Week Six: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

I'm returning to my "go through one chapter a week" plan with The Artist's Way.  Week five derailed me for a bit, for whatever reason, but I'm back! And not a moment too soon.  Week six is all about tackling a "major creative block -- money."

Confession: I have a serious money problem.  And it's not just a spending problem.  It's a problem discussing money.  Period.  Oh sure, I have the "If I won the lottery, I'd..." conversations, but when it comes to a serious conversation I freeze up.  And run away.  And avoid it at all costs.

Confession #2: I am actively working to overcome this issue.  Needless to say, it's made life a bit difficult, since said life is supposed to include a partnership over budget issues.

I can stretch a penny like nobody's business. For example, I can usually figure out how to feed 12-16 people for under $50 and still have it look like this:

If the budget for the meal is even smaller, the dinner may look like this:

And, for the past few months, I've kept it to under $25, which means only making one or two dishes (usually a huge pot of stew or soup and a salad), but I can still feed everyone.

My sister wins in the buying-things arena because she can coupon shop better than anyone I know and can usually bring home a carload full of goods from Target or Rite Aid for next to nothing.  We both had to learn, growing up with very little.  We know how to stretch, how to make do, and how to enjoy.

Confession #3: I hate the word "budget."  I feel like I'm going into convulsions when I hear it.  For years I didn't know why, and I still don't think that I truly understand everything, but now I have a feeling that it probably has something to do with budget = not enough.  At least in my mind.  And I always worry about not having enough.  Ask my family.  They'll tell you that usually I make too much food.  That, I think, is left from the days of always being hungry, eating very little.

Growing up, money always caused fights.  Perhaps that's another reason why I avoid it.  I don't like confrontation.  Oh sure, I'll become Darth Vader on steroids if I feel someone is threatening one of my babies, but other than that I avoid conflict. (I'm working on that, too.)

Julia Cameron writes that most of us believe that work is work, play is fun, and the two don't intersect.  We somehow feel like what we have to do with our lives and what we want to do are two different things.  I know I definitely believed that growing up!  Now I have a few lovely women in my life who show me that life can be different.  They have embraced their creativity and their desires and have found a way to work from this depth.  It's truly inspirational.

And so as part of this week's tasks, I'm to write in my morning pages about the god I believe in and the god I want to believe in.  Those tend to be two different versions of reality.  And yet if I go back to the beginning of my journey into The Artist's Way I remember that my creativity and desires come from someplace.  If I believe that they come from God, then shouldn't I also believe that this Creator has given me the means to use my own creativity?

It seems Peanuts was on the right track:

Our Puritan work ethic here in the US seems to tell us that hard work = value/good, so something that is easy must have a lesser value.  Why is that?  Maybe we have certain talents and so particular tasks just seem easy or more fun or less stressful because we are working from within our talents instead of fighting against them.  It doesn't necessarily mean less work, just a different kind of work.

Part of this old cliche, "let go and let God," really seems to be about money.  If I believe in scarcity, then that is what I'll face.  If I believe in abundance, then that is what I'll see.  I've tried this on a small scale, being intentional about little things, trusting that everything will work out, and when I am really focused on that intentionality, life tends to appear very abundant indeed.

Julia Cameron has a different way of putting this, "Because art is born in expansion, in a belief in sufficiency of supply, it is critical that we pamper ourselves for the sense of abundance it brings to us." Pampering may take many different forms.  For me, there are a few things that make me feel really good, and they aren't even that extravagant:

A good cup of coffee

A good book

Pretty stationary, usually greeting cards

A meal from one of my favorite fast food places -- Pizza Scmizza or Burgerville or Baja Fresh

But I realized recently that even though these are little things, I don't always indulge.  I would really love to go to a coffee shop by myself and sit for an hour and just write.  So why don't I do that?  I have plenty of excuses -- many legitimate -- but I can't blame God or the Universe or whatever for holding me back when I don't take the first step myself.

