the blocked, may unconsciously try to guilt-trip us into giving up our newly healthy habits. It is very important to understand that the time given to morning pages is time between you and God. You best know your answers. You will be led to new sources of support as you begin to support yourself. Be very careful to safeguard your newly recovering artist. 

Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people’s plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people. The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves. 

Through self-nurturance we nurture our inner connection to the Great Creator. Through this connection our creativity will unfold. Paths will appear for us. We need to trust the Great Creator and move out in faith. Repeat: the Great Creator has gifted us with creativity. Our gift back is our use of it. Do not let friends squander your time. Be gentle but firm, and hang tough. 

The best thing you can do for your friends is to be an example through your own recovery. Do not let their fears and second thoughts derail you. Soon enough, the techniques you learn will enable you to teach others. Soon enough, you will be a bridge that will allow others to cross over from self-doubt into self-expression. 

For right now, protect your artist by refusing to show your morning pages to interested bystanders or to share your artist date with friends. Draw a sacred circle around your recovery. Give yourself the gift of faith. Trust that you are on the right track. You are. As your recovery progresses, you will come to experience a more comfortable faith in your creator and your creator within. You will learn will that it is actually easier to write than not write, paint than not paint, and so forth. You will learn to enjoy the process of being a creative channel and to surrender your need to control the result. You will discover the joy of practicing your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus. Your own healing is the greatest message of hope for others.

(Excerpt from Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way (Kindle Locations 1092-1095). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition)

Do you have friends who are jealous of your creative work? Do you avoid them?

Right now I can't think of anyone like that but for many years I had people in my life like that especially other decorators who were very jealous of my career.

- How did you get that job.

- I am jealous of you.

- You are so lucky

I had a best friend how was jealous of my career, looks and age.  She was even jealous of my other friends and husband.  And somehow I felt like I needed her and felt lost without her.  But I feel like I have moved past that part of my life.

Attention - The Artist's Way - Week 2

"Very often, a creative block manifests itself as an addiction to fantasy. Rather than working or living the now, we spin our wheels and indulge in daydreams of could have, would have, should have. One of the great misconceptions about the artistic life is that it entails great swathes of aimlessness. The truth is that a creative life involves great swathes of attention. Attention is a way to connect and survive."

". . . The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."

"The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, “unutterably alone.” More than anything else, attention is an act of connection."

(Excerpts from  Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way (Kindle Locations 1261-1262). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. )

Skepticism

The inner enemy we harbor in ourselves is skepticism. "ourselves. Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism. This might be called the secret doubt. It does not seem to matter whether we are officially believers or agnostics. We have our doubts about all of this creator/creativity stuff, and those doubts are very powerful. Unless we air them, they can sabotage us. Many times, in trying to be good sports we stuff our feelings of doubt. We need to stop doing that and explore them instead."

The reason we think it’s weird to imagine an unseen helping hand is that we still doubt that it’s okay for us to be creative. With this attitude firmly entrenched, we not only look all gift horses in the mouth but also swat them on the rump to get them out of our lives as fast as possible."

"Now that we are in creative recovery, there is another approach we need to try. To do this, we gently set aside our skepticism—for later use, if we need it—and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open.

Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations. In creative recovery, it is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs. It is necessary that we examine them.

More than anything else, creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness. Again, picture your mind as that room with the door slightly ajar. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness. Begin, this week, to consciously practice opening your mind."

(Excerpt from Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way (Kindle Location 1208). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. )

CRAZYMAKERS

"Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers. They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive, and powerfully persuasive. And, for the creative person in their vicinity, they are enormously destructive. You know the type: charismatic but out of control, long on problems and short on solutions. Crazymakers are the kind of people who can take over your whole life. To fixer-uppers, they are irresistible: so much to change, so many distractions....

If you are involved with a crazymaker, you probably know it already, and you certainly recognize the thumbnail description in the paragraph above. Crazymakers like drama. If they can swing it, they are the star. Everyone around them functions as supporting cast, picking up their cues, their entrances and exits, from the crazymaker’s (crazy) whims.

