Week Ten in The Artist’s Way is about recovering a sense of self-protection, and explores creative blocks that we turn to when we don’t uphold boundaries for ourselves. This chapter of the book covers topics like workaholism, dry spells of creativity, or focusing on fame and competition instead of our craft itself. Today’s post will briefly cover how this week’s reading is landing for me.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. I’m using The Artist’s Way as a guiding tool, and sending shorter weekly recaps only via my newsletter. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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If I’m being really honest, I’m starting to feel slightly disengaged with the specific recommendations and insights within The Artist’s Way. Perhaps it’s because this is my second time through the book (I listened to the audiobook in September 2024.) Or perhaps these feelings are a result of my finally feeling like I’ve experienced a major breakthrough because my creative flow is wide open at the moment. Regardless of the reason why, I’ve decided to reflect on the chapter for the sake of following through, but I’m likely to keep going rogue with subsequent posts for the week 🙂

Week Ten: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

The chapter opens with three sentences that I think are worth quoting. I love this description of how creativity exists within each one of us, and I see why this particular book has been a helpful guide within the liminal space.

Creativity is God energy flowing through us, shaped by us, like light flowing through a crystal prism. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain. When we resist what that energy might show us or where it might take us, we often experience a shaky, out of control feeling. ~ Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

As I wrote about in Part I of my series on soul proprioception as a model or framework for making the best of a transitional season, the first thing we lose when we enter the liminal space is our perception of time. Without feeling oriented within time, our soul loses its grasp on who we are, what we want, and where we are. We are out of balance. We are lost. And if we don’t know at least this much, we certainly aren’t ready to make decisions about or take action towards where we are headed.

Why We Feel Trapped In Liminal Times

Just like with creativity, resisting what the liminal wants to show us results in a jarring and disorienting experience. We may even describe it as feeling trapped in the in-between. Without a clear perception of time as an anchor, fear starts lying to us with thoughts that we may never get out of this or that the only way out is to escape this unbelievable reality. So often, escapism comes in the form of addictions. Drugs, alcohol, sex, or even work are so often ways we attempt to escape this all-to-spacious in-between world.

For me, workaholism has been one of my biggest creative blockers in the past. It always felt like my duty to work hard. I believed that the consequences of letting off the gas were not only that I wouldn’t be successful with my goals, but also that I would let others down. But now I see that workaholism was actually the source of many of the failures or losses I was working so hard to avoid. What I couldn’t see then is that working like this was pulling me away from myself, my spouse, and my real feelings and desires.

This is why my first reaction upon entering into these liminal days was to kick into high gear and work my way out of this senseless void. For many years of my life, working hard was my go-to escapism tool, so this became like second nature.

In order to recover our creativity, we must learn to see workaholism as a creative block instead of a building block. ~ Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

There Are No Shortcuts Out of a Liminal Space

As I continue to immerse myself in the idea that a liminal space is a studio within which we can create the life of our dreams, I see why the lessons of the liminal must start with stripping away our old identity. If we carry our old ways into the new season, we may find that we made a U-turn instead of taking the onramp to the life we are meant to live. There are no shortcuts in the liminal space.

And because there are no shortcuts, we must learn to settle in and figuratively stand in Wuji (that’s a Chinese word for a set of standing meditation poses in qigong meaning “the ultimate nothingness“.) We must accept that there are fundamental, undeniable truths of the liminal space – the first of which is that the liminal is calling us to see it as a gift of reprieve, to stop fighting it, and to learn valuable skills that are most attainable from this position within nothingness.

These transition points of life can be the most profound and insightful times of our lives, but we must slow down. We must linger in the liminal and first acknowledge that we are no longer who we were or where we were. If we take the time to grieve that truth and say goodbye to the past from a place of gratitude and honor for our past selves, we start the process of preparing our soul to become who we are truly meant to be on the other side of the threshold.

Throughout this week, I’ll be expanding on the practical ways I am practicing standing in the void and improving my soul’s proprioception through a mix of balance work and heavy, deep inner work. My hope is that by sharing my experiences, those of you who are in your own liminal season will be enticed to try some of the methods that are helping me reorient myself and begin my journey across the liminal threshold, into the next chapter of life.

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