The Artist’s Way – 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

This is the fifth in a 12-post series about my experience with The Artist’s Way as experienced in a weekly group moderated by Helen, a kindred spirit who owns Camp Utopia. If you’ve just joined me, please begin at the beginning with The Artist’s Way – 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety.

If you are still with me, welcome back! Each week I’ll post the highlights from each class. This is not meant to be the complete experience – for that, I suggest you get the book and take the journey yourself.

Checking In

Our yoga postures are designed to line up with the chakra appropriate to where we are in the process. I don’t know if I believe in chakras or not, but hey, I’m up for anything.

The Morning Pages

I rebelled and blew off my morning pages. I brought a BLT to eat for lunch during class – completely blowing my eating plan. I’m rebelling this week and for an A student who always does her homework, this is some major growth!

About that Shower of Abundance card from last week . . .

Our financial situation is good and I’m grateful. However, the dark cloud of the IRS settled over our house last February, when our refund was horribly delayed – I was even assigned a taxpayer advocate. We didn’t do anything wrong, it was just our turn for our return to be examined more closely. Rather than being grateful that it wasn’t a full-blown audit, I go thung up on the principle of the thing. How dare they do this to me! I always prepare a pristine tax return and pride myself on its accuracy. After having a mini-meltdown and bursting into tears, I finally said, “I give up. I’m just going to go an as though we’ll never get this refund.” Then I was overcome with an urge to revamp our budget and what a revelation! I tweaked it and came up with some doable goals and will blog about that later. When I checked our bank balance online guess what? The IRS refund had been direct deposited into our account at long last, with interest, due to their delay. Wow! Perhaps there is something to this whole surrendering thing.

The Artist’s Date

I had two artist’s dates – I saw X-Men First Class (thoroughly enjoyed it) and went sailing with some new friends (it had been a long time since I’d sailed – loved it – except for that one scary gust of wind).

“Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually.” – Eileen Caddy

Recovering a Sense of Possibility

This week is a biggie. I examined the cost of settling for appearing good instead of being authentic. I also looked at right-dependence on the universe as source. My job is to listen. I’ll experiment with this in the morning pages. I’ll ask for answers at night before I go to sleep, then listen for answers in the morning as I write. Dependence on the creator within frees me from all other dependencies. Fears disappear, spontaneity returns, and real intimacy (rather than emotional hostage-taking) is possible.

I examined the “virtue trap” where I concentrate so much on others that I don’t take the time my artist requires – time to recharge – alone time. I don’t fall into the virtue trap much. Perhaps I’m just naturally selfish.

My instructor gave us all this card.

Start being intensely selfish.
Get hungry for the things that are truly important to you.
Think of the people you respect and love, the moments you relish, the impact you want to have, the legacy you want to leave.
Bottom line: don’t was your time on anything else.