Pamela Grace

In Week 4 of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, we get into even more paradoxes, including how deprivation leads to creation. If I’m being totally honest, I read this chapter twice, with each reading about 24-hours apart. I found myself struggling to connect and needed to re-read multiple passages. Again – to be honest – it could have been the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) rearing it’s ugly head. However, I find it is worth mentioning since this week focuses on how outside distractions or pollutants (as Cameron refers to them) keep us from realizing our potential and connecting with our inner artist.

Cameron begins the chapter by explaining how the Morning Pages keep us honest about our true feelings and reveal our true self instead of the curated version of our self that we show to the world. Human nature gives us the impulse to protect ourselves from pain or discomfort – whether that’s physical, mental, or emotional. So, it is without a doubt that we avoid the Morning Pages because they often reveal hard truths.

Shakespeare is quoted as saying, “To thine own self be true,” but how can we be when we haven’t met our true self. This requires awareness. I’ve discovered that achieving Shakespeare’s maxim only occurs when we allow pretense to fall by the way side. The Morning Pages helped me do just that. When I let my brain dump anything onto the page – with no expectation or obligation – I get to the source of where my head and heart exist. The only path to growth is self-reflection.

But there’s more to it than that. We must claim it. We must manifest our goals by writing them down. This is where Post-It Note Affirmations come in. When we put our affirmations onto the page we are manifesting them into reality. This is the first step in acting on the truths that are revealed through the Morning Pages. Once your eyes have been opened, you must acknowledge the truth and move onward. Cameron describes this as a kriya (Sanskrit for spiritual emergency). It’s the spiritual protest of a broken illusion, demanding to unknow what has burst the bubble.

In hind sight, I’ve been struggling through my own kriya for a couple of years. For me, it felt like a massive shift in the universe; an impending doom that I languished over. It sent me into numerous depressive episodes and I questioned it’s origin obsessively. I fought against it for a long time because it felt impossible to overcome. I was trapped. And, didn’t know how to move forward. But no matter how hard I tried to rationalize, or plan, or overthink, I always came back to the same realization. I needed to make one specific change. And for me that change, was listed in the Week 4 tasks.

My creative block and insurmountable distress was caused by my environment. My home life changed dramatically when my mother came to live with me a few years ago. She moved in after being diagnosed with a rare anemia. I liken it to a short story that I teach my freshman class each year; House Taken Over by Julio Cortázar (read it free here). Much like the characters in the story, I found myself haunted, isolated, and diminished. My mother is notoriously (within my family, at least) known to be a hoarder. When she came to live with me, I made it abundantly clear that she could not continue that pattern. But, she did. And my home slowly became a cluttered and uncontrollable mess that resembled a storage unit more than a house. Without realizing it, both my son and I began to condense our own belongs and isolate to our own rooms, giving way for mom to claim the main parts of the house as her own.

Around the beginning of this year, mom had another medical emergency; a stroke. It was heartbreaking to see her health decline after she had worked so hard to recover from the anemia. While she was in the hospital, I found myself discarding things that she had long held onto, like broken down cardboard boxes and empty plastic jugs. Cameron refers to this as a search-and-discard impulse. For me, it started as something to do while I worried about her prognosis. However, it became an incredibly cathartic process. Cameron notes a wonderful example that hit me like a wrecking ball. She explained, “A house overflowing with odds and ends and tidbits you’ve held on to for someday has no space for the things that might truly enhance today (83).”

The hard truth was that my mother had filled my home with elements that did not inspire joy. Instead it festered resentment and negativity that led to a rift in our relationship. One that I had bottled up. I made allowances and reduced myself so that she would not be inconvenienced.

After mom’s relocation to permanent rehabilitative care, I started removing more of her hoard. It felt like clearing cobwebs and letting the sunshine in. I was removing that stagnant energy and I felt revitalized. I could breathe again. I felt compelled to reclaim my writing desk and that led to even more progress. Just having my own desk back allowed me to channel that inner artist and add over three thousand words to my manuscript – which is more than I have been able to add in over six months. Cameron shares a quote by Sanaya Roman that I found inspiring, “All you need to do to receive guidance is to ask for it and then listen.” This is exactly how the Morning Pages helped me get to the heart of my unhappiness and creative block. Those truths flowed onto the page and there was no denying them.

It’s difficult to write this week’s blog post, because it’s personal and emotional. I struggle with the vulnerability. And more importantly, how my family and friends will respond to this admission. However, I am reminded that our art only comes from a source that is grounded in reality. To quote Anne Lamott, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Hard things are hard for a reason. And healing your inner artist is also healing your inner child. That only happens when we release the traumas that hold us back.

Cameron shows us that removing clutter opens us to new possibilities. She steps further into this paradigm by explaining how what we consume or don’t consume aids our growth and can lead to greater creative output and connection to the present. It’s ultimately about removing distractions from our lives. Cameron refers to this as reading deprivation. For me it was actual piles of clutter. But in week 4, Cameron aligns it directly to reading. She states, “Reading deprivation casts us into our inner silence… (87).” By selectively choosing or removing distractions such as tv binging, gossipy conversations, and chatty radio, we allow our own inner voice to be heard. According to Psychology Today, this level of boredom leads to creativity.

I encourage you to take this a step further and consider how this resonates even more today, in our society of 24-hour news coverage and social media feeds. Our minds are inundated with constant streams of information. How can we create art that is distinctly human when we are never bored, when we are never in tune with our own inner voice? Even Einstein’s inventions and genius are credited to his gedankenexperiment, or “thought experiments.” Without this decluttering, or information deprivation, we are unable to focus on our own inner artist.

Week 4 has been a resounding message – honor your true self, claim your affirmations, act on your goals, and give yourself space to think and breathe. We must disconnect and declutter to live authentic, deeply connected lives. Or as the teenagers say, “Go touch grass.” This week, I’ll continue to remove the things that do not bring me joy by having a closet clean out. For those interested, you can shop my closet to purchase gently used and vintage clothing.

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