Some of the most profoundly destructive crazymakers I have ever encountered are themselves famous artists. They are the kind of artists that give the rest of us bad names. Often larger than life, they acquire that status by feeding on the life energies of those around them. For this reason, many of the most crazy artists in America are found surrounded by a cadre of supporters as talented as they are but determined to subvert their own talent in the service of the Crazymaking King. Learn to get in touch with the silence within

Crazymakers break deals and destroy schedules. They show up two days early for your wedding and expect to be waited on hand and foot. They rent a vacation cabin larger and more expensive than the one agreed upon, and then they expect you to foot the bill.

Crazymakers expect special treatment. They suffer a wide panoply of mysterious ailments that require care and attention whenever you have a deadline looming—or anything else that draws your attention from the crazymaker’s demands.

The crazymaker cooks her own special meal in a house full of hungry children—and does nothing to feed the kids. The crazymaker is too upset to drive right after he has vented enormous verbal abuse on the heads of those around him. “I am afraid Daddy will have a heart attack,” the victim starts thinking, instead of, “How do I get this monster out of my house?”

Crazymakers discount your reality. No matter how important your deadline or how critical your work trajectory at the moment, crazymakers will violate your needs. They may act as though they hear your boundaries and will respect them, but in practice act is the operative word. Crazymakers are the people who call you at midnight or 6:00 A.M. saying, “I know you asked me not to call you at this time, but ...”

Crazymakers are the people who drop by unexpectedly to borrow something you can’t find or don’t want to lend them. Even better, they call and ask you to locate something they need, then
fail to pick it up. “I know you’re on a deadline,” they say, “but this will only take a minute.” Your minute.

Crazymakers spend your time and money. If they borrow your car, they return it late, with an empty tank. Their travel arrangements always cost you time or money. They demand to be met in the middle of your workday at an airport miles from town. “I didn’t bring taxi money,” they say when confronted with, “But I’m working.”

Crazymakers triangulate those they deal with. Because crazymakers thrive on energy (your energy),energy), they set people against one another in order to maintain their own power position dead center. (That’s where they can feed most directly on the negative energies they stir up.) “So-and-so was telling me you didn’t get to work on time today,” a crazymaker may relay. You obligingly get mad at so-and-so and miss the fact that the crazymaker has used hearsay to set you off kilter emotionally.

Crazymakers are expert blamers. Nothing that goes wrong is ever their fault, and to hear them tell it, the fault is usually yours. “If you hadn’t cashed that child-support check it would never have bounced,” one crazymaking ex-husband told his struggling-for-serenity former spouse.

Crazymakers create dramas—but seldom where they belong.

Crazymakers are often blocked creatives themselves. Afraid to effectively tap their own creativity, they are loath to allow that same creativity in others. It makes them jealous. It makes them threatened. It makes them dramatic—at your expense.

Devoted to their own agendas, crazymakers impose these agendas on others. In dealing with a crazymaker, you are dealing always with the famous issue of figure and ground. In other words, whatever matters to you becomes trivialized into mere backdrop for the crazymaker’s personal plight. “Do you think he/she loves me?” they call you to ask when you are trying to pass the bar exam or get your husband home from the hospital.

Crazymakers hate schedules—except their own. In the hands of a crazymaker, time is a primary tool for abuse. If you claim a certain block of time as your own, your crazymaker will find a way to fight you for that time, to mysteriously need things (meaning you) just when you need to be alone and focused on the task at hand. “I stayed up until three last night. I can’t drive the kids to school,” the crazymaker will spring on you the morning you yourself must leave early for a business breakfast with your boss.

Crazymakers hate order. Chaos serves their purposes. When you begin to establish a place that serves you and your creativity, your crazymaker will abruptly invade that space with projects of his/her own. “What are all these papers, all this laundry on top of my work table?” you ask. “I decided to sort my college papers ... to start looking for the matches for my socks...”

Crazymakers deny that they are crazymakers. They go for the jugular. “I am not what’s making you crazy,” your crazymaker may say when you point out a broken promise or a piece of sabotage. “It’s just that we have such a rotten sex life.”

If crazymakers are that destructive, what are we doing involved with them? The answer, to be brief but brutal, is that we’re that crazy ourselves and we are that self-destructive. Really? Yes. As blocked creatives, we are willing to go to almost any lengths to remain blocked.

As frightening and abusive as life with a crazymaker is, we find it far less threatening than the challenge of a creative life of our own. What would happen then? What would we be like? Very often, we fear that if we let ourselves be creative, we will become crazymakers ourselves and abuse those around us. Using this fear as our excuse, we continue to allow others to abuse us.

