My Journey on The Artist’s Way

Welcome to the first instalment of my ongoing journey to rediscover and recover my Creative Self.  For those of you unfamiliar with the book titled The Artist’s Way, it was authored by Julia Cameron as a guide for readers to acknowledge their latent creative spark, while offering valuable tools to nurture one’s artistic fantasies into tangible reality. What struck me most about the book, from the brief descriptions I came across prior to reading, was a core perspective offered on creativity which I found to be in remarkable alignment with some of my own understandings. Julia Cameron suggests creativity itself cannot be taught, rather individuals need to be taught how to ‘let themselves be creative’. As if to suggest creativity is our natural state of being, as opposed to a mere artificial identity only reserved for an isolated slice of society who wish to pursue eccentric lifestyles and careers, meanwhile sacrificing security and stability. I will delve deeper into this shortly but for now let’s just say I, too, believe every one of you has the creative spark, and that ‘creativity’ goes far beyond the cognitive schemas we have collectively agreed upon within our greater hive-mind of society. This series of posts from myself will serve as my documentation for the process laid out by The Artist’s Way, as well as an opportunity for me to express any insights that may rise to the surface of my awareness as this journey unfolds. I suppose I should preface with a brief summation of why I even decided to undertake this course in the first place.

Why are you doing this, Joshua?

For the majority of my life, I have consistently engaged in typically creative hobbies, be it drawing, acting, writing, poetry, graphic design and many more. Perhaps they came naturally to me, or perhaps I was given adequate opportunities in childhood to satiate my inner child’s need for creative self-expression – something I recognise I was incredibly fortunate to experience. Nevertheless, it is more recently that I have begun to ponder on what it really means to be ‘creative’, or an ‘artist’. Fundamentally, I believe we are all creators. We create all the time, consciously or not. We create stories about ourselves, other people, we create plans for our futures, we create connections with people by simply acting on a spontaneous thought, we create by putting anything out into the world which was not there previously. Consciously or not, we are all creating our own reality. It can be a tough pill to swallow, and our willingness to do so often dictates the responsibility and thus, power we have over our lives. While there is a plethora of our experience which appears to be influenced by external forces outside of our control, can we not at least control our reaction? Slowly taking the power back you surrendered to external forces, other people’s judgements and your own repeating patterns, becomes a very liberating experience paving the way for all sorts of exciting creations.

My Journey

These are realisations I have come to face in both brutal and beautiful ways, most intensely and profoundly over the last 2 years, representing an introspective synthesis of my entire bank of life experiences. I had reached a crossroads in my life, having been engrossed in the education system until the age of 22 and lacking any immediate pressure to find a job out of necessity or survival, I could only look inwards. I recognised the dualistic nature of my reality - blessed to have had a roof over my head with consistent support from two parents who love me dearly, while on the other hand the very fabric of this ‘happy family’ image was falling apart right before my very eyes. Conflict, crises, loss, isolation, detachment, grief and confusion were a few of the deep-rooted emotions that began to bubble deep beneath the surface. And yet, I still felt somewhat numb to the situations that unfolded, often fooling myself into interpreting this as if I was just ‘dealing with it well’, choosing to keep as much to myself as to avoid exposing such vulnerable complexities with friends or family who genuinely wanted to offer support. I know this now to be a typical symptom of being in ‘survival mode’, my limbic system was in overdrive to maintain a constant state of fight-or-flight, normalising each wave of fear and anxiety as the only means to feel safe. Numbing myself to the lower spectrum of emotions also meant I could barely connect to the highest octaves of human experience such as joy, bliss, peace and most importantly, creativity. Many of you reading this may recognise and relate to the struggles I describe, as I now understand them to be completely normal and necessary to endure to experience any sort of meaningful growth. It can be extremely alarming at first to acknowledge our pain, especially when it has been left unobserved for so long, only for it to rise dramatically to the surface at the most unexpected and unwanted moments. This is why I consider the first and most important stage to any form of healing to be awareness. Just by acknowledging that a part of us in imbalanced, we are taking on the necessary power to accept and transmute the forthcoming pain into meaningful action.

After allowing myself to sit with and accept the reality that stood before me (an ongoing process), I was ready to begin shifting my perspective. Asking myself the hard questions. The honest questions. A sudden shift from existential crises to profound purpose. A new passion – growth. Evolution. My curiosity had a fresh canvas to paint on, as it guided me intuitively towards resonant truths. As if like a river stream, correcting course from the dead-end bogs struggling to maintain life, through new canals, and into the boundless ocean of possibilities. These were my truths. We all have our own, as it should be. I find that so long as we pay close attention to how we come to hold our values, beliefs, attitudes and opinions, we are able to discern what is ours and what serves us. For myself, I recognised much of what I believed was just that – belief…rather than knowledge. A part of me could not fully embrace a belief if it had been handed to me by someone else. I had unveiled my greatest asset along this journey – an open mind. My thirst for knowledge could be redirected towards an inner calling to learn more about myself and the innate interlinks that bind together the collective human experience. Perhaps the perfect storm of my insatiable curiosity, a degree in Psychology, extensive reading on philosophy, religions and esoteric wisdom, led the way for more aligned perspective to emerge. My internal world began to reflect in the world around me, as if my life were a entering a new act, a more vivid chapter, whereby each experience represented a lesson to learn. In the spirit of throwing myself into fresh and exciting challenges, I recently embarked upon a journey which I will credit as the major catalyst to the reason I am writing these words to you now. A call for detachment and reconnection with myself, I honoured my calling to stay at a (Buddhist) Monastery. There are many profound moments from my time here, etched into my memory, which I wish to share another time. Let’s just say I felt the creative spark, so much so that I endeavour every day since to recreate the same conditions which allowed me to enter such a deep state of appreciation and bliss, without any external stimulation other than nature itself. I found myself returning full cycle to the intriguingly uncertain beliefs I held 2 years ago and instead corroborating them into my own verifiable perceptions to create a powerful synthesis between conceptual knowledge and lived experience. So, here we are. This is where my journey has led me today, and The Artist’s Way is just one of many inspirations I have come across to take on a new challenge.

Let me round-up the background with some final words on what I intend to ‘achieve’ from all of this. As cliché as it sounds (clichés exist for a reason!), its more about the process than the product. At least that’s the affirmation I will keep reminding myself of every time my mind wanders into instant-gratification-mode, as if were an impatient, wounded toddler demanding attention. The Artist’s Way will serve as an anchor, a form of structure that I, like anyone, deeply yearn for when I choose to face the boundless abyss of day-to-day life without someone telling me where to be and what to do. Last but not least, I hope what I do produce during and following on from the course may light a spark in someone else to pursue their inner callings, dreams and passions.