And so the tasks this week are focused on allowing little luxuries and looking at abundance:

• Find five pretty or interesting rocks or flowers or leaves as a reminder that abundance is in nature.
• Bake something. (There is a nutmeg donut recipe I've been wanting to try!)
• Send notes -- postcards or the like -- to five friends.
• Reread the Basic Principles and the Artist's Prayer each day.
• Say "yes!" to freebies.
• Collect images that represent what you'd love doing in life.
• Change or clear something in the home environment.

This week is a busy week, full of more work assignments and school assignments and other pressing tasks than I care to admit.  But I am going to find the time to create a little luxury in life, let my artist breathe a bit, and reflect on life's abundance.

Week Two: Identity

This morning before work I decided to read a bit from The Artist's Way. Week Two is underway, so it's time to push forward with the reading. In this week, the topic of crazymakers struck home.

Crazymaker, definition: one who is charming, inventive, and tends to be a destructive force in the lives of others.

They can

• be unreliable
• expect special treatment
• be expensive
• blame others
• zap energy
• create drama

Most importantly they deny what they are doing.  I know the crazymaker in my life. Now it's a matter of trying to separate myself, trying to create boundaries. I've been attempting to do this for several months now with some small success. We'll see what happens as I continue down this road.

Part of my job this week as a "recovering artist" (or at least one who is finding her sense of self) is to go through some of the tasks at the end of this chapter. I could complete each of these tasks this evening and say "See, I'm done!" but I don't think that is the point. Instead I am going to list the tasks and ask this week progresses I'll do something here and there until I reach the end of Week Two.

Tasks:

• Determine where my time goes by listing five major activities and how much time I spent on them, dividing the list by "shoulds" and "wants."
• List 20 things I enjoy doing and the last time I did each thing.
• Out of that list, find two things to do this week -- even if it's only for 15 mintues.
• Re-read my affirmations.
• List ten imaginary lives (things I think in my dreams, if I were another me, I'd do) and see if there's some activity I could do that's related to a pretend Me. (Confession: One imaginary life is be a singer, like a singer of showtunes or Big Band classics. Today, I indulged in that a big by singing "Don't Rain on My Parade" at the top of my lungs in my car. It was no Carnegie Hall, but then again I'm no Barbara. I think we'll call it even for the week.)
• List ten "tiny" changes, then see about setting one in motion.

WOW. That is quite the list! Part of me wants to yell "You're kidding yourself! Where are you going to find time for this?!" And it's true. This week is very busy. And it's winter, the time when I feel like sleeping as soon as the sun goes down (which is, inconveniently, around 5PM right now). But this is a priority in my life. It has to be. I am learning to take care of myself.

The Art of Language and Interpretation

Warning: This post is a bit long and rambling and has only a tenuous connection to my journey through The Artist's Way. You don't need to feel compelled to read it.
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Yesterday I had an all-day long meeting at work.  I work for a religious institution that employs somewhat more than 200 people (I don't know how many, exactly, but that's about how many people were at the mandatory employee meeting, the first I've attended and apparent the first that's ever taken place mid-year). I love my job, but the idea of spending a day in a meeting when I could be doing other, more productive, things did not sound too appealing. However, since my magical snow dance did not produce the desires effect of a snow day, off to the meeting I went bright and early that morning.

Confession: I did not read the book that was required reading before the meeting.
Confession #2: Only part of me felt guilty for not reading the book.
Confession #2-b: The title of the book offended me and gave me the excuse I was looking for to just skim a bit and not really read it.
Confession #3: After hearing the keynote speaker (the author of the book) I wish that I had read the book.

