The Artist's Way Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity and The Practice of Deprivation
Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
If you’ve been reading along and doing all the exercises week to week, you may have already begun to notice that many changes have entered your life as a result of creating more space for your inner artist. You’ll begin to explore new interests, start new routines, set new boundaries, and reevaluate how you spend your time and who you spend your time with. I’ve experienced this every time I go through this book, and it’s always empowering and nerve-wracking all at the same time.
Your old self wants to hold on to familiar ways while your new self is pushing you forward. You’re not feeling quite as stuck anymore, but you also don’t know where any of this is going. It’s quite a complicated mix of emotions.
It’s easy to want to go back to what’s comfortable and “safe”, but here in Week 4 of The Artist’s Way, we are recovering our integrity - stepping into the new version of ourselves and moving forward with more boldness and clarity. This is a powerful week of becoming and embracing who we were meant to be.
Grounding yourself in morning pages
Julia says “In order to have self-expression, we must first have a self to express”. In other words, if we want to have a clear and unique perspective as an artist, we must first have confidence and clarity about who we are. During this journey, that “self” will go through a lot, and I’ve experienced that continuing to ground yourself in morning pages (and for me, prayer) was the biggest source of help and guidance along the way.
As we go through the process of becoming a new and sometimes very different person, morning pages will provide the clarity and insight we need. The words on our pages will help us sort through some difficult feelings and thoughts, and more importantly, they will help us become more honest with ourselves. Keep writing and pay close attention to what comes up. As we talked about in Week 1, you might be surprised what you find.
The Practice of Deprivation
“The snowflake pattern of your soul is emerging. Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with many and varied forms of junk food for the soul.” - Julia Cameron
In Week 4, Julia recommends that we all do an exercise called Reading Deprivation, which is exactly what it means - no reading for the entire week. I know it sounds crazy, but the purpose of this exercise is to free our days from all the junk that we fill it with, and fill those moments with things that replenish our wells instead.
Julia specifically makes it a practice of depriving yourself from reading, but I think it might be helpful for us to take the exercise one step further and pinpoint the one distraction in your life that currently feels like the biggest one - the one that’s “poisoning your well”.
Some of my poisons are social media, being on my phone in general, snacking when I’m not even hungry (yes, this can be a form of self-distraction), and (not so much lately because I don’t have much time, but) binge-watching TV. What are some of yours? List them out and choose the one that takes up the most time and space in your life. That’s the one we should add to our deprivation practice for the week.
It might be impossible to deprive yourself of certain things completely (i.e., if you have to read a certain book for a course you’re taking or if you’re required to be on your phone for your job), but we can still try to commit to something each day. Maybe that means limiting your reading time to work hours only or giving ourselves only one hour to browse social media each day. Do what works, but don’t forget to challenge yourself.
And if you need some ideas for how you can spend that time instead, here are a few suggestions from the book:
Listen to music
Organize your closets
Repot some plants
Paint
Cook
Work out
Have dinner with an old friend
Just remember - the more junk we get rid of in our lives, the more space we are creating for our inner artist, and the clearer our inner artist’s voice will become. Therein lies the person we are meant to be.
I hope Week 4 is another week of growth and inspiration for you.
“By tossing out the old and unworkable, we make way for the new and suitable.”
See you in Week 5!