Your enemy within: core negative beliefs

I am rereading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: a spiritual path to higher creativity. In one of the essays, Julia lists 20 fears that mask as core negative beliefs.

In reviewing the sample list of commonly held negative core beliefs to "I can't be a successful, prolific, creative artist because..." I found one that felt especially true to me at the moment. Number 13. I will never have any real money. (Death is the Number 13 Card in the Tarot, and I pulled one recently and it was reversed...meaning I am stuck on an old issue. So this may well be it.)

I can't be a successful, prolific, creative artist because I will never have any real money.

Julia advised listening to blurts and converting them to affirmations, and interestingly, just last Saturday, I was at a Brahma Kumaris meditation center where we did exactly this exercise, and I felt good. Now I needed the exercise of prayer again. That as an enlivening session and a story for another day.

So, I took that core negative belief (number thirteen in Julia's list), a pen, and a piece of paper, and wrote for ten minutes. "Creator God, Eternal God, One True God, Dad... I am afraid of poverty. I am afraid of becoming impoverished. I am afraid of having no money to pay for bills and obligations. Please provide for me. Please comfort me. Dad, I feel that this is all my fault that we have no money, that you are somehow punishing me. But this is old beliefs about you. I don't believe in that god anymore, that was punitive and exacting and harsh. Please help me have faith..." and so on until my timer went off.

I like this exercise of wrestling a negative belief in prayer. I think it works for me.

photo credit BelieversChurchLeander.com

Writing practice. Feather. 90 seconds.

Feather, float. We need each other to flee. Fly away from here where we carry the weight of the world to the mountain alps where I know Miguel, my mountain lion, waits for me with his paws sure and steady, heartbeat echoing through eras and generations of several incarnations until we are truly joined together. So fly me away, bear me away

photo credit WiseGeek.com

Writing practice. Hair. 10 minutes.

When I die I want to be buried in your hair as I am buried now—my face burrowed deep in your neck, smelling the sweat mixed with the scent of shampoo. All the people I ever loved will snip a bit of their hair, entrust it in an envelope and slip in a short good-bye note, things you always wanted to say but thought you live forever—and in these notes, curly, straight, Asian black, blond, kinky, brunette, red, bleached, conditioned, gelled, waxed, I shall be buried in and then give birth to a tree. A tree. So make sure I swallow a seed deep in my tummy when I die. Tell the embalsamador not to take that away. I will burst forth, alive again, after ten years, a young sapling tree, my roots in your hair, nourished by your cells, and I will see the sun again. Yes, this is how I want it for me. Please, please be kind to me, to this tree-wannabe, while I still have legs to dance on, lungs to scream a song out of, and hair on the roots of my scalp. Please be nice. Water me gently and talk to me, making sure I flourish, that I bear fruit for the hungry. Now you do this for me. Promise me. Malunggay tree, so my leaves be full of vitamins C and E. Or mango, my fruit gold and juicy. Come on, help me decide. Star apple? Always in season, tall as grandpa can climb, though he never let me follow. Or the duhat of my childhood, which was home to mischievous duendes. But if you are kind you can make a wish, and they'll help you. Lost cat, lost necklace, lost jewelry, lost sock. Lost mind, lost brother or spouse or car. The duende will help you find it, if you are kind. Put a note on my Tree-Being "All Kind Duendes Welcome" Come in, take shelter, burrow into my torso timber, my arm branches, and tickle my leg roots. Come, let us be of help to the living humans forever lost, forever crying for their lost

photo credit FoxyIdea.com

Writing practice. Umbrella. 5 minutes.

You are still a necessity, an enduring appendage, as no app on any smartphone has ever replaced you yet. And so I write an ode to the umbrella I lost in the woods. Your underside was dark to absorb the light reflected from the pavement. You took that in and not threw it back at me. But your cover was shimmery two-toned blue/purple, and it threw back the sun's rays at the Universe. I need you, and my polarized sunglasses, and my sunblock. And I need you now that the monsoon has wet the streets every afternoon. Be my lover, umbrella. Marry me and I promise to dry you out completely and fold you neatly after every use. I promise to chase after you when you are tossed about by the wind. And I promise, most of all, to extol your fine, protective qualities to all I meet, and surely to strike umbrella-envy and inferiorella complex to them. This I swear, I do, so I shall go back to the woods where I lost you

photo credit TopNature.xyz

Writing practice. Screwdriver. 90 seconds

SCREWDRIVER. I wanna screw you, taxi driver. How hot you are, dark skin, playful smoky voice, playful, jovial free spirit that has roamed the city limits. I want to have sex with you here. Had I known that your jokes were flirty references, that you were giving me permission to unzip your pants, that they were signals for me I would have asked you to park in a dark corner and

Writing practice. Dentist. 10 minutes.

