The Artist's Way: Safety & Unlocking Your Creativity with Morning Pages

In this episode, Kyle Ariel Knowles introduces a 12-part series on Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, sharing his personal journey with the course and the transformative power of creativity. He discusses the significance of Morning Pages and Artist Dates as essential tools for creative recovery, emphasizing the importance of nurturing one's artistic self and overcoming creative blocks. The conversation highlights the spiritual aspect of creativity and the necessity of committing to one's artistic journey.

TAKEAWAYS

• Kyle has been practicing Morning Pages for a year and a half.
• Morning Pages serve as a brain dump and spiritual windshield wipers.
• The Artist's Way is about recovering your artistic self.
• The course consists of 12 weeks focusing on different aspects of creativity.
• Creativity is a natural order of life and should be nurtured.
• Artist Dates are essential for receiving inspiration.
• Many creatives become shadow artists, supporting others instead of creating.
• Core negative beliefs can hinder artistic expression.
• Affirmations can help in overcoming creative blocks.
• The joy of creativity lies in the act of creating itself.

LINKS

• The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
• The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to The Artist's Way
• 4:51 Exploring Morning Pages
• 10:07 Understanding Artist Dates
• 15:02 The Journey of Creative Recovery
• 20:12 Overcoming Creative Blocks
• 25:06 The Importance of Nurturing Creativity

Transcript

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Hello there, welcome to the Art and Artist Podcast. My name is Kyle Ariel Knowles and I'm also the guest today. I'm the host and the guest for a 12-part series on Julia Cameron's book and 12-week course called The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. I'm so excited to kick off this series and talk to you about my experiences during each week of the course. I have been a student of Julia Cameron's after purchasing this book and starting a practice that she recommends called" "Morning Pages." And I've been doing this for about a year and a half now. 

So I wanted to start this series simply because I've talked to so many people who have been inspired and basically have resuscitated or resurrected their artist child and their art because of Julia Cameron's internationally bestselling book, The Artist's Way. So a year and a half ago, it was at the end of 2023 when I first heard about Morning Pages. I believe it was Tim Ferriss, a podcast with Tim Ferriss or a content clip of Tim Ferriss mentioning the Morning Pages. And then I purchased The Artist's Way.

And, actually I started doing the morning pages before I really started reading the book and I didn't really know exactly how to do them. I heard they were, you were supposed to do them every morning. I didn't know it was three pages. And initially, even if I look at my morning pages journal, cause I finally purchased one from, Julia Cameron has kind of a, a companion volume called the Artist's Way Morning pages Journal and this is kind of what it looks like. There are two different covers. This one says burn if I die. I put that on all of them. I'm holding up all. 6 volumes that I've completed writing three pages a day for 12 weeks. Each volume kind of goes through. 12 weeks and so 7 times 3 there's 21 pages for you to write in each week times 12. I'll pull up the first volume. 

These aren't in order. Let me reorder them here. Got volume four, volume five, volume six, and one of them in volume, let's see volume four. There is a post-it note that says epiphany. And that's when I had a major epiphany about leaving corporate writing in the morning pages. So here's, let's see volume one, two, three,

Again, it says burn if I die simply because these are not meant to be read by anyone. They're not meant to be art. They're not meant to be anything but basically a brain dump. Stream of consciousness. Julia Cameron calls them spiritual windshield wipers doing the morning pages. But if I look back and I look in volume one, I actually started writing in a notebook.

And so my first few pages before I bought the companion volume were actually these loose sheets of paper. And again, didn't know specifically what it was. I didn't know it was three pages. Many days I wrote longer, some days I wrote shorter until I kind of understood exactly what the deal was. But I remember purchasing the book, The Artist's Way. I purchased the Audible version first, but here's the book here. I purchased the audible book, and I remember listening to it. We were on our way to visit family in California. So I was on a plane and I had a notebook out and I started listening to the book and I swear I was basically trying to transcribe the book in my notes because I was writing down basically every other sentence. Everything she was saying resonated with me so well about recovering your artistic self.

Everything about U-turns. She talks about U-turns and how and the resistance. I don't know if that's where the whole idea of the resistance came from. If she coined that phrase, but she uses it in here. And again, this book was first published in 1992. Basically this is the 30th anniversary. So this was in what? 2022 when this version came out that I'm holding here, but it says the first publication date was 1992, copyright 1992. And so it's been around for a while and there have been a lot of people that have used it, a lot of artists. And she even mentions a few in the introduction, including Pete Townsend from The Who, and I believe Elizabeth Gilbert is mentioned in here. When I was listening to it on the plane, I was writing down every other sentence. She has some amazing quotes about art and artists in here. And basically the 12 week course is to recover. She talks about this idea of recovery and you're trying to not recover from something, but recover towards something, recover your artist's self. 

