The Artist's Way (14 page)

O
NE
OF THE CHIEF
barriers to accepting God's generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish. We may tune in to the voice of the creator within, hear a message—and then discount it as crazy or impossible. On the one hand, we take ourselves very seriously and don't want to look like idiots pursuing some patently grandiose scheme. On the other hand, we don't take ourselves—or God—seriously enough and so we define as grandiose many schemes that, with God's help, may fall well within our grasp.

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 very 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.

Some of you may be thinking that this sounds like the magic-wand chapter: I pray and presto! Sometimes, that
is
how it will feel. More often, what we are talking about seems to be a conscious partnership in which we work along slowly and gradually, clearing away the wreckage of our negative patterning, clarifying the vision of what it is we want, learning to accept small pieces of that vision from whatever source and then, one day, presto! The vision seems to suddenly be in place. In other words, pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.

For this to happen, first of all, we must believe that we are allowed to catch the bus. We come to recognize that God is unlimited in supply and that everyone has equal access. This begins to clear up guilt about having or getting too much. Since everyone can draw on the universal supply, we deprive no one with our abundance. If we learn to think of receiving God's good as being an act of worship—cooperating with God's plan to manifest goodness in our lives—we can begin to let go of having to sabotage ourselves.

One reason we are miserly with ourselves is scarcity thinking. We don't want our luck to run out. We don't want to overspend our spiritual abundance. Again, we are limiting our flow by anthropomorphizing God into a capricious parent figure. Remembering that God is our source, an energy flow that
likes
to extend itself, we become more able to tap our creative power effectively.

God has lots of money. God has lots of movie ideas, novel ideas, poems, songs, paintings, acting jobs. God has a supply of loves, friends, houses that are all available to us. By listening to the creator within, we are led to our right path. On that path, we find friends, lovers, money, and meaningful work. Very often, when we cannot seem to find an adequate supply, it is because we are insisting on a particular human source of supply. We must learn to let the flow manifest itself where it will—not where we
will
it.

Cara, a writer, spent far longer than she should remaining in an abusive agent relationship because she thought it would be creative suicide to sever that professional tie. The relationship was plagued with evasions, half-truths, delays. Cara hung
in, afraid to let go of her agent's prestige. Finally, after a particularly abusive phone call, Cara wrote a letter severing the relationship. She felt as if she had just jumped into outer space. When her husband came home, she tearfully told him how she had sabotaged her career. He listened and then said, “A week ago, I was in this bookstore and the owner asked me if you had a good agent. He gave me this woman's name and number. Call her.”

Tearfully, Cara acquiesced. She got on the phone and connected immediately to the new agent's sensibility. They have been working together, very successfully, ever since.

To my eye, this is a story not only of synchronicity but also of right-dependence on universe as source. Once Cara became willing to receive her good from whatever source it appeared in, she stopped being victimized.

I recently had a woman artist tell me that she got her new and excellent agent by using affirmations. Even after years of artistic recovery, I still have my cynical side that says,
“Mmm.”
It is as though we want to believe God can create the subatomic structure but is clueless when faced with how to aid or fix our painting, sculpture, writing, film.

I recognize that many will balk at the simplicity of this concept. “God doesn't run the movie business,” we want to say. “CAA does.” I want to sound a cautionary note here for all artists who put their creative lives into solely human hands. This can block your good.

The desire to be worldly, sophisticated, and smart often blocks our flow. We have ideas and opinions about where our good should come from. As a Hollywood screenwriter, I had many rueful conversations with other screenwriters about the fact that while our agents were often invaluable, we seemed to get an awful lot of breaks from places like “my next door neighbor,” “my dentist's brother,” or “somebody my wife went to college with.” Those breaks are God the source in action.

I have said before that creativity is a spiritual issue. Any progress is made by leaps of faith, some small and some large. At first, we may want faith to take the first dance class, the first step toward learning a new medium. Later, we may want the 
faith and the funds for further classes, seminars, a larger work space, a year's sabbatical. Later still, we may conceive an idea for a book, an artists' collective gallery space. As each idea comes to us, we must in good faith clear away our inner barriers to acting on it and then, on an outer level, take the concrete steps necessary to trigger our synchronous good.

