Free The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

bench-sitting cynicism. Be alert to subtle sabotage from friends. You cannot afford their well-meaning doubts right now. Their doubts will reactivate your own. Be particularly alert to any suggestion that you have become selfish or different. (These are red-alert words for us. They are attempts to leverage us back into our old ways for the sake of someone else’s comfort, not our own.)
    Blocked creatives are easily manipulated by guilt. Our friends, feeling abandoned by our departure from the ranks of the blocked, may unconsciously try to guilt-trip us into giving up our newly healthy habits. It is very important to understand that the time given to morning pages is time between you and God. You best know your answers. You will be led to new sources of support as you begin to support yourself.
    To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
    R OBERT L OUIS S TEVENSON
    Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.
    S HAKTI G AWAIN
    Be very careful to safeguard your newly recovering artist. Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people’s plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people.
    The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves. Through self-nurturance we nurture ourinner connection to the Great Creator. Through this connection our creativity will unfold. Paths will appear for us. We need to trust the Great Creator and move out in faith.
    Repeat: the Great Creator has gifted us with creativity. Our gift back is our use of it. Do not let friends squander your time.
    Be gentle but firm, and hang tough. The best thing you can do for your friends is to be an example through your own recovery. Do not let their fears and second thoughts derail you.
    Soon enough, the techniques you learn will enable you to teach others. Soon enough, you will be a bridge that will allow others to cross over from self-doubt into self-expression. For right now, protect your artist by refusing to show your morning pages to interested bystanders or to share your artist date with friends. Draw a sacred circle around your recovery. Give yourself the gift of faith. Trust that you are on the right track. You are.
    As your recovery progresses, you will come to experience a more comfortable faith in your creator and your creator within. You will learn that it is actually easier to write than not write, paint than not paint, and so forth. You will learn to enjoy the process of being a creative channel and to surrender your need to control the result. You will discover the joy of practicing your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus.
    You own healing is the greatest message of hope for others.
CRAZYMAKERS
    A related thing creatives do to avoid being creative is to involve themselves with crazymakers. Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers. They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive, and powerfully persuasive. And, for the creative person in their vicinity, they are enormously destructive. You know the type: charismatic but out of control, long on problems and short on solutions.
    Crazymakers are the kind of people who can take over your whole life. To fixer-uppers, they are irresistible: so much to change, so many distractions….
    If you are involved with a crazymaker, you probably knowit already, and you certainly recognize the thumbnail description in the paragraph above. Crazymakers like drama. If they can swing it, they are the star. Everyone around them functions as supporting cast,