Week 9- Recovering a Sense of Compassion

The Artist’s Way --

A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Recovering a Sense of Compassion


This week finds us facing the internal blocks to creativity. It may be tempting to abandon ship at this point. Don’t! We will explore and acknowledge the emotional difficulties that beset us in the past as we made creative efforts. We will undertake healing the shame of past failures. We will gain in compassion as we re-parent the frightened artist child who yearns for creative accomplishment. We will learn tools to dismantle emotional blocks and support renewed risk.


KEY IDEAS:

Fear

Blocked artists are not lazy – they are blocked & frightened.
The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist at all.
Use love for your artist to cure its fear.
Enthusiasm

Being an artist requires enthusiasm more than discipline.
Our artist child can best be enticed by treating the work as enthusiastic play.
Creative U-Turn

Those who are recovering but still addicted to sympathy can create self-sabotaging behaviors or U-turns.
The ability to avoid or recover from U-turns is powerful.
A successful career is built on surviving failures.
Once we admit the need for help, help arrives.
Blasting Through Blocks

5 steps to working through a block – page 159


Read Chapter nine
Read your Morning Pages (see task 1)
Do the rest of the Tasks at the end of the chapter
Read “Basic Principles” daily
Read Affirmations daily
Write Morning Pages daily
Go on an Artist’s Date this week