Reflections on The Artist’s Way, Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith
This is the twelfth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith.
Week 12 was the final week of the course, but a new chapter of my life was just beginning.
Cameron splits Week 12 into a few themes — Trusting, Mystery, The Imagination at Play, and Escape Velocity.
Trusting
‘We are not accustomed to thinking that’s God’s will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide. Instead, we have bought the message of our culture: this world is a vale of tears and we are meant to be dutiful then die. The truth is that we are meant to bountiful and live.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
This week, I’ve been asking myself, ‘What if my life was in service to a higher power? My gifts and abilities, my interests and desires, my accomplishments and mistakes. What if it’s not just about me, but also about my special place in the universe?’
And what if I appreciated others through this lens as well?
That dinner a friend made me becomes a gift from a universal source, sent through her interest in Italian cuisine. That conversation with a colleague where I truly felt seen allows her presence to be an extension of something greater than both of us.
Could I really be on a mission from God? Could we all be?
‘Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
How many times have I hidden my inner dream? Hid it from others out of fear I’d be judged or discouraged, or be flatly dismissed with the words ‘you can’t just do what you want’.
When have I buried my dreams out of fear that I’d never be able to achieve them? Or fear I would and it wouldn’t be what I expected, leaving me to drown in a sea of disappointment?
What great dream am I still hiding from?
Did I catch a glimpse of my dream and lose it? Are the things meant for us meant to stick around? Or do we have to reach out and grab them before they slip away, lost forever?
I peel back the layers of conditioning and other people’s ideas of who I should be, and I see what’s left. I knock it all down and sift through the rubble of my life. I flip through photos of ex-boyfriends and parties in the backyards of former addresses. I open old journals and read passages from random pages. I piece together my past, curious if my twenty-year-old self left behind any clues.
To sit still and figure it all out is tempting. I finally figure it out in motion. I get started and learn along the way. Things shift and change and I trust my lived experience. I do my best to let go of the things that didn’t want to stick around. And then I do my best again the next day.
‘It is the inner commitment to be true to ourselves and follow our dreams that triggers the support of the universe. While we are ambivalent, the universe will seems to us also to be ambivalent and erratic.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, page 194
Mystery
‘The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
Sometimes I want to know the outcome before I get started.
I want to know what things will look like, feel like, sound like, to set the dimension and the value, to validate, to people-please, to play it safe. To know it’s gonna be good before I even get started, otherwise, it’s a waste of time.
And that’s usually when I do my worst work.
You meet the eyes of a stranger on a train and think, maybe they’re the one, the precious love I've been seeking all this time. There’s a moment filled with the depth of a thousand possibilities, followed by the damp weight of regret as you step out into an unchanged world.
You experience the kind of moment that splits time into before and after, but the after never happens.
‘Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise. All too often, when we say we want to be creative, we mean that we want to be able to be productive.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
To separate creativity from productivity is to put each in its place.
Creativity is the energy that flows through you, the unique expression of your soul.
Productivity is ‘the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input’.
Productivity is required to make creativity tangible, real. But these two things are not the same.
The Imagination at Play
‘We are an ambitious society, and it is often difficult for us to cultivate forms of creativity that do not directly serve us and our career goals. Recovery urges our reexamining definitions of creativity and expanding them to include what in the past we called hobbies. The experience of creative living argues that hobbies are in face essential to the joyful life.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
It’s not up to me to tell you what’s a hobby in your life. And even if it were, it’s not up to me to assign the value of your hobbies versus the value of anything else you do.
hobby /ˈhɒbi/ noun
1. an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.
‘her hobbies are reading and gardening’
I kept my painting a hobby for many years to keep it safe and protected. If it was something I did for pleasure in my free time, I believed it was safe from criticism and judgement. And for the most part, it was — because I was the only one who saw it.
I eventually realised that by keeping it hidden, I was keeping myself small. I was hiding my gifts and my vision from the world and denying my contribution. I had to step through my fear of being judged and being liked in order to live my truth.
‘As we write, digging ourselves our of denial, our memories, dreams, and creative plans all move to the surface. We discover anew that we are creative beings.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
When I think of the future, I want more pleasure in my life. It’s a guiding principle. Play can get me there.
Cameron writes about the power of morning pages and artist dates to get us into a state of play and free us from the narrow parameters of what we think art can be.
Escape Velocity
‘Do not indulge or tolerate anyone who throws cold water in your direction. Forget good intentions. Forget they didn’t mean it.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
Cameron describes the ‘tests’. These are the people and situations that show up when we’re nearing milestones on our road to recovery.
The bad-for-you-ex who calls just as you’re starting a healthy relationship. The disappointing boss who finally offers the raise you’ve been so patiently waiting for just as you’ve decided to leave the company.
We’ve all been there before, tested with compliments, attention, and the possibility of change. We want the bad things that have been done to us to be undone by the same people who didn’t really care the first time around.
We imagine the sense of relief we’ll feel when the universal accounts are reconciled, the apologies are received, and the justice is served.
The test is a mirage that holds our focus. We resist taking the next step and moving on in a good direction, away from what keeps us small.
Cameron suggests figuring out who is supportive, and who is not (the wet blankets). She recommends we open up and give space to the people that truly support us.
‘Escape velocity requires the sword of steely intention and the shield of self-determination.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 12
I picked up The Artist’s Way when I was starting my work as a coach. I thought I’d give it a try, maybe find a few activities or tools to use with my clients.
Once I got started, I realised my exploration would go much deeper and be more personal than I had expected. I walked away with a greater sense of self and a set of tools to continue exploring what it means to be me, to live a life, to be a whole person.
The process was transformational.
Since 2018, when I did the twelve-week course for the first time, I’ve done it a few more times (solo and with others), and I now facilitate groups.
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