In this final week of The Artist’s Way, we acknowledge that creativity requires a heavy dose of trust. This process through the book has certainly helped me to develop that trust. Cameron includes a reminder that when we follow the whisper in our souls, the Creator steps up to support us. It is through our commitment to our truest goals and desires that the universe “mirrors that yes and expands it.” In today’s post, I’m reflecting on Week Twelve: Recovering a Sense of Faith.

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.

When I first began this experiment, I felt lost and maybe even a little depressed. I viewed this middle space as some kind of purgatory. Like a child sent to stick my nose in the corner and think about what I had done wrong until I felt sorry enough to apologize and ask forgiveness, I accepted this “punishment.” (Mind you, I had done nothing wrong; I was just disappointed that what I needed, what I had to offer, and what my business needed were no longer overlapping in the Venn diagram.)

I held onto this hope that I would only be relegated to the corner a short time – just until I learned my lesson – and I was determined to learn it as fast as I could. I made this self-initiated project my job because I didn’t have a real job, and sensible adults have jobs! I thought if I took it seriously, I could figure my way out of this middle space and get on with my life with a grand gesture, a launch, a big announcement about what Amber Gray is doing now that she sold her business.

To my surprise, the lesson that I learned “as fast as I could” was not how to get out of a liminal space but how to surrender to it. This type of surrender wasn’t one of abandonment or forfeiture, but of acceptance and trust.

The liminal has not held me captive, it has protected me like a cocoon. Surrendering to this cocoon’s power to dissolve my former identity and my tightly-held beliefs just so happens to be the first step towards coming out of the liminal space. I didn’t know that, but I chose to trust and see. It only works because I have faith that I am becoming something new. The imaginal cells of my being are rearranging – and without the cocoon, I cannot survive this process. This is why I have started calling the liminal space (my cocoon) a gift.

I feel like this quote sums it up well:

There is a path for each of us. When we are on our right path, we have a sure-footedness. We know the next right action – although not necessarily what is just around the bend. By trusting, we learn to trust. ~ Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

And I have learned to trust, because God has mirrored my yes and expanded it, just like Julia said it would happen. She says that our ideas form in drips and drops, not by squared-off building blocks. She goes on to say that we need to trust the darkness. It’s from darkness that our bright ideas are born.

Choosing to work through The Artist’s Way in my liminal space feels quite serendipitous. I didn’t realize how this book would save me from my old ruts and change so much about how I think about myself and my future. Cameron wrote this book for blocked creatives, but I think it fits perfectly within the liminal space, too. Any kind of in-between season, stuck-ness, or transition has similar challenges and the same solution.

We must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. ~ Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

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