The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (35 page)

J. P. HUGHSTON
PAINTER

We are intended to create. We refurbish a dowdy kitchen, tie bows on a holiday cat, experiment with a better soup. The same child who brewed perfume from a dab of this and a dash of that, half dish soap and part cinnamon, grows up to buy potpourri and to boil a spice pot that says, “Christmas.”

As gray, as controlled, as dreamless as we may strive to be, the fire of our dreams will not stay buried. The embers are always there, stirring in our frozen souls like winter leaves. They won’t go away. They are sneaky. We make a crazy doodle in a boring meeting. We post a silly card on our office board. We nickname the boss something wicked. Plant twice as many flowers as we need.

Restive in our lives, we yearn for more, we wish, we chafe. We sing in the car, slam down the phone, make lists, clear closets, sort through shelves. We want to do something but we think it needs to be the
right something,
by which we mean
something important.

We are what’s important, and the something that we do can be something festive but small: dead plants go; mismatched socks bite the dust. We are stung by loss, bitten by hope. Working with our morning pages, a new—and gaudy?—life takes form. Who bought that azalea? Why the sudden taste for pink? Is this picture you’ve tacked up a you you’re going toward?

Play is the exultation of
the possible.

MARTIN BUBER

Your shoes feel worn. You throw them out. There’s a garage sale coming and you are playing host. You buy a first edition, splurge on new sheets. A friend worries once too often about what’s come over you and you take your first vacation in years.

The clock is ticking and you’re hearing the beat. You stop by a museum shop, sign your name on a scuba-diving sheet, and commit yourself to Saturday mornings in the deep end.

You’re either losing your mind—or gaining your soul. Life is meant to be an artist date. That’s why we were created.

ESCAPE VELOCITY

My friend Michele has a theory, a theory born of long and entangled romantic experience. In a nutshell, it goes: “When you’re going to leave them,
they know.”

This same theory applies to creative recovery. It occurs when you reach what Michele calls
escape velocity.
As she puts it, “There’s this time for blast-off, like a NASA space launch, and you’re heading for it when
wham,
you draw to you the Test.”

“The Test?”

“Yeah. The Test. It’s like when you’re all set to marry the nice guy, the one who treats you right, and Mr. Poison gets wind of it and phones you up.”

“Ah.”

“The whole trick is to evade the Test. We all draw to us the one test that’s our total nemesis.”

A lawyer by trade and a writer by avocation and temperament, Michele is fond of conspiracy theories, which she lays out in sinister detail.

“Think of it. You’re all set to go to the Coast on an important business trip, and your husband suddenly needs you, capital
N,
for no real reason.... You’re all set to leave the bad job, and the boss from hell suddenly gives you your first raise in five years.... Don’t be fooled. Don’t be fooled.”

Listening to Michele talk, it was clear that her years as a trial attorney stood her in good stead as a creative person. She, at least, was no longer fooled. But is it really so sinister as she implied? Do we really draw to us a Test? I thought about everything Michele had told me and I concluded that the answer was yes.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

ANDRÉ GIDE

I thought of all the times I’d been fooled. There was the agent who managed to undo done deals but apologized so prettily.... There was the editor who asked for rewrite upon rewrite until gruel was all that remained, but who always said I wrote brilliantly and was her brightest star.

A little flattery can go a long way toward deterring our escape velocity. So can a little cash. More sinister than either is the impact a well-placed doubt can have, particularly a “for your own good, just wanting to make sure you’ve thought about this” doubt—voiced by one of our nearest and dearest.

As recovering creatives, many of us find that every time our career heats up we reach for our nearest Wet Blanket. We blurt out our enthusiasm to our most skeptical friend—in fact, we call him up. If we don’t, he calls us. This is the Test.

Our artist is a child, an inner youngster, and when he/she is scared, Mommy is what’s called for. Unfortunately, many of us have Wet Blanket mommies and a whole army of Wet Blanket surrogate mommies—those friends who have our second, third, and fourth thoughts for us. The trick is not to let them be that way. How?
Zip the lip. Button up. Keep a lid on it. Don’t give away the gold.
Always remember: the first rule of magic is self-containment. You must hold your intention within yourself, stoking it with power. Only then will you be able to manifest what you desire.

