Reflections on The Artist’s Way, Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection

This is the seventh post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection.

It’s been two years since I first completed The Artist’s Way and it’s taken me as long to look back and reflect. I make plans, then life has its own plan.

‘When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting’s own plan.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

People ask me where I get my inspiration for my paintings. I start with an idea, collect a few thoughts, look for ideas out in the world around me. “Maybe I’ll play with shades of blue. Maybe I’ll paint a green sky. I’ll use these photos I took when I was in New York for inspiration.” Then the process begins and it’s all open to change. Blue suddenly bores me, a green sky seems too strange, and I wonder why I’m still thinking about New York. The first brushstrokes on the canvas get hidden behind new layers.

Cameron splits the reading this week into sections — Listening, Perfectionism, Risk, and Jealousy.

Listening

‘Listening is a form of accepting.’
— Stella Terrill Mann

I went for an afternoon walk yesterday, wandering in and out of the patchwork of parks that dot my neighbourhood in West London. It was supposed to be a generous hour break, but I still found myself resisting my return. I had created a space of safety by turning my thoughts around in my head, getting lost in regret and sadness. Rumination had woven a soft blanket for me to crawl under, my body relaxed in its cosy warmth. I wanted more.

I felt a sense of calm as I listened to what felt true at that moment, letting the past move through me in waves. By the time I stepped onto the street that would take me home, I was content and free again.

Cameron begins the week’s reading by mentioning the morning pages and the artist date. ‘The pages train us to hear past our Censor. The artist dates help us to pick up the voice of inspiration. While both of these activities are apparently unconnected to the actual act of making art, they are critical to the creative process.’

‘It is as though all the stories, painting, music, performances in the world live just under the surface of our normal consciousness. Like an underground river, they flow through us like a stream of ideas that we can tap down into. As artists, we drop down the well into the stream. We hear what’s down there and we act on it—more like taking dictation than anything fancy having to do with art.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

I’ve carried on with morning pages and artist dates since originally completing the process outlined in the book. I write most mornings, filling notebooks that sit quietly in my storage space. Artist dates during lockdown have mostly involved walks. When London has been open for moments over the past year, I’ve slipped into museums, picking up timed tickets for socially distanced wanders around gallery halls. My last visit was to the Tate Britain and I was stunned by the scale of the halls, something that barely registered when I was a more regular visitor. The figures in the paintings seemed to walk right out of the paintings.

Perfectionism

‘The perfectionist fixes line one of a poem over and over—until no lines are right. The perfectionist redraws the chin line on a portrait until the paper tears. The perfectionist writes so many versions of scene one that she never gets to the rest of the play.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

Cameron is hard on perfectionism, with good reason. It’s a common and familiar block. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find its foundation, feeling not good enough, not skilled enough, not talented enough. The edits and fixing, the endless revisions and obsession with the details provide protection from the vulnerability of being alive. An attempt to hide some underlying inadequacy.

‘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.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

When I look back on sketches from previous projects, it’s often the drawings that I didn’t like at the time that are the most interesting. The wobbly marks on the page, the slightly distorted proportions, the colour that’s slightly off. These are the details that make something special, noticeable, worthy of the time it takes to look.

‘Do not fear mistakes. There are none.’
— Miles Davis

Risk

‘We’ve all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

The vulnerability of the creative process is the vulnerability of life, magnified. Will I be judged? Will I be loved? Am I worthy?

All the things that make us human and truly loveable are the same things that scare us into quiet corners, editing our conversations, and taking refuge in our shame. Consciously or unconsciously, we risk waiting for someone to arrive and grant us permission to be ourselves. Will they ever show up?

‘We deny that in order to do something well we must first be willing to do it badly.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

A few years ago, when I was transitioning out of corporate work, I took a teaching job in an adult education program. I knew the subject matter well, but I had not taught before. I had a rough start. I was awkward delivering the lesson material, punctuating my speech with umms and ahhs, and receiving frequent complaints from students. I remember walking home after one of the first days of class, thinking clearly that I was bad, but I could be good. I was filled with a feeling of bubbly excitement and smiled to myself. It was an opportunity to grow, something that I had not experienced for a while.

I had stagnated in my previous work, which I had found easy and somewhat dull. In my new role, my weaknesses were obvious, undeniable, on display for the audience that sat in my classroom.

I put in serious effort, nurtured my latent talent for education and, fortunately, I became a good teacher. More importantly for me, I learned how to transmute excitement about being bad at something into motivation and growth.

‘Usually, when we say we can’t do something, what we mean is that we won’t do something unless we can guarantee that we’ll do it perfectly.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

‘Once we are willing to accept that anything worth doing might even be worth doing badly, our options widen.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

I recently joined a running club. It’s been over four years since I’ve run with any frequency. I am a slow runner and I’m an older member of the group.

I used to run track in high school, and I was a slow runner even as a teenager. I was on the field hockey team in the autumn season. At the suggestion of my coach, I joined the track team in the winter and spring seasons to stay in shape over the year. It was there I learned that sometimes doing something outwardly unremarkable is still worth doing.

Although I would never be a top runner, I learned to enjoy the process of training and staying in good shape. We’d run drills to stay nimble and stretch to gain flexibility. I remember bouncing on the spongy surface of the indoor track, the sound of the starter pistol echoing, and the cool touch of the baton on my palm on the relay handoff.

My fitness was the priority, and I existed with ease amongst those who were there for serious competition. To be there was a gift to my body and my spirit.

‘There is something enlivening about expanding our self-definition, and a risk does exactly that. Selecting a challenge and meeting it creates a sense of self-empowerment that becomes the ground for further successful challenges. Viewed this way, running a marathon increases your chances of writing a full-length play. Writing a full-length play gives you a leg up on a marathon.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

Jealousy

Cameron closes out the week by addressing jealousy. She writes, ‘Jealousy is always a mask for fear: fear that we aren’t able to get what we want; frustration that somebody else seems to be getting what is rightfully ours even if we are too frightened to reach for it.’

‘Jealousy is a map.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

When I think about jealousy and connection, I consider how it creates distance, space between people where suspicion and sabotage makes a home.

I’ve used jealousy to point me in the right direction, but I’ve tried to use it and let go. Like a road sign that’s noticed, but left in place for the next traveller. Feelings of jealousy can pop up for me in all kinds of places, expected and otherwise.

‘At its root, jealousy is a stingy emotion. It doesn’t allow for the abundance and multiplicity of the universe. Jealousy tells us there is room for only one—one poet, one painter, one whatever you dream of being …
Perversely, jealousy strips us of our will to act when action holds the key to our freedom.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 7

‘Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong’

In the exercises section of this week, Cameron includes my favourite mantra of the book — ‘Treating myself like a precious object with make me strong.’

She suggests we watercolour or letter out the phrase on paper and place it somewhere it will be seen daily. She writes, ‘We tend to think being hard on ourselves will make us strong. But it is cherishing ourselves that gives us strength.’ If I had to pick one lesson from The Artist’s Way, this would be it.

Like many people, I’ve spent a good deal of my life believing that somehow punishment and self-loathing will lead to self-improvement. As I move through life, I realise it’s very much the opposite. This is a fear that if I love myself now with all of my imperfections, they will stick with me.

As the humanistic psychologist Carl R. Rogers said, ‘The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.’ I choose to accept myself with self-love, knowing that change is inevitable and my imperfections are the things that make me human, special, and worthy of the time it takes to see me.

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