How Great is Your God? The Artist Way Creative Workshop Week 5 - Sense of Possibilities

This week we are asked to examine the payoffs for remaining stuck and believing that energy spent on creative activities wastes our time. We explore how we curtail our possibilities by limiting the good we can receive in our lives from our spiritual creative connection with our Creator. Julia Cameron, the author, explains that most of us never consider how powerful our Creator is, but instead, we draw very limited amounts of the power available to us. As we work on unblocking our creative inner child artist and connecting spiritually with our God, we decide how powerful God is for us. Julia Cameron further explains that we somehow subconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us at any one time. We become stingy with ourselves, because of our limitations or imaginations of the amount of the gift(s) we are allowed to receive, if it is more than we can comprehend we often send it back.

Our God as we can conceive is a source of unlimited resources, and power, and offers equal access to everyone. It is our limitations of what our God can do and accomplish in our lives that prevent us from fully accepting this Truth. We operate from a scarcity mentality and deprive ourselves of fully receiving God’s goodness and abundance. We forget that our God is our Source we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account of gifts.

However, Julia Cameron continues in this chapter “If we learn to think of receiving God’s good as being an act of worship – cooperating with God’s plans for manifest goodness in our lives we can begin to let go of having to sabotage ourselves”. The shift from Spiritual dependency is a gradual one. One we have been making slowly and surely over the last four or five weeks. Each day we become more true to ourselves, more open to the positive, and less judgmental of ourselves and others, by seeking the Creator within. We begin to embrace our gifts of creativity, whatever that form may be, music, writing, art, crafts, sewing, cooking, decorating, gardening, etc. We learn to be more spiritual in this world, to trust that God is good all the time, so ARE WE, and All of Creation.

This Chapter is entitled, Recovering a Sense of Possibility. She provides many exercises to explore what you may have been denying yourself by setting these limitations on yourself. She challenges the self-imposed limitations of our acceptance of God’s love and abundance in our lives. She explores how our true selves and desires may be hidden by our obligations and limitations and our time to discover all the possibilities. I encourage those who are following along with the book, to continue to work the morning pages, artists’ dates, walks, and these exercises in your journals as we progress.

Our Group Artist Date this week was origami because I have always wanted to try it. I am also working on providing a wide variety of creative activities to allow everyone the opportunity to explore what materials you may connect with most. This week is paper arts through origami, but you can find many other ways to create with paper, quilling, decoupage, sculpture, collage, scrapbooking, and card making to name a few. The important thing is to work with the materials that seem to draw your attention, bring your joy, and allow you to express your emotions most effectively. I find mixed media is also quite rewarding. I have posted an instruction PowerPoint of the origami we worked on my website under the workshops page dropdown page for instructions and reference materials.

Remember I have posted a schedule of the remaining planned activities to help you plan and get your supplies. This schedule is posted on the website under the workshops dropdown page.

Next week we are discussing Chapter 6 and painting on canvas tote bags. All our activities are planned with everyone’s budget in mind. You should be able to find most of the materials and supplies at the dollar store, goodwill, your favorite craft store, or recycled or upcycled. This week, I have also included a few outlined designs on canvas tote bags in Mi Florecita Artshop. You may find it easier to use these totes to start decorating with fabric paints and then continue to add your flare, names, patches, or embroidery. These are also customizable and can be personalized online. I have included the QR code for Mi Florecita Artshop for your convenience.