I never wanted to be a dentist, tasting through their nostrils the breath of cavities and phlegm, bloody root canals, halitosis and tartar mixed with saliva sauce. Why would anyone care that much about teeth? Or cats? Or cars? But not about me? You left me. We used to make love every Sunday afternoon in your apartment above the dentist's clinic, with the ugly name. Dr Can Tooth, something or other. Some bad clinic name we laughed about each time we saw it. But Richard lays now where I used to beside you. Richard reeks of beer through his sweat pores. And you deserve each other because each time I kissed you, my love allowed me to love the cigarette on your tongue, and the nicotine in your gums. I did not gag but tasted fully your deep, and the stale coffee in the back of your mouth. I loved it. I loved you. I loved the inside of your mouth. Loved every inch of it. I loved the inside of your cheeks, the warmth there. I cleansed your mouth every Sunday afternoon and Richard stinks of beer. Still I remember your sad smile, your teeth that are stubbornly whiter than mine though I brush after every meal with baking soda, sometimes even after there's no meal. The taste of your body fluids down my throat that the dentist needs to clean because some get trapped between my teeth or the underside of my tongue. Keep it. "Leave it alone," I tell the doc. "Doc, that's the only souvenir of Jeff. Of our Sundays together, lying together, naked, a tumble of legs and arms, before Richard came to take my place. Don't take those away, Doc. Let them fill the sugared cavities of my aching heart. Thank you, Doc. Thank you for understanding. Has your heart ever been broken, Doc?" And the dentist leaned a little closer over me as I laid out on his chair, helpless, defenseless, and whispered a secret. "Sunday afternoons," the dentist said, "The clinic's closed. There are no patients and I am alone. I take some of the morphine so I forget the pain." I understand you, Doc. I understand you, the pain. But the morphine is only gum-deep. Gum-deep. And my heart is made of calcified teeth that no anaesthetic can reach. I am here, I smile, teeth white. I tell you, I can smile at your memory now, Jeff, from my heart. This is true, and this is deep. Deeper than the drill, the mirror, the light, the laughter, the mucus of all the pus-filled hate once had for you. I can live now with the joy of being strapped to a chair

Writing practice. Bathroom Mirror. 5 minutes.

Dirty, grimy, I will lick you clan and brush my tongue and spit the toothpaste froth back at ya never liked how you look like fat lips shiny shimmery skin sheen of tropical unworthy, thinning hair, and eyes, eyes lost to the soul of dead at birth, why are you here, then? Don't you hear the siren sound? Step outside, the birds are back in the trees after the rain. Poor dog left out through the thunderstorm still whining from the pain of neglect. Hate them, hate them neighbours, cruel to dogs and the air and plants. I will unscrew you, bathroom mirror, I will. I will carry you over my shoulder, and greet my neighbor with you smashing kiss on their forehead till they bleed to death on the streets and the garbage truck comes to run them over for good measure. Litter. Thank God.

Writing practice. Lily Pad. 90 seconds.

It is on a lily pad that I will travel the world, and travel time, and it is on the lily pad that I will swift upwards to give each star a kiss. I will lick a guava and melt it on my tongue, there to wait for eternity

Writing practice. Crash. 10 minutes.