If you are involved now with a crazymaker, it is very important that you admit this fact. Admit that you are being used—and admit that you are using your own abuser. Your crazymaker is a block you chose yourself, to deter you from your own trajectory. As much as you are being exploited by your crazymaker, you, too, are using that person to block your creative flow.

If you are involved in a tortured tango with a crazymaker, stop dancing to his/her tune. Pick up a book on codependency or get yourself to a twelve-step program for relationship addiction. (Al-Anon and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous are two excellent programs for stopping the crazymaker’s dance.) The next time you catch yourself saying or thinking, “He/ she is driving me crazy!” ask yourself what creative work you are trying to block by your involvement.

(excerpt from Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way (Kindle Locations 1187-1192). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Core Negative Beliefs About Creativity - The Artist's Way

Question – The author lists various core negative beliefs about creativity. Which are yours?

I can’t be a successful, prolific, creative artist because:

1. Everyone will hate me.
2. I will hurt my friends and family.
3. I will go crazy.
4. I will abandon my friends and family.
5. I can’t spell.
6. I don’t have good enough ideas.
7. It will upset my mother and/or father.
8. I will have to be alone.
9. I will find out I am gay (if straight).
10. I will be struck straight (if gay).
11. I will do bad work and not know it and look like a fool.
12. I will feel too angry.
13. I will never have any real money.
14. I will get self-destructive and drink, drug, or sex myself to death.
15. I will get cancer, AIDS—or a heart attack or the plague.
16. My lover will leave me. 17. I will die.
18. I will feel bad because I don’t deserve to be successful.
19. I will have only one good piece of work in me.
20. It’s too late. If I haven’t become a fully functioning artist yet, I never will.

I think the ones I relate to the most are 13) I will never have enough money and 20) It's  is too late.  I am too old.

PERMISSION TO BE A BEGINNER - ARTIST"S WAY

QUESTION – The author talks about giving yourself permission to be a beginner. Do you grant yourself that permission? 

"Remember, your artist is a child. Find and protect that child. Learning to let yourself create is like learning to walk. The artist child must begin by crawling. Baby steps will follow and there will be falls—yecchy first paintings, beginning films that look like unedited home movies, first poems that would shame a greeting card.

 . . Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse. This happens in any number of ways: beginning work is measured against the masterworks of other artists; beginning work is exposed to premature criticism, shown to overly critical friends. In short, the fledgling artist behaves with well-practiced masochism. Masochism is an art form long ago mastered, perfected during the years of self-reproach.

 . .(it is) necessary to go gently and slowly. What we are after here is the healing of old wounds—not the creation of new ones. No high jumping, please! Mistakes are necessary! Stumbles are normal. These are baby steps. Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves. . .Too far, too fast, and we can undo ourselves. Creative recovery is like marathon training. We want to log ten slow miles for every one fast mile. This can go against the ego’s grain. We want to be great—immediately great—but that is not how recovery works. It is an awkward, tentative, even embarrassing process. 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."

Shadow Artists - The Artist's Way

p. 27 – The author discusses people who abandon their creativity and become “shadow artists.” Can you describe the characteristics of shadow artists? Would you be able to recognize one if you saw these characteristics in a client ? 

":Too intimidated to become artists themselves, very often too low in self-worth to even recognize that they have an artistic dream, these people become shadow artists instead. Artists themselves but ignorant of their true identity, shadow artists are to be found shadowing declared artists. Unable to recognize that they themselves may possess the creativity they so admire, they often date or marry people who actively pursue the art career they themselves secretly long for. . . 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. 

Shadow artists often choose shadow careers—those close to the desired art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself. Noting their venom, François Truffaut contended that critics were themselves blocked directors, as he had been when he was a critic. He may be right. Intended fiction writers often go into newspapering or advertising, where they can use their gift without taking the plunge into their dreamed-of fiction-writing career. Intended artists may become artist managers and derive a great deal of secondary pleasure from serving their dream even at one remove."

I would be able to recognize a shadow artist - they say things like - I wish I were you and - you are so creative - and I could never - when I was young I wanted to do that. 

I would notice is they were an artist manager or an AD or married to an artist. All those things would tip me off to a person being a Shadow Artist.

