Are You Playing Small? Artist Way Creative Workshop Ch.10 Rediscovering a Sense of Self-Protection

This week Author, Julia Cameron, addresses the toxic patterns we cling to that block our creative flow because creativity is a spiritual issue, many of the perils we experience are spiritual. She says that creativity is God's Energy flowing through us, shaped by us, like a light flowing through a crystal prism. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain. However, when we resist what that energy might show us or where it might take us, we often experience a shaky, out-of-control feeling. We want to shut the flow down and regain our sense of control. We will slam on the psychic brakes and block the flow with many things, but most especially we adopt toxic patterns, like alcohol, sugar, sex, drugs, and workaholism. Most of us can name our toxic ‘drug of choice’ that stops our creative flow, but for those who have not identified these toxic patterns, Julia Cameron has many exercises and tasks to help you identify some of the most dangerous and how to make them less effective over time.

Julia Cameron continues to address workaholism, drought, fame, and competition more specifically as some of the more toxic to our creative recovery. She explains that to recover our creativity we must learn to see workaholism as a block, not a building block. Unfortunately, work is synonymous with worth for a workaholic, so it is very difficult to let go of any part of it. It helps define what overwork is like and how it prevents you from real growth.

Drought on the other hand occurs in everyone’s life from time to time because we all go through different seasons in our lives. A drought is a dry season where we feel like everything is empty, mechanical, and forced. When we go through these seasons, we tend to withdraw, but this is when we need to show up even more. Practice our morning pages, and artist dates, and doing the ‘work’ offers clarity and charity for ourselves, because the season will end, and we will come out better for it if we show up for ourselves preserving our sense of self-protection.

Fame is another toxic pattern that tends to derail us on our road to recovery. It’s a poison of our ego that encourages us to believe that if it hasn’t happened yet, it won’t happen. Fame drives us to confuse success with credit, it is not the same. We know success in creating and putting in a good day’s work. Fame is the desire for credit and praise, and the desire to hold on to it can lead to a continuous feeling of lacking or being left out. This places our focus on having to be famous, awarded, acknowledged, or produce great art to be considered a success, instead of focusing on the process and work itself. Eventually, fame erodes our joy and creates jealousy of others' accomplishments.

What it is that we are looking for or desiring is – self-approval through all these toxic patterns and behaviors. We need to develop a sense of self-protection through nurturing and approving of ourselves through small pleasures like fun and play. Reminding ourselves that what we are afraid of when we do not get credit or fame is that we won’t be loved as an artist or as a person. The solution to this fear is giving ourselves concrete, small, loving actions that are consciously, consistently, and effectively nurturing our inner child artist.

By the same token, the toxic pattern of competition lies at the root of much of our creative blockage. The desire to be better than or to win can choke off the simple desire to just be. This leads us away from our voices, and our own choices, and into a game that centers outside of ourselves and our sphere of influence. Eventually, competition will demand us to define our creativity in terms of someone else's, causing judgment, snap decisions, and harsh criticisms of any work that isn’t deemed to be ‘Good enough’, the best, or completely original. The best solution is to learn to seek approval from us and not others, remembering that showing up for the work is the win that matters here.

Julia Cameron continues to provide great and effective tools in going deeper into the tasks for this week. We suggest working on at least three that you find interesting and seeing what insights they may give you and keep showing up for yourself. We began working on a dream catcher this week as our artist date activity. This is a two-part project where we will complete the feathers next week. We look forward to seeing all your completed dream catchers next week. We will discuss Chapter 11 Rediscovering a Sense of Autonomy. We are quickly coming to the end of our Artist Way Creative Workshop. We have greatly enjoyed our artist’s date activities and having creative fun together over these past few weeks. We will end with a canvas painting, so get your paintbrushes ready and join us for our final activity together.