Message: THE ARTIST'S WAY (FREE,SELF PACED COURSE-requiring 10-12 hours of your time weekly!)

An intensive self-examination course
This 229-page book is actually a course to RECOVER AND REDISCOVER your creativity. The entire course is based upon the principle that the artist must have faith to be creative. It is the author's conviction that the Creator encourages creativity in all people.

The book is broken down into twelve weekly lessons. There are several miscellaneous sections. Each weekly lesson has tasks and exercises to be completed. Sidebars provide quotes and tidbits of information to uplift the soul. The divisions of the manual are as follow:

In the introduction, the author explains how she began teaching and eventually developed her seminars and lectures into a book.

Spiritual Electricity: The Basic Principles defines the ten spiritual principles, gives directions for using this course, and tells the reader what to expect from the course.

The Basic Tools introduces the two primary tools of the course: the morning pages and the artist date. The morning pages are three handwritten pages, penned in stream-of-consciousness, without looking back at the previous pages. The artist date is time set aside to be spent with your inner artist. There is even a creativity contract.

Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety deals with realizing what negative beliefs and hurts from the past are blocking or restricting your creativity and replacing them with positive affirmations.

Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity begins with a section called "Going Sane." It deals with the people you surround yourself with in life and how they exert negative influence over your creativity.

Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power leaps right into anger management, shame, and dealing with criticism. It examines how most people are afraid that there is a God watching everything we do.

Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity is about learning to distinguish between the mask you wear for the public and your real inner feelings. There are exercises in learning what you really want from life and in sensory deprivation.

Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility begins with the following sentence: "One of the chief barriers to accepting God's generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish." This lesson teaches us to break through those barriers.

Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance will have you tossing out clothing and gathering rocks. It teaches us that there is abundance in our lives and that our creativity requires its own portion of luxury.

Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection covers jealousy, perfectionism, risk, and learning to listen to our inner artist.

Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength teaches us to turn loss into gain by metabolizing the pain into energy. There is an exercise to help the artist break out of the early patterning; to overcome the negativity of childhood.

Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion deals with avoiding self-defeat and learning to logically deal with fears.

Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection enlightens us about the spiritual demons we create to battle our creativity: workaholism, fame, competition, and drought.

Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy focuses on how to handle success, how to nurture the inner artist, and the connection between nurturing the inner artist and self-respect.

Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith reminds us of the pitfalls to our creativity and helps us learn to have faith.

The book ends with sections on questions and answers, creativity clusters, and forming a sacred circle.

Every artist should own a copy of this book and utilize it religiously! It is the kind of manual that can be used over and over again for continual growth. I highly recommend it and feel it is a vital tool for personal creative expansion.

I'm an avid journal keeper, it helps me free my mind. There are times, however, when my mind wants to remain locked. This book, complete with freeing exercises, changed all that. I keep the morning pages every day now and have little trouble with my creativity. This book was a god-send to a generation who finally realized that all things in life require some creativity and that unlocking it is the key to a healthy, fullfilled, and well-lived life.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I also recommend the companion "Morning Pages Journal", but only if you aren't sure where to begin. If you are certain you can pick up a blank notebook and begin following the advice she gives, then the journal isn't really necessary.

This is the book that every artist, writer, photographer, journaler and SCRAPBOOKER needs.

This book may help you out of the creative pits. This isn't a book just to read: each week has assigned tasks, and there are daily journaling (Morning Pages) and weekly Artist's Dates. Be prepared to spend a few hours a week just working on the book.

Julia Cameron writes this self help book as a 12 step process, which means she spends a great deal of time focussing on the spiritual aspects of ourselves and our creativity.

Cheers!
Cindy




http://groups.msn.com/TheArtistsWayOnlineGroup2004