The keynote address electrified the room and made me start thinking about the art of language. I am perhaps only referring to this as art because of my recent encounters with The Artist's Way, but I was struck by how people use language.  I work at a religious institution. A Christian religious institution. And it was a push to get a job there because this place only hires Christians and that is not the way I would identify myself.  I used to use that term years ago, but growing up I always felt like an outsider, no matter how much I looked and sounded like the perfect Christian.  When I became an adult, I rejected anything religious. Sure, I had a degree in "that stuff," and I could talk with the best, but I was an avowed agnostic and proud of it.  My transformation to a spiritual person came along the time of my first venture into The Artist's Way in 2008.  It was that book, and the good friend who introduced me to it, that paved the way for other books and lectures on CD, most notably those of Dr. Wayne Dyer. While I don't necessarily agree with everything that this man says (and I'm okay with that, I don't believe that it's possible to 100% agree with someone 100% of the time), I felt drawn to his views on spirituality and found myself agreeing with things like  

• "My belief is that the truth is a truth until you organize it, and then becomes a lie. I don't think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and peace. What I tell people is don't be Christian, be Christ-like. Don't be Buddhist, be Buddha-like" 

and  

• "Religion is orthodoxy, rules and historical scriptures maintained by people over long periods of time. Generally people are raised to obey the customs and practices of that religion without question. These are customs and expectations from outside the person and do not fit my definition of spiritual." 

Then Anne Rice came out in 2010, saying "For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity." Okay. That's something I understand, too.

I also understand those who want to be part of a religion. I think that most people generally feel the need for a sense of belonging. Some people belong to a religion, some a book club, and some a bingo group that's met every Friday night for the past 40 years. All of these things, in my mind, offer a similar draw: like-minded people with rituals and language that give them a common history.  It makes sense.  It's appealing.

Of course we also want to be considered unique or at least a bit on the outside. This is where religious groups have the advantage: they can claim persecution in some form (real or perceived) and that gives the members a binding cause, something that keeps them together, something that draws on their protective natures. (Think about Mormons in the late 19th century: that interpretation of religion might've died with all the others that popped up around that time except for the fact that people started attacking them. Everyone loves an underdog. Now Mormons are one of the fastest-growing denominations in the world -- and it's not just because they tend to have large families!)  It was always amusing to me how Christians could still claim to be outsiders even when they are the largest religion in the world.  Then I came to the Persecution Realization and it all made sense.

Back to my job.  The me several years ago would have been very uncomfortable with the notion of prayer, the Jesus and God talk that happens all the time and is just a normal part of every day at Work. The new me, the one comfortable in my spirituality, the one who believes that all religions have the same basic premise and same desires, the one who is comfortable talking about the Universe and whatever binds all humanity together the same way that some people talk about God -- that me found a way to be real, be myself, and fit in at Work.  I looked for the commonalities and found them and feel that it means I can be honest with myself even as I work at Work.  Someone may discuss a "relationship with Jesus" (as in "I'm not a religious nutter, I just want a relationship with this non-physical being" as if merely tacking the word relationship on to something makes it better, more sophisticated).  I may have my own ideas about that that "relationship" entails, but the bottom line is that the person is doing something every day to connect with his/her spiritual self and is trying to grow and if he/she needs to call it a relationship and have certain rituals around that, so be it.  When someone asks me to pray, I no longer feel a panic or a hostility (two emotions quite common to my early adult self), and while my thoughts on prayer may be different than theirs, I think that the underlying point of it all is the same.  One person may be "talking to God" and the other may be meditating, and even though talking to someone who is not there sounds a bit more crazy than the quiet self-reflection that is meditation, I do believe the outcomes are actually pretty similar.