"It takes a great deal of ego strength to say to a well-meaning but domineering parent or a just plain domineering one, “Wait a minute! I am too an artist!” The dreaded response may come back, “How do you know?” And, of course, the fledgling artist does not know. There is just this dream, this feeling, this urge, this desire. There is seldom any real proof, but the dream lives on. As a rule of thumb, shadow artists judge themselves harshly, beating themselves for years over the fact that they have not acted on their dreams. This cruelty only reinforces their status as shadow artists. Remember, it takes nurturing to make an artist. Shadow artists did not receive sufficient nurturing. They blame themselves for not acting fearlessly anyhow. 
     In a twisted version of Darwinian determinism, we tell ourselves that real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That’s hogwash. Many real artists bear children too early or have too many, are too poor or too far removed culturally or monetarily from artistic opportunity to become the artists they really are. These artists, shadow artists through no fault of their own, hear the distant piping of the dream but are unable to make their way through the cultural maze to find it."

And here is the problem with being a Shadow Artist?

"For all shadow artists, life may be a discontented experience, filled with a sense of missed purpose and unfulfilled promise. They want to write. They want to paint. They want to act, make music, dance ... but they are afraid to take themselves seriously."

What can we do and how can we help them? or ourselves?

"In order to move from the realm of shadows into the light of creativity, shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously. With gentle, deliberate effort, they must nurture their artist child. Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work."

I remember a few times when I felt like a shadow artist.  I was in my early 20s working for the National Theater of the Deaf.  I was a manager of actors and I felt like I too was creative.  I was washing the costumes when I felt like I could equally have designed the costumes.  People reminded me that it wasn't my place, maybe I was too young, maybe I needed to wait my turn.  Any of these things but I didn't feel satisfied.  I, infact , felt jealous and resentful.

I remember having the same experience when I was working as a Shopper-Buyer.  I felt like I had more talent, ideas and energy than my boss.  I looked at her and became more and more angry. One day I wanted to push her down the stairs.  I realized then I needed to either quit and become the boss or go to jail for killing someone.  I decided to quit and that's when I started by career as a Decorator.

Art You Creatively Blocked? - The Artist's Way

Question – The author gives some clues to knowing if you are creatively blocked. Are you? How might you use these with a client

Julia Cameron writes "Many of us wish we were more creative. Many of us sense we are more creative, but unable to effectively tap that creativity. Our dreams elude us. Our lives feel somehow flat. Often, we have great ideas, wonderful dreams, but are unable to actualize them for ourselves. Sometimes we have specific creative longings we would love to be able to fulfill—learning to play the piano, painting, taking an acting class, or writing. Sometimes our goal is more diffuse. We hunger for what might be called creative living—an expanded expanded sense of creativity in our business lives, in sharing with our children, our spouse, our friends. . . . Many of us find that we have squandered our own creative energies by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others. Their lives have obscured and detoured our own. As we consolidate a core through our withdrawal process, we becomem ore able to articulate our own boundaries, dreams, and authentic goals. Our personal flexibility increases while our malleability to the whims of others decreases. We experience a heightened sense of autonomy and possibility.. . How do you know if you are creatively blocked? Jealousy is an excellent clue. Are there artists whom you resent? Do you tell yourself, “I could do that, if only...” Do you tell yourself that if only you took your creative potential seriously, you might: 

• Stop telling yourself, “It’s too late.” 
• Stop waiting until you make enough money to do something you’d really love.
• Stop telling yourself, “It’s just my ego” whenever you yearn for a more creative life. 
• Stop telling yourself that dreams don’t matter, that they are only dreams and that you should be more sensible. 
• Stop fearing that your family and friends would think you crazy.
Stop telling yourself that creativity is a luxury and that you should be grateful for what you’ve got.


I find myself to be a very creative power.  My career is creative, my hobbies are creative and my world view is creative. I really feel that I am connected to a waterfall of creativity.

When I worked with clients using yoga, meditation and breathwork I try to see what really turns them on - where is their joy and bliss and that becomes what creativity means to me.  You don't need to have a paint brush to be creative, you can be a singer, a gardner, a comedian, a cook, a scrap booker any of these things.  You can live your life as creativity.  Just be open to trying.

I think it is important we take responsibility for our own creative and not let other people control it.  I see this a lot with actors.  Make your own pieces! Find other ways to get that creative feeling.  Don't stop being creative just because you aren't cast.