If this still sounds airy fairy to you, ask yourself bluntly what next step you are evading. What dream are you discounting as impossible given your resources? What payoff are you getting for remaining stuck at this point in your expansion?

God as my source is a simple but completely effective plan for living. It removes negative dependency—and anxiety—from our lives by assuring us that God will provide. Our job is to listen for how.

One way we listen is by writing our morning pages. At night, before we fall asleep, we can list areas in which we need guidance. In the morning, writing on these same topics, we find ourselves seeing previously unseen avenues of approach. Experiment with this two-step process: ask for answers in the evening; listen for answers in the morning. Be open to all help.

For four weeks now, we have been excavating our consciousness. We have seen how often we think negatively and fearfully, how frightening it has been for us to begin to believe that there might be a right place for us that we could attain by listening to our creative voice and following its guidance. We have begun to hope, and we have feared that hope.

The shift to spiritual dependency is a gradual one. We have been making this shift slowly and surely. With each day we become more true to ourselves, more open to the positive. To our surprise, this seems to be working in our human relationships. We find we are able to tell more of our truth, hear more of other people's truth, and encompass a far more kindly attitude toward both. We are becoming less judgmental of ourselves and others. How is this possible? The morning pages, a flow of stream of consciousness, gradually loosens our hold on fixed
opinions and short-sighted views. We see that our moods, views, and insights are transitory. We acquire a sense of movement, a current of change in our lives. This current, or river, is a flow of grace moving us to our right livelihood, companions, destiny.

Dependence on the creator within is really freedom from all other dependencies. Paradoxically, it is also the only route to real intimacy with other human beings. Freed from our terrible fears of abandonment, we are able to live with more spontaneity. Freed from our constant demands for more and more reassurance, our fellows are able to love us back without feeling so burdened.

As we have listened to our artist child within, it has begun to feel more and more safe. Feeling safe, it speaks a little louder. Even on our worst days, a small, positive voice says, “You could still do this or it might be fun to do that….”

Most of us find that as we work with the morning pages, we are rendered less rigid that we were. Recovery is the process of finding the river and saying yes to its flow, rapids and all. We startle ourselves by saying yes instead of no to opportunities. As we begin to pry ourselves loose from our old self-concepts, we find that our new, emerging self may enjoy all sorts of bizarre adventures.

Michelle, a hard-driving, dressed-for-success lawyer, enrolled in flamenco dancing lessons and loved them. Her house—formerly a sleek, careerist's high-tech showcase—suddenly began filling up with lush plants, plump pillows, sensuous incense. Tropical colors bloomed on the once-white walls. For the first time in years, she allowed herself to cook a little and then to sew again. She was still a successful lawyer, but her life took on a rounded shape. She laughed more, looked prettier. “I can't believe I am doing this!” she would announce with delight as she launched into some new venture. And then, “I can't believe I didn't do this sooner!”

By holding lightly to an attitude of gentle exploration, we can begin to lean into creative expansion. By replacing “No way!” with “Maybe,” we open the door to mystery and to magic.

This newly positive attitude is the beginning of trust. We
are starting to look for the silver lining in what appears to be adversity. Most of us find that as we work with the morning pages, we begin to treat ourselves more gently. Feeling less desperate, we are less harsh with ourselves and with others. This compassion is one of the first fruits of aligning our creativity with its creator.

As we come to trust and love our internal guide, we lose our fear of intimacy because we no longer confuse our intimate others with the higher power we are coming to know. In short, we are learning to give up idolatry—the worshipful dependency on any person, place, or thing. Instead, we place our dependency on the source itself. The source meets our needs through people, places, and things.

This concept is a very hard one for most of us to really credit. We tend to believe we must go out and shake a few trees to make things happen. I would not deny that shaking a few trees is good for us. In fact, I believe it is necessary. I call it
doing
the
footwork.
I want to say, however, that while the footwork is necessary, I have seldom seen it pay off in a linear fashion. It seems to work more like we shake the apple tree and the universe delivers oranges.

Time and again, I have seen a recovering creative do the footwork of becoming internally clear and focused about dreams and delights, take a few outward steps in the direction of the dream—only to have the universe fling open an unsuspected door. One of the central tasks of creative recovery is learning to accept this generosity.

An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is.