“INTRODUCTION WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME what I do, I usually answer, “I’m a writer-director and I teach these creativity workshops.” The last one interests them. “How can you teach creativity?” they want to know. Defiance fights with curiosity on their faces. “I can’t,” I tell them. “I teach people to let themselves be creative.” “Oh. You mean we’re all creative?”…. “Yes.” Cameron, pg.
The Artist’s Way Is Not Only for Artists and Writers
“I have taught a spiritual workshop aimed at freeing people’s creativity. I have taught artists and nonartists, painters and filmmakers and homemakers and lawyers—anyone interested in living more creatively through practicing an art; even more broadly, anyone interested in practicing the art of creative living” Cameron
“Because The Artist’s Way is, in essence, a spiritual path, initiated and practiced
through creativity, this book uses the word God. This may be volatile for some of you—conjuring old, unworkable, unpleasant, or simply unbelievable ideas about God as youwere raised to understand “him.” Please be open-minded.
Remind yourself that to succeed in this course, no god concept is necessary. In fact, many of our commonly held god concepts get in the way. Do not allow semantics to become one more block for you. When the word God is used in these pages, you may substitute the thought good orderly direction or flow. What we are talking about is a creative energy. God is useful shorthand for many of us, but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source, and Higher
Power…. The point is not what you name it. The point is that you try using it.” Camero.
“For many of us, thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping-off place.” Cameron
“I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me. WILLIAM BLAKE
“I have worked artist-to-artist with potters, photographers, poets, screenwriters, dancers, novelists, actors, directors—and with those who knew only what they dreamed to be or who only dreamed of being somehow more creative. I have seen blocked painters paint, broken poets speak in tongues, halt and lame and maimed writers racing through final drafts. I have come to not only believe but know: No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity. One fifty-year-old student who “always wanted to write” used these tools and emerged as a prize-winning playwright. A judge used these tools to fulfill his lifelong dreams of sculpting. Not all students become full-time artists as a result of the course. In fact, many full-time artists report that they have become more creatively rounded into full-time people. Through my own experience—and that of countless others that I have shared—I have come to believe that creativity is our true nature, that blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem. I have found this process of making spiritual contact to be both simple and straightforward. If you are creatively blocked—and I believe all of us are to some extent—it is possible, even probable, that you can learn to create more freely through your willing use of the tools this book provides.” Cameron
“In the brush doing what it’s doing, it will stumble on what one couldn’t do by oneself.” ROBERT MOTHERWELL
“The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” PIET MONDRIAN
How My Intuition Wrote My Debut Picture Book: Writing, Painting, & Illustrating by Intuition
Spiritual Electricity: The Basic Principles
“FOR MOST OF US, the idea that the creator encourages creativity is a radical thought. We tend to think, or at least fear, that creative dreams are egotistical, something that God wouldn’t approve of for us. After all, our creative artist is an inner youngster and prone to childish thinking.” Cameron
“We undertake certain spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energy of the universe. If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem. As a teacher, I often sense the presence of something transcendent—a spiritual electricity, if you will—and I have come to rely on it in transcending my own limitations.” Cameron
The following spiritual principles are the bedrock on which creative recovery and discovery can be built. Read them through once a day, and keep an inner ear cocked for any shifts in attitudes or beliefs.
BASIC PRINCIPLES
1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” THE TALMUD
Great improvisors are like priests. They are thinking only of their god. STÉPHANE GRAPPELLI MUSICIAN
What we play is life. LOUIS ARMSTRONG
Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes. PETER KOESTENBAUM
I paint not by sight but by faith. Faith gives you sight. AMOS FERGUSON
Why should we all use our creative power …? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. BRENDA UELAND
The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate—it is life, intensified, brilliant life. ALAIN ARIAS-MISSON