Crash! Love that sound, like Ash, and Bash, and Brash, words that need to exist in this world obsessed with outward beauty and appearances, the fake, lice and lies. In this world, community, people, give me instead the ashen, the bashen, the brashen. Give me the crash alien and I will climb up a tree like Totoro, with an umbrella hooked on my knee I shall be there, up there and do a vrksasana. Spine aligned, crown of the head touching the sky, straight leg rooted to the ground, bent knee pointed east to the morning sun, and this is my prayer to all the trees of the world: be resilient! Grow! Humans love to destroy, but you keep on growing, sprouting, open your leaves, sink down your roots, for you truly hold the earth together. Crust ticklers, grippers, huggers of the surface of this earth. Reach to the core where metals crash and burn and bring out a vein of gold. Gold. Breathe it out and I shall be happy, worship you, joyful and happy. I shall climb down, and find the next tree. Find the coconut, acacia, malunggay, mangga. Repeat the prayer and the pose for each tree. Humans, come, come and partake the fruits of life. Eat the leaves. Brew them for their tea is health to your lungs and liver. Last night a dragonfly furiously beat its wings against my window screen. I tried to blow it away, but it was only attracted more by my humane breath. I opened the screen, lifted it off where the screw had come loose from the wall and in it came, crashing, attacking cobwebs and terrifying spiders. Terrifying me. Until at last it perched first on my face towel, and then on my daughter's school bag. First grader, age seven. Then it cleaned itself. It was a good omen. I am terrified of roaches. Want to boric them to death. But dragonfly wings I want to have

Writing practice. Sky. Five minutes.

Sky, I reach for you up and down. You burn me from New Zealand to Hawaii. Where to go? How to follow that star that calls to me and gives refreshing water? What gifts to bring the Babe of Bethlehem? Born in blood to shed blood. Lots of guts, and I am here, fully here, breathing, shallow, curved back, wanting nothing more than to curl into a ball in a deep hole in the earth, for I have nothing but my gems, my crystal fingers, and doughnuts. Anne Rice wanted doughnuts! A true New Orleander. What do you call people from New Orleans? And that pastry that Tiana bakes in The Princess and the Frog? Sky, lead me out of here into New Orleans, so I can walk its dangerous and mysterious streets, paranoid of voodoo and tourist traps, to touch a myrtle or chestnut, kiss it, wrap my arms around it. That, my True North Star, point me to the South. Australia, New Zealand, India. The Ganges and your holiness. Lead me South and I shall stalk you like a cat, climb up a pole, launch into mid-space. Ride a broom to the moon and back and say, that yes, for once, not in this form, but in feline, I was finally able to reach you.

Protecting the artist child within

Friends, I am re-reading essays from TAW here and there. Today I encountered a funny quote from a blog called David At Raptitude. He wrote: "No one is a grownup at everything." I laughed when I saw the truth in his off-hand sentence. We can't demand too much of ourselves. We can't insist that we look like responsible adults to everyone in the world.

What I am also realizing is that on the other hand, I can insist on looking like an adult to my inner artist child. I can be an adult and take care of my inner child. So, while The Artist's Way is aimed at recovering and healing the child within, it is our Inner Parent that does that work.

We can't be grownups at everything, but we can be grownups towards our art.

Shadow Artists

I am reviewing some key essays in TAW, although not formally going through the book in a strict twelve-week basis.

Having reread the essay Shadow Artists, I realize humbly that all writers on this earth have social, economic, familial, and geographic realities that we must face, deal with, contend, engage every day--and yet still make art. It's a humbling realization, because now I can no longer resent this or that artist who just happened to be born to supportive parents who paid for acting classes or dance lessons or a singing coach, and drove their child to and from rehearsals. I am not that actor, although I am friends with actors who have that reality.

I have used resentment far too long as a block. I imagined that there is an ideal artist's life and that I don't have it, and that is why I am not successful or prolific. It's a victim mentality and it has crippled me far too long. To let go of it, I need to forgive myself for embracing that block, and to gently let it go.

All artists have their lives and realities. I am an artist with my own life and reality. It's not always easy, the path is often rocky and dirty, but this is my life, and in it I can and must create the art that wants to be created, because all artists before me, and around me, create in the lives they are in.

No more putting off creating until I get the fantasy artist life that I envisioned as ideal. In this life that I am in now, in whatever reality, I can create. I think this is what Julia meant when she said it is audacity that creates artists, not just talent. In the midst of my realities, I need to be audacious and create art, let go of resentment, and embrace the rich life I am given: I am a husband to a loving wife, I am a father to a spirited artist daughter. I did not finish school. I love reading and fiction. I have skills I need to learn, and will learn if I put in the time. My parents are middle-aged, and no, they were not supportive of my career choice, but that's just that. I can still create my art here and now.

Thanks for listening.