The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (14 page)

LOUIS PASTEUR

Life is what we make of it. Whether we conceive of an inner god force or an other, outer God, doesn’t matter. Relying on that force does.

“Ask and you shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened to you....” These words are among the more unpleasant ones ascribed to Jesus Christ. They suggest the possibility of scientific method: ask (experiment) and see what happens (record the results).

Is it any wonder we discount answered prayers? We call it coincidence. We call it luck. We call it anything but what it is—the hand of God, or good, activated by our own hand when we act in behalf of our truest dreams, when we commit to our own soul.

Even the most timid life contains such moments of commitment: “I will get a new love seat after all!” And then, “I found the perfect one. It was the strangest thing. I was at my Aunt Bernice’s and her neighbor was having a garage sale and she had this wonderful love seat her new husband was allergic to!”

In outsized lives, such moments stand out in bas-relief, large as Mount Rushmore: Lewis and Clark headed west. Isak Dinesen took off for Africa. We all have our Africas, those dark and romantic notions that call to our deepest selves. When we answer that call, when we commit to it, we set in motion the principle that C. G. Jung dubbed
synchronicity,
loosely defined as a fortuitous intermeshing of events. Back in the sixties, we called it
serendipity.
Whatever you choose to call it, once you begin your creative recovery you may be startled to find it cropping up everywhere.

Don’t be surprised if you try to discount it. It can be a very threatening concept. Although Jung’s paper on synchronicity was a cornerstone of his thought, even many Jungians prefer to believe it was a sort of side issue. They dismiss it, like his interest in the I Ching, as an oddity, nothing to take too seriously.

Jung might differ with them. Following his own inner leadings brought him to experience and describe a phenomenon that some of us prefer to ignore: the possibility of an intelligent and responsive universe, acting and reacting in our interests.

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

OVID

It is my experience that this is the case. I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.

“God is efficient,” the actress Julianna McCarthy always reminds me. I have many times marveled at the sleight of hand with which the universe delivers its treats.

About six years ago, a play of mine was chosen for a large staged reading at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. I had written the play with my friend Julianna in mind for the lead. She was my ideal casting, but when I arrived in Denver, casting was already set. As soon as I met my leading lady, I had a funny feeling there was a bomb ticking. I mentioned this to the director but was assured the actress was a consummate professional. Still, the funny feeling lingered in my stomach. Sure enough, a week before we were set to open, our leading lady abruptly resigned—from my play and from Painting Churches, the play that was in mid-run.

The Denver Center was stunned and very apologetic. They felt terrible about the damage my play would sustain by the abrupt departure. “In a perfect world, who would you cast?” they asked me. I told them, “Julianna McCarthy.”

Julianna was hired and flown in from Los Angeles. No sooner did the center’s directors lay eyes on her work than they asked her not only to do my play but also to take over the run of Painting
Churches
—for which she was brilliantly cast.

“God is showing off,” I laughed to Julianna, very happy that she had the chance to do “her” play after all.

In my experience, the universe falls in with worthy plans and most especially with festive and expansive ones. I have seldom conceived a delicious plan without being given the means to accomplish it. Understand that the
what
must come before the
how.
First choose
what
you would do. The
how
usually falls into place of itself.

Desire, ask, believe, receive.

STELLA TERRILL MANN

All too often, when people talk about creative work, they emphasize strategy. Neophytes are advised of the Machiavellian devices they must employ to break into the field. I think this is a lot of rubbish. If you ask an artist how he got where he is, he will not describe breaking in but instead will talk of a series of lucky breaks. “A thousand unseen helping hands,” Joseph Campbell calls these breaks. I call them synchronicity. It is my contention that you can count on them.

Remember that creativity is a tribal experience and that tribal elders will initiate the gifted youngsters who cross their path. This may sound like wishful thinking, but it is not. Sometimes an older artist will be moved to help out even against his or her own wishes. “I don’t know why I’m doing this for you, but ...” Again, I would say that some of the helping hands may be something more than human.

We like to pretend it is hard to follow our heart’s dreams. The truth is, it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open. Turn aside your dream and it will come back to you again. Get willing to follow it again and a second mysterious door will swing open.

The universe is prodigal in its support. We are miserly in what we accept. All gift horses are looked in the mouth and usually returned to sender. We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.

Take a small step in the direction of a dream and watch the synchronous doors flying open. Seeing, after all, is believing. And if you see the results of your experiments, you will not need to believe me. Remember the maxim “Leap, and the net will appear.” In his book,
The Scottish Himalayan Expedition,
W. H. Murray tells us his explorer’s experience:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative [or creation] there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way.

If you do not trust Murray—or me—you might want to trust Goethe. Statesman, scholar, artist, man of the world. Goethe had this to say on the will of Providence assisting our efforts:

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.

Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities.

WILLIAM BRIDGES

SHAME

Some of you are thinking, “If it were that easy to take an action, I wouldn’t be reading this book.” Those of us who get bogged down by fear before action are usually being sabotaged by an older enemy, shame. Shame is a controlling device. Shaming someone is an attempt to prevent the person from behaving in a way that embarrasses us.

Making a piece of art may feel a lot like telling a family secret. Secret telling, by its very nature, involves shame and fear. It asks the question “What will they think of me once they know this?” This is a frightening question, particularly if we have ever been made to feel ashamed for our curiosities and explorations—social, sexual, spiritual.

“How dare you?” angry adults often rage at an innocent child who has stumbled onto a family secret. (How dare you open your mother’s jewelry box? How dare you open your father’s desk drawer? How dare you open the bedroom door? How dare you go down in the cellar, up in the attic, into some dark place where we hide those things we don’t want you to know?)

The act of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, “See?”

When people do not want to see something, they get mad at the one who shows them. They kill the messenger. A child from an alcoholic home gets into trouble scholastically or sexually. The family is flagged as being troubled. The child is made to feel shame for bringing shame to the family. But did the child bring shame? No. The child brought shameful things to light. The family shame predated and caused the child’s distress. “What will the neighbors think?” is a shaming device aimed at continuing a conspiracy of illness.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing. But before a wound can heal it must be seen, and this act of exposing the wound to air and light, the artist’s act, is often reacted to with shaming. Bad reviews are a prime source of shame for many artists. The truth is, many reviews do aim at creating shame in an artist. “Shame on you! How dare you make that rotten piece of art?”

For the artist who endured childhood shaming—over any form of neediness, any type of exploration, any expectation—shame may kick in even without the aid of a shame-provoking review. If a child has ever been made to feel foolish for believing himself or herself talented, the act of actually finishing a piece of art will be fraught with internal shaming.

Many artists begin a piece of work, get well along in it, and then find, as they near completion, that the work seems mysteriously drained of merit. It’s no longer worth the trouble. To therapists, this surge of sudden disinterest (“It doesn’t matter”) is a routine coping device employed to deny pain and ward off vulnerability.

Adults who grew up in dysfunctional homes learn to use this coping device very well. They call it detachment, but it is actually a numbing out.

“He forgot my birthday. Oh, well, no big deal.”

A lifetime of this kind of experience, in which needs for recognition are routinely dishonored, teaches a young child that putting anything out for attention is a dangerous act.

“Dragging home the invisible bone” is how one recovering artist characterized her vain search for an achievement big enough to gain approval in her family of origin. “No matter how big a deal it was, they never seemed to take much notice. They always found something wrong with it. All A’s and one B and that B got the attention.”

It is only natural that a young artist try to flag parental attention by way of accomplishments—positive or negative. Faced with indifference or rage, such youngsters soon learn that no bone would really meet with parental approval.

Often we are wrongly shamed as creatives. From this shaming we learn that we are wrong to create. Once we learn this lesson, we forget it instantly. Buried under
it doesn’t matter,
the shame lives on, waiting to attach itself to our new efforts. The very act of attempting to make art creates shame.

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples’ models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.

SHAKTI GAWAIN

This is why many a great student film is never sent off to festivals where it can be seen; why good novels are destroyed or live in desk drawers. This is why plays do not get sent out, why talented actors don’t audition. This is why artists may feel shame at admitting their dreams. Shame is retriggered in us as adults because our internal artist is always our creative child. Because of this, making a piece of art may cause us to feel shame.

We don’t make art with its eventual criticism foremost in mind, but criticism that asks a question like “How could you?” can make an artist feel like a shamed child. A well-meaning friend who constructively criticizes a beginning writer may very well end that writer.

Let me be clear. Not all criticism is shaming. In fact, even the most severe criticism when it fairly hits the mark is apt to be greeted by an internal
Ah-hah!
if it shows the artist a new and valid path for work. The criticism that damages is that which disparages, dismisses, ridicules, or condemns. It is frequently vicious but vague and difficult to refute. This is the criticism that damages.

Shamed by such criticism, an artist may become blocked or stop sending work out into the world. A perfectionist friend, teacher, or critic—like a perfectionist parent who nitpicks at missing commas—can dampen the ardor of a young artist who is just learning to let it rip. Because of this, as artists, we must learn to be very self-protective.

Does this mean no criticism? No. It means learning where and when to seek out right criticism. As artists, we must learn when criticism is appropriate and from whom. Not only the source but the timing is very important here. A first draft is seldom appropriately shown to any but the most gentle and discerning eye. It often takes another artist to see the embryonic work that is trying to sprout. The inexperienced or harsh critical eye, instead of nurturing the shoot of art into being, may shoot it down instead.