In order to achieve escape velocity, we must learn to keep our own counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately.

Make a list: those friends who will support me. Make another list: those friends who won’t. Name your W.B.’s for what they are—Wet Blankets. Wrap yourself in something else— dry ones. Fluffy heated towels. Do not indulge or tolerate
anyone
who throws cold water in your direction. Forget good intentions. Forget they didn’t mean it. Remember to count your blessings and your toes. Escape velocity requires the sword of steely intention and the shield of self-determination.

“They will try to get you. Don’t forget that,” warns Michele. “Set your goals and set your boundaries.”

I would add, set your sights and don’t let the ogre that looms on the horizon deflect your flight.

TASKS

1. Write down any resistance, angers, and fears you have about going on from here. We all have them.

2. Take a look at your current areas of procrastination. What are the payoffs in your waiting? Locate the hidden fears. Do a list on paper.

3. Sneak a peek at Week One, Core Negative Beliefs (see page 30.) Laugh. Yes, the nasty critters are still there. Note your progress. Read yourself the affirmations on pages 36 and 37. Write some affirmations about your continued creativity as you end the course.

4. Mend any mending.

5. Repot any pinched and languishing plants.

6. Select a God jar. A what? Ajar, a box, a vase, a container. Something to put your fears, your resentments, your hopes, your dreams, your worries into.

7. Use your God jar. Start with your fear list from Task I above. When worried, remind yourself it’s in the jar—“God’s got it.” Then take the next action.

8.
Now,
check
how: H
onestly, what would you most like to create? Open-minded, what oddball paths would you dare to try?
W
illing, what appearances are you willing to shed to pursue your dream?

9. List five people you can talk to about your dreams and with whom you feel supported to dream and then plan.

10. Reread this book. Share it with a friend. Remember that the miracle is one artist sharing with another. Trust God. Trust yourself

Good luck and God bless you!

CHECK-IN

1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Have you accepted them yet as a permanent spiritual practice? How was the experience for you?

2. Did you do your artist date this week? Will you allow yourself these on a permanent basis as well? What did you do? How did it feel?

3. Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?

4. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.

As a recovering creative, you now have put many hours into your recovery over these three months, changing rapidly as you grew. For your recovery to continue, you require a commitment to further creative plans. The contract on the following page will help you accomplish them.

CREATIVITY CONTRACT

My name is _______. I am a recovering creative person. To further my growth and my joy, I now commit myself to the following self-nurturing

plans:

Morning pages have been an important part of my self-nurturing and self-discovery. I, ________, hereby commit myself to continuing to work with them for the next ninety days.

Artist’s dates have been integral to my growth in self-love and my deepening joy in living. I, _______, am willing to commit to another ninety days of weekly artist’s dates for self-care.

In the course of following the
artist’s way
and healing my artist within, I have discovered that I have a number of creative interests. While I hope to develop many of them, my specific commitment for the next ninety days is to allow myself to more fully explore ___________________________.

My concrete commitment to a plan of action is a critical part of nurturing my artist. For the next ninety days, my planned, self-nurturing creative action plan is _________________________.

I have chosen ________ as my creative colleague and ________ as my creative back-up. I am committed to a weekly phone check-in.

I have made the above commitments and will begin my new commitment on _____________.

EPILOGUE

THE ARTIST’S WAY

IN ENDING THIS BOOK, I yearned for a final flourish, some last fillip of the imagination that would sign the book. This was a small and harmless conceit, I felt—until I remembered the number of times I have enjoyed a painting and been distracted by the outsized artistic signature of its maker. So, no final flourishes here.

The truth is that this book should probably end with an image from another book. As I recall it, and this may be my imagination and not my memory at work, an early edition of Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain featured a mountain on its book jacket—the seven-story mountain, no doubt.