Chapter 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
The Artist's Way Journey
Welcome to the fifth post in a 12-week series dedicated to exploring creativity and artistic identity through Julia Cameron’s 1994 course The Artist’s Way! Whether you are completing the course alongside me, joining us in the future, or here to learn from my insights and reflections, the following series of posts will remain a safe space for discussion and reflection wherever you are in your artistic journey.
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Chapter 5 challenged my limiting beliefs and pulled me from the virtue trap.
“This week you are asked to examine your payoffs in remaining stuck. You will explore how you curtail your own possibilities by placing limits on the good you can receive. You will examine the cost of settling for appearing good instead of being authentic. You may find yourself thinking about radical changes, no longer ruling out your growth by making others the cause of your constriction.”
Reflecting on Chapter 5
Chapter 5 focuses on taking yourself and your art seriously and breaking through the limiting beliefs and forms of self-sabotage that stand between you and creative fulfilment. One of the core messages in this chapter (and one that I wholeheartedly believe in) is that by depriving yourself of your creativity, you are then, in turn, also depriving the world. Your work is a gift meant to be received by those who need it. By holding back and denying your inner artist, you are smothering a small, precious beacon of hope.
I am guilty of self-sabotage and have long inhabited a scarcity mindset. I have a misguided tendency to ration my joy. Let me save this book for a sunnier day. If I eat all these berries now, I won’t have any on another day when I really feel like them. I’ve already done x y z this week, I should give myself something to enjoy next week.
I recognise how this pattern of savouring has served me — I know how to cherish small, simple things, I am patient, consumption doesn’t come naturally and so I know how to save well. But in many ways, this mindset has hurt me as much as it has tried to protect me. I know that it stems from a long battle with depression and a (false) belief that if I enjoy the nice things now, there will be no nice things later and the world will return to a bleak grey.
“Many of us have made a virtue out of deprivation. We have embraced a long-suffering artistic anorexia as a martyr’s cross.”
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, p.98
I own so many books I’m dying to read, but at the same time, allowing myself to “binge” and read them all feels irresponsible. Never mind how much joy they could bring me and all the stories I could immerse myself in. Never mind that in a few days from now, the berries will be soft and mushy. At least if I have books on the shelf and berries in my fridge, I know I have a cushion to fall back on; I know the future has hope.
This virtuous mindset plagues us all in our own unique ways, but it doesn’t truly serve us — nor our art. A constant state of limbo is stifling, confusing, and disorientating. It’s difficult to create from. This chapter asks us to name our forbidden joys and dare to indulge in them. It asks us to interrogate our payoffs — what is the perceived benefit of staying creatively blocked? How does depriving ourselves of play, our favourite things, and exploring our creativity freely or even obsessively, help us? How does it help the people we love? How does it help the world?
Is it worth it?
I didn’t think so.
“Recovery is the process of finding the river and saying yes to the flow, rapids and all. We startle ourselves by saying yes instead of no to opportunities…By holding lightly to an attitude of gentle exploration, we can begin to lean into creative expansion.”
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, p.95
Chapter 5 Check-In:
Are you still writing your morning pages?
Did you have an artist date this week? What did you do?
What is one way you self-sabotage your inner artist? Why do you do it? What might happen if, just this once, you defied it?
Yours in art and in hope,
Caitlin ❧