The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (38 page)

At the very least, we are sure we will be.

Ask budding artists why they are afraid to move deeply into their creativity and they will tell you, “I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of my life alone.”

In America, we seem to confuse artists with cowboys. We see artists as self-contained, driven loners who are always riding off into the sunset to do our thing—alone. If you’ll pardon the joke, the cowboy analogy is so much bull. Most of us enjoy a little company. One of our great cultural secrets is the fact that artists like other artists.

Think about it for just a second: What did the Impressionists paint? Lunch ... with each other. What did the Blooms-bury Group write about? Dining out with—and gossiping about—each other. Whom did John Cassavetes make films with? His friends. Why? Because they believed in one another and enjoyed helping each other realize their dreams.

Artists like other artists. We are not supposed to know this. We are encouraged to believe “there is only so much room at the top.” Hooey. Water seeks its own level and water rises collectively.

Artists often help each other. We always have, although mythology tells us otherwise. The truth is that when we do, very powerful things happen. I will give a case in point. Film director Martin Scorsese developed, shaped, and fine-tuned the script for
Schindler’s List
—then gave the project to his friend Steven Spielberg, feeling the material should be his. This unballyhooed act of creative generosity finally gave Spielberg his shot at an Oscar as “a real director”—even though Scorsese knew it might cost him his own shot, at least this year. And yet, to read about it in the press, these men are pitted against each other, artist versus artist, like athletes from warring nations in our mini-wars, the Olympics. Hooey, again.

Success occurs in clusters.

As artists, we must find those who believe in us, and in whom we believe, and band together for support, encouragement and protection.

I remember sitting in a hotel room twenty years ago with two then-little-known directors, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg. Scorsese, then my fiance, was off in France, and I was being consoled over take-away pizza by his two friends.

Spielberg was talking about a film he longed to make about the UFO phenomenon. There was scant support for the project and Spielberg was discouraged—although the project itself excited him. What to do? De Palma encouraged him to follow his heart and make that piece of art. That movie became
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I tell this story not to drop names, but to make the point that even the most illustrious among our ranks as artists were not always illustrious and won’t ever be beyond the fears and doubts that are part of creative territory. These fears and doubts will always, for all of us, be something to move through with a little help from our friends.

We all start out the same way—rich in dreams and nothing more. If we are lucky, we find friends to believe in our dreams with us. When we do, that creative cluster becomes a magnet to attract our good.

I have been teaching
The Artist’s Way
for a long time. I’ve discovered that while I don’t believe in a quick fix, rapid and sustained creative gains can be made—especially if people are willing to band together in clusters. When I travel to teach, it is with the goal of leaving creative clusters behind me in each locale so that people can work together to nurture and support each other over the long haul.

In Chicago there is a cluster that has been together for years. The group began with questions like, “Will I be able to write again?” and “I’d like to try to improve, but I’m scared,” and “I really want to produce,” and “I’d like to write a play.”

Years later, the cluster is the same, but the questions are very different. “Who’s throwing Ginny’s Emmy nomination party?” and “Should Pam do her third play with the same theater company?”

As creative people, we are meant to encourage one another. That was my goal in writing
The Artist’s Way
and it is my goal in teaching it. Your goal, it is my hope, is to encourage each other’s dreams as well as your own. Creative ideas are brain-
children.
Like all children, they must be birthed and this birthing is both a personal and collective experience.

It was my privilege recently to midwife a book in my own creative cluster. My friend Sonia Choquette, a gifted psychic and teacher, was able to shape her long years of experience into an invaluable tool kit,
The Psychic Pathway.
As her friend, I received her book as nightly installments on my fax machine. I would fax her back, believing in her when she, like all artists, had trouble believing in herself.

Raised, like so many of us, to hide her creative light under a bushel lest her dazzle diminish the light of others, Sonia experienced doubt, fear and deepening faith as she moved past these creative barriers into creative birth.

God is glorified in the fruitage of our lives.

JOEL S. GOLDSMITH

I know there are those among you who fear undertaking projects that seem to demand many dark nights of the soul. Let me suggest to you that such nights may also be, in the beautiful Spanish words,
noches estrelladas—
star-studded.

Like neighboring constellations, we can serve each other both as guides and as company. In walking your artist’s way, my deepest wish for you is the company of fellow lights and the generosity to light each other’s ways as we each pass temporarily into darkness.

Know this well: Success occurs in clusters and is born in generosity. Let us form constellations of believing mirrors and move into our powers.

Sacred Circle Rules

1. Creativity flourishes in a place of safety and acceptance.

2. Creativity grows among friends, withers among enemies.

3. All creative ideas are children who deserve our protection.

4. All creative success requires creative failure.

5. Fulfilling our creativity is a sacred trust.

6. Violating someone’s creativity violates a sacred trust.

7. Creative feedback must support the creative child, never shame it.

8. Creative feedback must build on strengths, never focus on weaknesses.

9. Success occurs in clusters and is born in generosity.

10. The good of another can never block our own.

Above All:
God is the source. No human power can deflect our good or create it. We are all conduits for a higher self that would work through us. We are all equally connected to a spiritual source. We do not always know which among us will teach us best. We are all meant to cherish and serve one another.
The Artist’s Way
is tribal. The spirit of service yields us our dharma: that right path we dream of following in our best and most fulfilled moments of faith.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

HENRY MILLER

I learn by going where I have to go.