Which brings me back to the art of language. The author speaking yesterday was amazing. I found myself agreeing with him and thinking that if we had a personal conversation we would find a lot in common.  His premise was that religion (all religion, not just Christianity, but he focused on Christianity because of his audience) sustains the "life of the mind" because at its core it encourages empathy, it has an emphasis on relationships and understanding and that is useful when looking at various perspectives, its encouragement of creativity through a vision of a better world (peace, justice, etc.), and being open to mystery (because of its emphasis on faith). The explanations the author used to get us here made sense to me.  The problem, said the author, is that Christianity -- especially the American version and all its branches -- squashes the life of the mind. This is something that I've said for years, and so of course I perked up as the author started talking about this. He said that in the late 17th century some Age of Reason authors like John Locke (yes, the same one who inspired our Founding Fathers) were so tired of the religious crazies they saw that they wrote about how religion, specifically Christianity, was Reasonable.  Sounds good, right?  Wrong! The author yesterday traced how this belief in Reasonableness lead, eventually, to beliefs like:

• The Bible is full of facts.
• The Bible is unerringly true.
• The Bible is the direct Word of God.
• The Bible is scientific. (Creationists, this is you.)

When people claim these things and truly believe them, it bothers me. The Bible is a religious book that talks about spirituality.  It is not scientific. It is not reasonable. It was never meant to be.  It is, instead, filled with symbols and metaphors and paradox -- just like religion.  And that's okay. The paradoxes within spiritual beliefs should lead people to question and explore: that is how religion and the life of the mind are so well-suited. (No more of this mindless babble: "The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it." garbage on bumper stickers. I get so mad when I read crap like that!) 

Of course the mind is stretched when there are differing perspectives that one must understand, wrestle with, etc., which is why having a Work that insists that everyone be Christian is a bit of a problem. If we are that insular, are we really nurturing the life of the mind?  Or are we self-limiting by imposing such boundaries?  I personally think that our hiring actions speak louder than words: we really care about your label more than we care about you and the underlying beliefs that drive you. Does it matter whether someone calls himself Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or just spiritual if the underlying themes for life -- equality, social justice, world peace, love for all, mercy and grace -- are the same?  I don't think that it matters what language one uses to describe one's self. 

And perhaps that's where I differ from my colleagues and from some friends and family.  I don't wrestle with the question "What does it mean to ___________ from a Christian perspective?"  I just operate in my job using the same principles that are important to my life.  And I do think that if we drilled down to look at what we all value, regardless of what terminology we use, we'd find plenty of common ground.

Isn't it funny that language, something that gives us tools by which we can communicate, also is responsible for the barriers that divide us? And for all my Christian friends out there, perhaps that is the true message of the metaphor of Babel -- a (non-historical) story to illustrate not what happens when people try to reach God, but a story that shows what happens when we let our words divide us: all of humanity is scattered.

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand." -- Baruch Spinoza

This is my third day in a row of morning pages -- today I actually wrote in the morning! -- and already I am reawakening my original suspicion about them, developed in 2008, that they really are magical. Of course I do not mean magic as in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but more along the lines of something powerful. There is something to be said for writing one's ramblings and purging one's mind for a few minutes each day. For me, that act allows my brain to look for other entertainment, other thoughts and ideas. Usually, after a few days of pages my novel's plot jumps into focus and I know what happens next, or I have clarity for the direction my week should take, or I have more energy.

Or, like today, I wake up with a vivid dream about something that has been troubling me and I don't know what to do about it. And so I write. I write and write and write, hoping to put that troubling thing aside or find the answer, thinking that there is some mystery buried in the dream, in my subconscious, if only I can reach it.

Since I cannot seem to find the answers for which I am searching, I turn instead to continue my reading in the first chapter of The Artist's Way. This, it seems to me, is a more productive use of time and may, eventually, trick my subconscious into shedding more light on certain subjects. The chapter today seems most fitting because it discusses "core negative beliefs" that block one's creativity as an artist. It discusses using positive affirmations to find and rid one's self of negative beliefs. Cameron suggests picking an affirmation and repeating it to see what happens, so here it goes:

I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
I, MCB, am a brilliant and prolific writer.

