Free The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice by Julia Cameron

Isn’t this interesting? We can easily, and without embarrassment, bludgeon ourselves with negative affirmations: “I’m not gifted enough/not clever enough/not original enough/not young enough ...” But saying nice things about ourselves is notoriously hard to do. It feels pretty awful at first. Try these and see if they don’t sound hopelessly syrupy: “I deserve love.” “I deserve fair pay.” “I deserve a rewarding creative life.” “I am a brilliant and successful artist.” “I have rich creative talents.” “I am competent and confident in my creative work.”
    Did your Censor perk its nasty little ears up? Censors loathe anything that sounds like real self-worth. They immediately start up with the imposter routine: “Who do you think you are?” It’s as though our entire collective unconscious sat up late nights watching Walt Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians and practicing Cruella DeVille’s delivery for scathing indictments.
    Just try picking an affirmation. For example “I, ______ (your name), am a brilliant and prolific potter [painter, poet, or whatever you are].” Write that ten times in a row. While you are busy doing that, something very interesting will happen. Your Censor will start to object. “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t say all that positive stuff around me.” Objections will start to pop up like burnt toast. These are your blurts.
    Listen to the objections. Look at the ugly, stumpy little blurts. “Brilliant and prolific ... sure you are.... Since when? ... Can’t spell.... You call writer’s block prolific? ... You’re just kidding yourself ... an idiot ... grandiose.... Who are you kidding? ... Who do you think you are?” and so on.
    You will be amazed at the rotten things your subconscious will blurt out. Write them down. These blurts flag your personal negative core beliefs. They hold the key to your freedom in their ugly little claws. Make a list of your personal blurts.
    It’s time to do a little detective work. Where do your blurts come from? Mom? Dad? Teachers? Using your list of blurts, scan your past for possible sources. At least some of them will spring violently to mind. One effective way to locate the sources is to time-travel. Break your life into five-year increments, and list by name your major influences in each time block.
 
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
    C. G. JUNG
     
     
    Paul had always wanted to be a writer. And yet, after a brief flurry of college creativity, he stopped showing his writing to anyone. Instead of the short stories he dreamed of, he kept journal after journal, each following the last into a dark drawer far from prying eyes. Why he did this was a mystery to him until he tried working with affirmations and blurts.
    When Paul began writing his affirmations, he was immediately shaken by an almost volcanic blast of disparagement.
    He wrote, “I, Paul, am a brilliant and prolific writer.” From deep in his unconscious there erupted a spewing torrent of self-abuse and self-doubt. It was numbingly specific and somehow familiar: “You’re just kidding yourself, a fool, no real talent, a pretender, a dilettante, a joke ...”
    Where did this core belief come from? Who could have said this to him? When? Paul went time-traveling to look for the villain. He located him with great embarrassment. Yes, there was a villain, and an incident he had been too ashamed to share and air. A malevolent early teacher had first praised his work and then set about a sexual seduction. Fearful that he had somehow invited the man’s attention, ashamed lest the work really be rotten too, Paul buried the incident in his unconscious, where it festered. No wonder secondary motives were always a fear when someone praised him. No surprise he felt that someone could praise work and not mean it.
    Boiled down to its essentials, Paul’s core negative belief was