THEODORE ROETHKE

AN ARTIST’S PRAYER

O Great Creator,
We are gathered together in your name
That we may be of greater service to you
And to our fellows.

We offer ourselves to you as instruments.
We open ourselves to your creativity in our lives.
We surrender to you our old ideas.
We welcome your new and more expansive ideas.
We trust that you will lead us.

We trust that it is safe to follow you.
We know you created us and that creativity
Is your nature and our own.

We ask you to unfold our lives
According to your plan, not our low self-worth.
Help us to believe that it is not too late
And that we are not too small or too flawed
To be healed
—
By you and through each other—and made whole.
Help us to love one another,
To nurture each other’s unfolding,
To encourage each other’s growth,
And understand each other’s fears.
Help us to know that we are not alone,
That we are loved and lovable.
Help us to create as an act of worship to you.

READING LIST

MY EXPERIENCE AS A teacher tells me that those who read this book are better off doing something, rather than reading another book, but I have included many of my favorites just in case they feel compelled to research further. These books represent some of the very best in their fields. To keep it simple, try to finish Artist’s Way work before adding this input.

Aftel, Mandy.
The Story of Your Life
—
Becomingthe Author of Your Experience. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Persuasive and useful.

Berendt, Joachim-Ernst.
The World Is Sound: Nada Brahma.
Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 1991. Eloquent and persuasive book on sound theory.

Bolles, Richard Nelson.
WhatColor Is Your Parachute?
Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1970. Whimsical and pragmatic guide to goal setting.

Bonny, Helen.
Music and Your Mind.
Barrytown, N.Y: Helen A. Bonny and Louis M. Savary, 1973, 1970. An explicit guide to using music as an antidote for mental and emotional pain.

Bradley, Marion Zimmer.
The Mists of Avalon.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1982. A powerfully evocative novel of female spirituality in pre-Christian England. A mesmerizing novel of goddess worship in Arthurian times.

Brande, Dorothea.
Becoming a Writer.
1934. Reprint. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1981. The best book on writing I’ve ever found.

Burnham, Sophy. A
Book of Angels.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1991. An elegant, deeply felt exploration of the spiritual powers and forces at play in our lives.

Bush, Carol
A.
Healing Imagery and Music.
Portland, Oreg.: Rudra Press, 1995. A profoundly useful guide to listening for healing.

Came to Believe.
New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1973. Useful and touching book about embryonic faith.

Campbell, Don G.
The Roar of Silence.
Wheaton, Ill.: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1994. Seminal book on sound healing—clear, passionate and useful. All of Campbell’s many books are important and persuasive, but this one remains a primer.

Cassou, Michelle, and Stewart Cubley.
Life, Paint, and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic
of Spontaneous Expression.
New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1996. Passionate and experienced into—the-water book for visual artists.

Chatwin, Bruce.
Songlines.
New York: Penguin Books, 1987. An exquisite, mysterious and powerful book.

Choquette, Sonia.
Your Heart’s Desire.
New York: Random House, Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997. An extremely clear, step-by-step guide for manifesting dreams as working reality

Choquette, Sonia.
The Psychic Pathway.
New York: Random House. Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1994, 1995. Safe, grounded, practical guide to opening to spiritual gifts.

Eisler, Raine.
The Chalice and the Blade.
San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987. Seminal book on the differences in masculine and feminine life approaches.

Fassel, Diane.
Working Ourselves to Death.
San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. A strong-minded intervention for workaholic personalities.

Fox, Matthew.
Original Blessing
. Santa Fe, N.M.: Bear & Company, 1983. An important corrective book on Christian tradition; brilliant, impassioned, compassionate.

Franck, Frederick.
Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing.
New York: Bantam Books, 1993. A fine treatise on the value of “attention” in the creative life.

Gawain, Shakti.
Creative Visualization.
Mill Valley, Cal.: Whatever Publishing, 1986. Helplful in learning to create and hold a vision.

Goldberg, Bonni.
Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer’s Life.
New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1996. A masterfully provocative and wise writer’s tool.

Goldberg, Natalie.
Writing Down the Bones.
Boston, Mass.: Shambhala Publications, 1986. The best pen-to-paper writing book ever written.

Goldman, Jonathan.
Healing Sounds: The Power of Harmonics.
Rockport, Mass.: Element Books, Inc., 1992. Powerful and gentle teaching book on sound healing techniques.

Grof, Christina, and Stanislav Grof,
The Stormy Search for the Self.
Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1990. A provocative book about the misunderstanding of spiritual experience in our culture.

Harmon, Willis, and Howard Rheingold.
Higher Creativity
. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher,
1984.
A valuable and often instructive book on creativity in front-line famous authors and others.

Hart, Mickey.
Drumming at the Edge of Magic.
San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. A great book on music as a spiritual experience.

Heywood, Rosalind.
ESP: A Personal Memoir.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1964. A delightful book of personal encounters with higher forces.