When I talk to people about creativity, most believe that they are not creative. I believe that everyone has the potential to be creative but so many things hold us back in that pursuit. Fear is the probably the number one offender, so much so that even in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, the first chapter is recovering a sense of security. If we look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the first four levels are about having a sense of security. The first level consists of basic physiological needs, the second security such as housing, the third self esteem, and so on. It’s not until you ascend to the top of the pyramid that we have access to creativity and self expression. I agree with this in theory as I have experienced it myself. What I want to challenge readers with is the idea that, no matter how much money, food, and belonging we feel, security is an illusion created from our minds. I don’t know that 16 million people thought they would die from a global pandemic over the past 4 years, a testament to my notion that we have little control over life. I don’t say this to invoke fear, but to empower those who feel that they can’t express themselves creatively without feeling like it’s safe to do so.
In Julia’s book, she guides the reader through a series of questions and considerations, all geared towards helping one heal from the fear and rejection they may have experienced earlier in life. It’s through healing those old wounds that we can begin a path towards true self expression. The wounds that are calling to be healed are going to be different for each person as we all have different personalities and life experiences. This is why I love tools like Astrology, Human Design, and the Enneagram, because they can help us discover things about ourselves that aren’t as apparent. Those modalities can be overwhelming and so my suggestion is that it doesn’t have to be an overly complicated process; all you have to do is pay attention to the things that make you mad or sad.
The true sense of security comes from both trust and faith that we have access to guidance and help. At the most basic level, I have not struggled with access to those things other than my time in active addiction. That holds its own struggles and it’s something that I cannot include in this discussion. I think most of the readers here, though, have many of those basic needs met, so the question is, do we need to have worked through the pain from low self esteem and the feeling of isolation in order to access parts of our creative self? Or can our artistic expression be a part of that recovery?
My argument is that creative self expression is the path to that recovery and can aid us in our desire to feel safe. The art of creating, whether is be painting or baking, allows us access to divine inspiration and that in itself is the part that is healing. We have fallen into the trap that productivity and capitalistic output is the only pursuit worthy of our time, and because of that, we have abandoned one of the key paths to self esteem, belonging, and self expression. The most effective way to rage against the machine is to pursue our curiosities.
Thinking back on my own experience, I didn’t start exploring anything beyond dance until I was in my 30s. At the time, I thought it was because I didn’t have time. Now that I have done a lot of work around it, I realize that when I got sober, I had to let go of my dream to be a dancer. My entire life, I had done nothing but dance. I went to college to pursue a BFA and I wanted to moved to NY. Unfortunately, my addiction prevented me from doing so. I couldn’t keep myself together enough to make it to class and eventually I had to leave. After I went to rehab, I was afraid, rightfully so, to leave this established bubble of recovery. In truth, that was the best thing for me, but it didn’t make the pain of watching a dream end any less. I remember that sense of mourning I felt as I realized that I was not going to be in performing arts.
It wasn’t until I started with the Artist’s Way that I realized I hadn’t fully felt the grief around that loss. I have actually felt a lot of loss in my life but have never allowed myself to feel any kind of sadness of grief. The last 17 years have been about recognizing, allowing, and accepting that grief. The fear of pain and loss prevented me from opening my heart to anything that cause that pain again. Recovering a sense of security for me has been about allowing joy; the joy of fully abandoning myself into something without the fear of losing it again, and the joy of fully abandoning myself to something without the fear of being vulnerable. Most of my healing has been around allowing myself to feel my emotions in my body.
Faith and gratitude are the antidote to that fear. I have had to develop a sense of trust that something greater than me is guiding me and when I listen to is, I am always safe. It doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen or that I won’t feel the pain of loss again, it just means that I can handle it if, when, I do. I can handle it because I have in the past and I know that I can lean on that greater power to help me through it. Gratitude is when I know just how NOT secure I really am, when I truly take in the absolute lack of control I have in this world, and recognizing that in spite of that, my life is really good. I don’t know how I have been sober for 24 years, especially when so many are not or have died in the pursuit of it, and so, I am incredibly grateful for sobriety and what it has given me. I am grateful for the people that always seem to show up in my life at the time that I need them. I am grateful for the way the right class, book, modality seems to show up at exactly the right time for me. It gives me both the faith and hope that things are working in my favor and all I have to do is treat myself well and surrender.
This is where my security comes from. It comes from the knowing that I will always be okay, no matter what.
Understanding that has allowed me to take so many chances in my life that I would have not done other
If you’ve been thinking about reading the Artist’s Way, I highly recommend it. The reason I like this more than other books about creativity is that there is an active process to work through your blocks. Of course, I love Elizabeth Gilbert and it’s great hearing what she has to say about being creative, but as I have mentioned above, having a way to work through our own personal beliefs about ourselves is really the way that we can move through this life. I know that things can feel so hard sometimes, especially now when we are constantly aware of what is going on and how everyone feels about everything, but I truly believe that our ultimate reason for living to to experience this world and the joy that is in it. I don’t mean we falsely chase happiness, but we experience the true breadth of all this life has to offer and the ways we are called to engage with it.
