Go Beyond The Artist's Way: Make Heaven on Earth

Dear Reader,

Today I want to start talking about the deep ramifications and possibilities of our creative awakening.

Beyond The Artist's Way

Since I was a teenager I've loved Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.  I wouldn't be the rad lady I am today without Cameron's compassionate guide to recovering from creative blocks.  My own practice of Truth and Beauty Pages evolved out of Cameron's suggested Morning Pages.  And my practice of Hops evolved in part out of the gentle risks that Cameron encourages readers to take in the exercises throughout the 12 week program of The Artist's Way. Clearly, I'm indebted.

Cameron emphasizes the fact that creativity is a positive spiritual force which we ignore or neglect to cooperate with at our own peril.  She notes that many people experience themselves as creatively blocked because of wounding and criticism they've received throughout their lives (especially in childhood) and offers exercises and fresh perspectives to help heal these blocks.

Cameron's suggestions helped me a great deal, but following them never quite led me into the conflagration of creative bliss that I hoped to enter-- so I evolved my own practices.  I always wondered how it could be that Cameron's suggestions didn't quite work for me, since I completely trusted Cameron's premise regarding the spiritual electricity of the creative principle and I faithfully followed her pointers.

I finally figured out the source of my difficulty when I remain with Cameron's approach:  Cameron figures creative recovery as largely a process which leads to mostly personal and rather conventional artistic fulfillment. Even when she talks about an instance of a successful "cluster" of recovering artists helping one another to grow creatively, the success that each artist attains is based on achievements in each individual's own career, achievements which take place within presently existing systems of recognition:
In Chicago there is a cluster that has been together for years. The group began with questions like, "Will I be able to write again?" and "I'd like to try to improve, but I'm scared," and "I really want to produce," and "I'd like to write a play." Years later, the cluster is the same, but the questions are different. "Who's throwing Ginny's Emmy nomination party?" and "Should Pam do her third play with the same theater company?" (221 The Artist's Way)
I can see the ways in which it would be neat to be nominated for an Emmy or to be setting up my third play with a cool theater company-- but on the other hand, that stuff isn't quite juicy enough for me.

The Gift World as the Point of Creativity

What do I mean? I mean that as I grow spiritually, the idea of winning an Emmy or Pulitzer or making it to the New York Times best seller list doesn't quite ring my bell like it used to.  This isn't because I've acquired a saintly distaste for wealth or fame-- it's just that I have another idea that sounds more fun.

What's my other idea? Realizing the gift world, or heaven on earth.

[caption id="attachment_291" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Fire Dancers at Burning Man, a temporary gift economy"][/caption]

What is the gift world? It's subjective experience of life in which your genius is fully supported and welcomed in its expression, and in which your needs and authentic preferences are joyously met by a provident universe.

Interestingly, the subjective experience of the gift world is brought about when you put your creative power to work in the project of fully supporting and welcoming the genius of others, and when you seek to joyously fulfill the needs and authentic preferences of others in a manner that most delights you.

In other words, the gift world is a subjective experience of life that comes about through making it objectively real for others. No one can be forced to enter the experience of the gift world since participation in it requires deliberate action, but everyone can be invited to it via generosity and kindness.

This idea has been with me for sometime. It began after I read Lewis Hyde's classic The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. It gained steam when I read about the Cornucopia level of consciousness in Ken Keyes' Jr. Handbook to Higher Consciousness.  It magnified for me recently as I've been reading Charles Eisenstein's excellent writings (which include elaborations of Hyde's work), and as I've been attending local Gift Circles.  The notion gelled just last week when I read on the American Visionary Art Museum's website that the most common theme of visionary art worldwide is the "backyard recreation of the Garden of Eden and other utopian visions-- quite literally building heaven on earth."

Now I've begun to suspect that the reason why my creative conflagration sometimes sputters is not because I'm creatively blocked or because I had a particularly wicked childhood-- it's because I haven't been asking enough of my creative power.  Wounding and criticism are endemic to the way our current culture works. Everyone has been deeply wounded, creatively and otherwise, because everyone has been encultured into the false state of separation that the teacher Don Miguel Ruiz calls "the dream of hell."

I've been playing small-- and yes, by playing small I mean aiming to get on the Best Seller List or win a Pulitzer.  Such goals are dry and dull because they're structurally part of the rather lame universe we're in-- the one where struggle and competition are normal, where some folks win big while others lose, where some get to be glamorous artists and authors and others are confined to drudgery.

I realized that the reason I'm completely uninterested in most work produced self-consciously as "art" is that such work tends to configure itself in a manner that aims to be legible within the present system -- the lack world. As such, even if it offers to communicate high ideals, it leaves me rather cold, because such ideals are betrayed by the very fact that the work presents itself as a cultural commodity rather than a pure gift.

Too often, this kind of work lacks an essential generosity-- it offers itself for the sake of being seen and admired rather than for the sake of giving forth love and power to its receiver.

I reflect, for example, that one of my most favorite poets, Rumi, who happens to also be the most popular poet amongst Americans gave his poems out wildly and freely.

Art-Makers Need to Eat, Too

But Carolyn- you might object -- of course artists offer their works as commodities! They need to eat and live, too.

Ah yes. They do. And I'm certainly not one who would insist that us geniuses should live in ascetic poverty.  I believe all beings deserve a lavish life.  I'm not saying that artists or any one else shouldn't be compensated for their work-- they should be.  We should all be supported as we offer forth what we most love to offer forth.

What I'm saying is that creative work is most inspiring and most exciting when it offers to freely lead us towards the realization of our best possibilities. And I'm suggesting that if you feel in any way creatively under-realized or blocked, perhaps the source of your discomfort is that you are seeking to make something that we will recognize as valuable "art" within our present condition rather than seeking to make things that call us into the state where we are empowered, expanding, free, realized.

Love,

Carolyn

Image Credit: "Burning at Burning Man" by meganpru, borrowed from Flickr under Creative Commons licensing