“Leap and the net will appear.” Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron writes "As you work with the tools in this book, as you undertake the weekly tasks, many changes will be set in motion. Chief among these changes will be the triggering of synchronicity: we change and the universe furthers and expands that change. I have an irreverent shorthand for this that I keep taped to my writing desk: “Leap, and the net will appear.” It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance. It is a little like opening the gate at the top of a field irrigation system. Once we remove the blocks,"

I do agree that if you leap the net will appear when you come from a place of integrity and authenticity.  I don't believe whatever you do you are protected and it will work out.  But I do believe when you are aligned with your higher purpose everything will work out as it should and that has happened to me many times.

.

Being A Suffering Artist - The Artist Way

Question -- The author talks about being a suffering artist. Have you experienced this? What might you say to a client who seems to be a suffering artist? 

I have bought into the idea you have to suffer to be an artist: Van Gogh not selling and cutting off his ear.  But right now I am not in that space.  I want to do well.  I want to succeed.  I want to travel and have friends and do what I want and have fun.

I would tell a client they don't have to suffer to be an artist  Making art can be a extremely creative beautiful experience leading to our wholeness and fulfillment. Let as celebrate with art!  Let's use the art to connect with our True Nature and the Divine. Let's use art and creativity as a spiritual experience one of ecstatic union.

"Creativity is an experience—to my eye, a spiritual experience. It does not matter which way you think of it: creativity leading to spirituality or spirituality leading to creativity. In fact, I do not make a distinction between the two. In the face of such experience, the whole question of belief is rendered obsolete. As Carl Jung answered the question of belief late in his life, “I don’t believe; I know.”

Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way (Kindle Locations 346-347). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Artist's Way - The Great Creator

Question  – The author presents the concept of the Great Creator. What is your view of this concept? Would you be willing to discuss this with a client?  

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist' Way" about the Great Creator:

"While using, teaching, and sharing tools I have found, devised, divined, and been handed, I have seen blocks dissolved and lives transformed by the simple process of engaging the Great Creator in discovering and recovering our creative powers. “The Great Creator? 

That sounds like some Native American god. That sounds too Christian, too New Age, too...” Stupid? Simple-minded? Threatening? ... I know. Think of it as an exercise in open-mindedness. Just think, “Okay, Great Creator, whatever that is,” and keep reading. Allow yourself to experiment with the idea there might be a Great Creator and you might get some kind of use from it in freeing your own creativity. Because The Artist’s Way is, in essence, a spiritual path, initiated and practiced through creativity, this book uses the word God. This may be volatile for some of you—conjuring old, unworkable, unpleasant, or simply unbelievable ideas about God as you were raised to understand “him.” Please be open-minded."

I believe in a higher power.  I don't think he is a white man in the sky with a beard but I do think the universe has a Life Force or Qi or Prana.  I believe in the Divine.  I often see this as the Mother.  Ma. Kali is very important to me right now but other times she has been Matangi, Saraswati or Tara.  I have done a lot of work with the moon goddesses, the lunar nityas and I believe there is an divine energy in the earth, sun and stars.  This divinity can also be found in us. Sometimes I call it Source.  I find the goddess a way to connect to the aspects of myself. My true nature or true self.

I would be able to discuss this with a client if I felt they were open to it.  But I don't think I would push it on them.  I was raised by atheists. So I know there is sensitivity about religion.  But if there was an opening I would ask people to look for the Divine or Source and I would say they can find that inside themselves, they don't need to look outside.  Sometimes it is hard to live life without the Divine because we found ourselves alone and often purposeless and lonely.

Julia Cameron Writes:

"Remind yourself that to succeed in this course, no god concept is necessary. In fact, many of our commonly held god concepts get in the way. Do not allow semantics to become one more block for you. When the word God is used in these pages, you may substitute the thought good orderly direction or flow. What we are talking about is a creative energy. God is useful shorthand for many of us, but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source, and Higher Power.... The point is not what you name it. The point is that you try using it. For many of us, thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping-off place. . . Do not call it God unless that is comfortable for you. There seems to be no need to name it unless that name is a useful shorthand for what you experience. Do not pretend to believe when you do not. If you remain forever an atheist, agnostic—so be it. You will still be able to experience an altered life through working with these principles."