For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading “The Artists Way” a 12 week inner creative healing book/journey by Julia Cameron…& let’s just say — healing is DEFINITELY in full effect, especially after reading this weeks chapter….
Currently I’m on chapter 4–“recovering a sense of integrity” (or week 4) of this inner creative healing process….& with what I’ve been moving through this past week or so, this chapter honestly couldn’t have reached me at a better time.
I asked for guidance & I listened. The universe came through. God came through. And it can happen for you too…
Stand In Integrity
Chapter 4 covers the topic around integrity. In other words, this weeks reading shared potent information on what creating honest changes with yourself looks and feel like.
What I discovered is that in order to create real honest changes within ourselves, it requires us then to get real honest….with ourselves.
Many of us though, don’t know how to be honest or real with ourselves. Many of us barely take the time to sit with ourselves, with our thoughts, feelings, long enough to understand them, let alone understand who we are. And so this can seem like a very difficult and somewhat even scary process to endure…
Yet once we can get to a place of true honesty with ourselves, we’ll find that the process is also EXTREMELY exciting, too.
It’s this sense of living with integrity or truth that is key, and is what helps us to reestablish a new definition for ourself…. It’s what helps us to become who we really are. Our true selves.
Get Honest With How You Feel
A powerful tool to help us heal, and also a tool mentioned in the Artists Way, is to establish a daily & consistent routine for ourselves of journaling, deemed— daily pages.
The chapter of this week predominantly focuses on the tool of journaling (or daily pages) and how it can be used to help us redefine or define who we actually are.
Through journaling, we begin to sort through the differences between our “real feelings,” which are often secret, and our “OFFICIAL feelings,” those on the record for public display & often what comes up as— “I feel okay about that…”
Let Go & Let God
“I feel Okay” is a blanket word for most of us. It covers all sorts of icky feelings…and so “we officially feel okay”….. but do we?
We can find out how we really feel through exploring our REAL feelings. We do this…. through daily pages.
It’s in these moments, where we get to write, and flow with our thoughts, that we can start to fully understand what we’re moving through or why things are happening as they are.
If you have the creeping feeling that your partner is not being totally honest with you, the daily pages are liable to bring this creepy possibility up— and with it the responsibility for an unsettling, uncomfortable but REAL conversation.
Morning pages are our moment to speak one on one with god!!!!!
Be Here, Now
In order to live in full self expression of who we truly are, we first need a self. Daily pages are our way to create our new sense of self.
“Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure.” — anonymous
As you continue to show up for yourself in this way, offering yourself a brief moment, on a daily basis, of taking your thoughts from your mind & bringing it onto paper— you will notice a shift start to happen. And that’s because as we lose our vagueness about ourself, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is here, in this moment, that we contact the creative TRUE self.
The Good…& Not So Good
In time, as we continue to create healing space for ourselves, we end up losing the false self we were sustaining for so long. The loss of this false self though can feel traumatic….you may even find yourself feeling or thinking: “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t recognize me.”
This is normal & to be expected. You’re changing. You’re ascending. Breathe. Take it in. Don’t give up. Keep going. Continue showing up for yourself. Keep journaling!!!!! Release. Because healing is taking place….
The New You
Welcome to your new life— you’re awakening to your truth.
Think of yourself as an accident victim waking away from the crash: your old life has crashed and burned; your new life isn’t apparent yet. You may feel yourself to be temporarily without a vehicle. Just keep walking.
It may be difficult for you to realize that this process of going inside and writing daily pages can open an inner door through which your creator helps and guides you. Yet, I’m living proof, as well as many others, that this is in fact the case.
Our willingness to heal and to do all the things is what swings this inner door open. The daily pages symbolize our willingness to speak to and hear god. Daily pages lead us into many other changes that come from God and lead us to God. This is the hand of God moving through your hand as you write. It is very powerful. Trust that.
**Exercises/affirmations to try—**
Affirmations (Repeat Daily)
I receive all good the world has to offer.
I trust my perceptions
A stronger and clearer me is emerging
I am recovering and enjoying my identity
Try this guided affirmation meditation I recorded on insight timer. Click here to listen
Buried Dreams, an EXERCISE:
Here’s an exercise that coincides with chapter 4 of “The Artists Way” that can help you to start this recovery process of redefining your true self. Below is an example of how I did it. See what you come up with for yourself. Do a little digging. Be fast. Be messy. Don’t think so deeply about answers. This is an exercise in spontaneity, so be sure to write your answers out quickly. Speed kills the inner critic.
1. List 3-5 hobbies that sound fun:
Writing
Deep conversations
Hiking
Hanging with friends/adventures
Play
2. List 3-5 classes that sound fun:
Paint/wine
Learning how to finance my money
Learning about the mind
Learning how to market
Learning how to run a successful business
3. List 3-5 things you personally would never do that sound fun:
Bungee jump into water
Scooba-dive
Swimming in an open water (deep sea)
4. List 3-5 skills that would be fun to have:
Marketing
Public speaking
Singing/acting
Knew how to play sports
An instrument (any)
5. List 3-5 things you used to enjoy doing:
Play with toys
Watch tv
Hang out inside with family
Be careless & free with friends
Drink & party
6. List 3-5 silly things you would like to try once:
Act as a student and mingle with other students
Walk around like I’m famous and have a camera follow me in the city with ppl watching me
Put on a talent show of some sort/host a big event
Dress up / go to a drag show
Reading deprivation:
Words can be like tiny tranquilizers. Try a week of reading deprivation. No reading at all.
Like greasy food, over stimulation can clog our system. Too much of it and we feel, yes, fried.
It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually filling the well.
Reading deprivation casts us into our inner silence, a space some of us begin to immediately fill with new words— long, gossipy conversations, television binging, the radio as a constant, chatty companion.
We often cannot hear our own inner voice, the voice of our artists inspiration, above the static.
If we monitor the inflow and keep it to a minimum, we will be rewarded for our reading deprivation with embarrassing speed. Our reward will be a new outflow.
Our own art, our own thoughts and feelings, will begin to nudge aside the sludge of blockage, to loosen it and move it upward and outward until once again our well is running freely.
This weeks exercise— NO READING!!! (If you read this post first, that’s okay…you can start fresh now)
The nasty bottom line is this: sooner or later, if you are not reading, you WILL run out of work and be forced to play.
“I learned that the real creator was my inner self, the shakti…That desire to do something is God inside talking through us.” — Michele shea