Sure enough, my Censor (whom I like to call my Guilt Monster) rears its ugly head as I am writing and says all sorts of terrible things about me and my talent as I am trying to create positive affirmations. No surprise there. Having grown up in a culture where Guilt reigned supreme, I should not be surprised that my Guilt Monster wants to stick around. It's cozy here, warm and welcoming, and what's a homeless Guilt Monster to do? And so I keep him, throw him a bone, and continue blocking my own creativity.

Not any more!  I am sorry, Mr. Monster, but I am afraid that I will have to let you go. I know that this may take some time. You can be cute and furry and comforting and I am used to having you around, but I am afraid that you will have to go. You keep hurting me, and so I am going to build a shield that I can use in my defense until you finally decide to leave. This shield is made out of positive affirmations, just look:

I am creative.
I am a writer.
I am a good, brilliant, prolific, funny writer.
I am allowed to nurture my Artist.
My creative talents are a blessing and a gift and I will use them.

"Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage." -- Claude M. Bristol

Setting Intentions for 2011

It is the first day of 2011. I have never been one for resolutions because I feel they are usually just another way to feel guilt or shame and they are so rarely successful. Instead, I decided this year to set intentions for 2011.  The previous year seemed to be very difficult for most people I know and so part of me thinks that 2011 must be an improvement. Today is the day to start down that path of improvement.

I spent a few days thinking about what I wanted to do this year. My intentions for the year seemed to revolve around finishing a dissertation, writing more in my novel, discovering more ways to be artistic, improving my mental outlook, ensuring I have a job after June 1, and learning to be true to myself. This sounds like a broad scattering of things I would like to do, but I think that all can be classified under one heading: learning to be an artist.

When I was growing up, I thought that artists were people who painted or put together dynamic collages or sewed beautiful quilts or made every meal a beautiful feast fit for a five-star restaurant. None of those descriptions applied to me. I would look at those around me and think "I wish I could be more artistic," but nothing ever happened; I did not even try some things because I thought "I'm not the artistic type." As a teenager, I scoffed at those with artistic temperaments and thought that since that personality did not apply to me I could certainly never be artistic. I wanted stability, I had responsibilities, I could never just float through life on a wing and a paintbrush and expect it all to turn out well.

Instead, I would express my colorful nature through clothes, loud jewelry, bright colors on the living room walls.  This was not artistic, I thought, because it was something anyone could do. I would stay up late at night and write little stories about family trips and just share them with family on e-mail. This was not artistic, I thought, because it was something anyone could do. I would try new recipes and feed the masses of family and friends with the new loaves I kneaded and baked with love. This was not artistic, I thought, because it was something anyone could do.

It was not until 2008 that I started thinking, "Wait a minute. Maybe all of this is art, just not art like I'm used to." And maybe I could be artistic without having an artist's personality. I did not have to be the next Monet or the next Thomas Mann or even the next P.D.Q. Bach: I could be myself. And my self loved (loves) bright colors, good food, craft projects and photographs, writing and reading and gardening and life.

Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way helped me come to this realization about art.  As I wrote morning pages every day, as I walked the dog and absorbed the fresh air and beautiful scenery, I slowly started accepting myself as an artist, as someone who can be creative. And it really doesn't matter if I'm the next Monet or Mann or Mozart because I am not being creative for anyone else: I am being creative for me.

This brings me back to my intentions for 2011.  I have The Complete Artist's Way -- all three books in the series -- and I have been meaning to work through this in its entirety but I have not started. Or rather I start and then stop and then don't push myself to get back on the Horse of Another Color and keep going.  That is going to change this year.  There are 36 chapters total in this collection of three books.  I have 52 weeks in the year. And so I am going to start my artistic journey and see where I end up in 2011. According to Julia Cameron, I need a Creativity Contract, so here it goes:

I, MCB, understand that I am undertaking an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the 36-week duration of the course. I, MCB, commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfillment of each week's tasks. I, MCB, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions with which I will have to deal. I, MCB, commit myself to excellent self-care -- adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering -- for the duration of the course.

There. It's done. Let week one begin.