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

well.
 
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
    OSCAR WILDE
     
CONTRACT
 
I, _______________, understand that I am undertaking an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the twelve-week duration of the course. I, _______________, commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfillment of each week’s tasks.
 
 
I, _______________, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with. I, ______________, commit myself to excellent self-care—adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering—for the duration of the course.

 
Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about .... Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.
    JALAI UD-DIN RUMI
     
     
    Artist’s block is a very literal expression. Blocks must be acknowledged and dislodged. Filling the well is the surest way to do this.
    Art is the imagination at play in the field of time. Let yourself play.

CREATIVITY CONTRACT
     
    When I am teaching the Artist’s Way, I require students to make a contract with themselves, committing to the work of the course. Can you give yourself that gift? Say yes by means of some small ceremony. Buy a nice notebook for your pages; hire your babysitter ahead of time for the weekly artist dates. Read the contract on the preceding page. Amend it, if you like; then sign and date it. Come back to it when you need encouragement to go on.

WEEK 1
     
    Recovering a Sense of Safety
     
T his week initiates your creative recovery. You may feel both giddy and defiant, hopeful and skeptical. The readings, tasks, and exercises aim at allowing you to establish a sense of safety, which will enable you to explore your creativity with less fear.

SHADOW ARTISTS
     
    ONE OF OUR CHIEF needs as creative beings is support. Unfortunately, this can be hard to come by. Ideally, we would be nurtured and encouraged first by our nuclear family and then by ever-widening circles of friends, teachers, well-wishers. As young artists, we need and want to be acknowledged for our attempts and efforts as well as for our achievements and triumphs. Unfortunately, many artists never receive this critical early encouragement. As a result, they may not know they are artists at all.
    Parents seldom respond, “Try it and see what happens” to artistic urges issuing from their offspring. They offer cautionary advice where support might be more to the point. Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets. There, caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure, shadow artists are born.
    I am thinking here of Edwin, a miserable millionaire trader whose joy in life comes from his art collection. Strongly gifted in the visual arts, he was urged as a child to go into finance. His father bought him a seat on the stock exchange for his twenty-first birthday. He has been a trader ever since. Now in his mid-thirties, he is very rich and very poor. Money cannot buy him creative fulfillment.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
    C. G. JUNG
     
     
    Surrounding himself with artists and artifacts, he is like the kid with his nose pressed to the candy-store window. He would love to be more creative but believes that is the prerogative of others, nothing he can aspire to for himself. A generous man, he recently gifted an artist with a year’s living expenses so she could pursue her dreams. Raised to believe that the term artist could not apply to him, he cannot make that same gift for himself.
    Edwin’s is not an isolated case. All too often the artistic urges of the artist child are ignored or suppressed. Often with the best intentions, parents try to foster a different, more