“Why indeed must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb... the most active and dynamic of all?” - Mary Daly
In my last post, I Love Being a Woman with a Beautiful Desk, I explained that I am reading The Artist’s Way (TAW) with a community of peers. Over the coming 12 weeks, I will be delving into The Artist’s Way. Today, I am sharing my favorite quotes from the Introduction.
On the morning of 9/29, I renewed my practice of morning pages. This is a practice I had heard of and picked up here and there. I’d write my morning pages for a few months in school here, for a few months post-university there. I eventually forgot them. Now that I am reading the book, I am fully committed to them and I feel that they have already transformed me.
So far, I have woken up happy to write every morning. I have even gone to bed craving the morning, so that I can write and be in my space - the silence of the early morning. This is a lovely time - with the darkness, the sun rising, my piano music going, the kittens loving on me, my tea, and my journal. I have learned that 6am can be sweet. This 6am is a sweet creature.
I look forward to the coming 12 weeks of delving into this book and this artistic practice. P.S. There are also so many more stunning quotes in the margins of this book. I am not including any more than Mary Daly’s here because I don’t want to spoil any surprises and highly recommend the book.
Without further ado…
The Artist’s Way: Introduction
XXII “When the word God is used in these pages you may substitute the word with good orderly direction or flow. What we are talking about is creative energy. God is a useful shorthand for many of us but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source and Higher Power… The point is not what you name it, the point is that you try using it. For many of us thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping-off place.”
XXIII “I have come to believe that creativity is our true nature. That blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem. I have found this process of making spiritual contact to be both simple and straightforward.
In short, the theory doesn't matter as much as the practice itself does. What you are doing is creating pathways in your consciousness through which the creative forces can operate. Once you agree to clearing these pathways, your creativity emerges. In a sense, your creativity is like your blood; just as blood is the fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent.”
Spiritual Electricity: The Basic Principles
Pg. 1 “What we are talking about is an induced- or invited- spiritual experience... We undertake certain spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energy of the universe.
If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem.”
Pg. 2 “The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.”
Pg. 6 “We begin to excavate our buried dreams... We mourn the self we abandoned. We greet the self as we might greet a lover at the end of a long and costly war.”
Pg. 7 “To affect a creative recovery we must undergo a time of mourning… Our tears prepare the ground for our future growth. without this creative moistening, we may remain barren. We must allow the bolt of pain to strike us. Remember, this is useful pain; lightning illuminates.
Pg. 7 “As you learn to recognize, nurture, and protect your inner artist, you will be able to move beyond pain and creative constriction.”
The Basic Tools:
Pg. 9 “There are two pivotal tools in creative recovery: the morning pages and the artist date. A lasting creative awakening requires the use of both.”
Pg. 10 “The morning pages are three pages of long-hand writing, strictly stream of consciousness... They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain since that is one of their main functions.”
Pg. 12 “When people ask, “Why do we write morning pages?” I joke, “To get to the other side.” They think I'm kidding but I'm not. Morning pages do get us to the other side: the other side of our fear of our negativity and of our moods.”
Pg. 14 “We meditate to discover our own identity, our right place in the scheme of the universe. Through meditation, we acquire and eventually acknowledge our connection to an inner power source that has the ability to transform our outer world. In other words, meditation gives us not only the light of insight, but also the power for expansive change.”
Pg. 15 “The pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self. They are a trail that we follow into our own interior. Where we meet both our own creativity and our creator. Morning pages map our own interior. Without them, our dreams may remain terra incognita. Using them, the light of insight is coupled with the power for expansive change. It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action. The pages lead us out of despair and into undreamed-of solutions.”
Pg. 18 “An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.
Pg. 19 “Your artist is a child. Time with a parent matters more than money spent... It is the time commitment that is sacred.”
Pg. 20 “The morning pages acquaint us with what we think and what we think we need. We identify problem areas and concerns. We complain, enumerate, identify, isolate, fret. This is step one, analogous to prayer. In the course of the release engendered by our artist state, step two, we begin to hear solutions. Perhaps equally important, we begin to fund the creative reserves we will draw on in fulfilling our artistry.”
Pg. 21 “As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them. I call this process filling the well.
Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention; its midwife is detail. Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention on to details (for instance the excruciatingly beautiful curve of a lost lover’s neck). Art may seem to involve broad strokes, grand schemes, great plans. But it is the attention to detail that stays with us; the singular image is what haunts us and becomes art. Even in the midst of pain, this singular image brings delight.”
Pg. 21 “The language of art is image, symbol... The artist language is a central one, a language of felt experience. When we work at our art, we dip into the well of our experience and scoop out images... In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun... do what intrigues you, explore what interests you think mystery, not mastery.... a mystery draws us in, leads us on, lures us.”
Finally, welcome to *Spirit Study*.
These TAW posts, upcoming interviews, and any of my writing that references the Holy Spirit will fall under the new category of spirit studies. I truly enjoy this topic and look forward to discovering what Spirit will reveal through research and writing here.
If this interests you, please share and leave a note in the comments. What is your concept of the Holy Spirit? What does divinity mean to you? Do you have any experience with The Artist’s Way? What is your favorite spiritual or religious text?
Merci for reading.
sincerely,