Today, I’m kicking off Week Four of the The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Integrity. Cameron warns that this week is designed to catapult me into introspection and integration of new self-awareness, and that it will likely be both very difficult and extremely exciting. After reading the chapter and realizing what I’m being asked to do this week, I can confirm that this week is going to be challenging. Let’s do this.

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Use Daily Pages to Tell Yourself the Truth

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” ~ Anton Chekhov

Cameron rephrases that quote to say that in order to have self-expression, we must first have a self to express, and she goes on to explain how this process of self discovery involves loss and gain simultaneously. We discover our boundaries which by nature separate us from the others in our life. We lose our misconceptions as we clarify our perceptions, and we release ambiguity and illusions of who we think we are. This process guides us to clarity, and clarity creates change.

This is what we’re after, after all.

Writing the Daily Pages every day is sometimes met with resistance because this is the place we tell ourselves the truth. And when we encounter those days that elicit the statement, “It’s okay,” (about anything) the Pages would force us to admit to ourselves when “it’s okay” is actually ambiguous code for something that is indeed not okay. We know that admitting something is not okay will require us to change. To take action in some form. So we resist it.

As Cameron puts it, “this is how you’re feeling; what do you make of that? And what we make of that is often art.”

Creativity is not what we turn to to escape reality; creativity is how we embrace, accept, and ground ourselves deeper into the reality of the present time.

Recovering a sense of integrity is about grappling with our changing self-definition. I mentioned last week about my belief that we are in a collective liminal season. As a civilization, we are grappling with this process of releasing an old identity. There is a deep sense of both loss and gain. (Side note: if you only see one or the other, remember that you will always see what you choose to focus on.) To navigate this liminal space – this threshold crossing of what was and what will be – we must find something solid to steady ourselves as we move forward.

Grab the handrail that is the Daily Pages.

Tell yourself the truth every day. Journal the mundane events of yesterday, the exciting hope for your tomorrow, your fears and sorrows, and admit to yourself the state of your heart and mind. You will be tempted to ignore parts of what you see, but resist that temptation. Eat the death cookies when you notice them, because delaying action when your soul is asking you to do something will only stall your progress.

Reading Deprivation Week

Alright, this one is making me squirm in my chair. The main tool to employ this week is reading deprivation. Cameron is saying to take a week off from reading! She says that for most artists, consuming the words of others is like eating greasy food. It clogs the system and leaves us feeling fried. Depriving ourselves of reading for a period of time clears space for our true self to emerge. Without distractions, we have no other option other than to engage our senses with the 3D world around us.

I don’t like this. I’ll admit that. For the last couple of years, I’ve read at least one book per month – all self-help or business books. But over the last 30 days or so, my reading (and my appetite for reading) has ramped up significantly. I’ve finished three books and am currently reading four more. I finished an audiobook and bought the paperback which I’ve started rereading and taking notes on. And this doesn’t even count the various newsletters and blog posts I read each week.

I have purchased several more audiobooks, too. And unlike my past habit of only listening to books and then forgetting 85% of what I consumed, I’ve been taking notes and journaling on the books I’m reading right now. I’m doing more than ever to learn from what I’m consuming, and much of what I am capturing is coming out in my writing, so it feels meaningful and productive.

But I’m committed to this process, Julia. So I will deprive myself of reading this week. I’m moving these stacks of books to a safe place in my studio to remove the temptation of reading before bed.

Cameron is well aware that this will not be easy, but she encourages that this effort will open up the floodgates of our own thoughts, feelings, and art. The time we gain back from deprioritizing our consumption of others’ work will have the opportunity to be filled with our own artistic expression.

So, here we go. A week without reading; a chance to create a bit more space within the walls of my heart and mind.

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