And here are the 12 weeks in the course, recovering a sense of safety. That's week one. That's what we'll talk about today.Week two is recovering a sense of identity. Week three, recovering a sense of power. Week four, recovering a sense of integrity. Week five, recovering a sense of possibility. Week six, recovering a sense of abundance. Week seven, recovering a sense of connection. Week eight, recovering a sense of strength. Week nine, recovering a sense of compassion. And week 10, recovering a sense of self-protection. Week 11, recovering a sense of autonomy. Week 12, recovering a sense of faith. There's an introduction as well, but let me just read weeks one through 12 again. And it's recovering a sense of, and these are the words, safety, identity, power, integrity, possibility, abundance, connection, strength, compassion, self-protection, autonomy, nd faith. 

And really the introduction, she's talking about how she came up with the idea of teaching these courses and she started writing things down and then people were asking her for what she had written down and finally she was teaching this course with a partner and he just kept saying write it down, write it down and kept pushing her to keep writing it until it became a book and a 12 week course.

Kyle Ariel Knowles (07:17.175): And I just want to go through the introduction. So we're all on the same page as we go through this 12 week podcast series. But she talks about in the introduction, because she's using the word spirituality, right? The subtitle is a spiritual path to higher creativity, but she doesn't want anyone to be scared of that. And I really like the acronym G O D or God. And she says, you know, you may substitute the thought good orderly direction instead of God or flow creative energy, goddess, higher power, spiritual electricity, the universe, the source, whatever you want to relate to, whether you're an atheist or a Christian or Hindu or Muslim, it doesn't matter. I really like myself. I like the acronym good orderly direction for God, but I especially like goddess. She talks about tapping into this and how the universe is open and welcome to your art and what's preventing us from doing it is the fear that we have. And so this whole course is designed to help you overcome the fear of doing art, whatever that is, writing, painting, sculpting, making movies, but she talks about her own journey and having different kinds of creative spasms, creativity as an act of will or ego, you know, thinking that the stereotypical things that people say about artists, that they're drunks, they're not good with relationships, all those kinds of things, those are just beliefs. don't have to be true. They're not facts. 

And she talks a lot about how you can be an artist and still be financially solvent. You can be an artist and still have good relationships. You can be an artist and not be addicted to drugs or sex or work. Then she talks about spiritual electricity and these basic principles. She talks about synchronicity and how we change in the universe furthers and expands that change. And she has some

Kyle Ariel Knowles (09:39.961): Some great quotes in here. I love this one from Joseph Chilton Pierce. "We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God's creative pulse itself." And then she lists the basic principles of this spiritual path to higher creativity. And the first one she says is creativity is a natural order of life. Life is energy, pure creative energy. And I won't read all 10 of these.

I'll just read one more, the last one, number 10. "Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity." I love this other quote from the Talmud. "Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.""

Then she goes into talking about how to use this book for your creative recovery, what to expect. She has a few bullet points in here. "How do you know if you are creatively blocked? Jealousy is an excellent clue. Are there artists whom you resent? Do you tell yourself, I could do that if only. Do you tell yourself that if only you took your creative potential seriously, you might..." And then she lists some bullet points. I'll just read a couple of them.

"Stop telling yourself it's too late. Stop telling yourself it's just my ego. Whenever you yearn for a more creative life. Stop telling yourself that creativity is a luxury and that you should be grateful for what you've got."" And I love this quote. She includes in here from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.""

I don't know if that resonates with you, but it really resonated with me. 

Kyle Ariel Knowles (11:34.095): Okay, then she talks about the basic tools and there are two main tools that she talks about. She talks about the morning pages. What the morning pages are are three pages of longhand writing. Okay. Not using a computer or a keyboard, but using your hand and a pen or pencil if you want, but doing that on paper. And there's something about putting hand and pen to paper that is different than typing. Typing you can go fast and broad but you can't go deep. And there are studies that even talk about note taking and how much more people remember when they write down something as opposed to type something. So they are three pages of long handwriting written first thing in the morning right after you wake up. It's basically stream of consciousness writing and you can write whatever you want.

The pages are open and welcome to you to swear to be mad at your neighbor or your boss or your partner to say whatever you want. It can be as trivial as I need to take the trash out today or I need to mow the lawn. And it's not meant to be writing that is creative or artistic, but what you'll find over time. And she gives an example of how she was doing these morning pages and a character in a story or play that she wanted to write kind of came out in these pages. And what I found over the past year and a half of writing some days, they're just, this is what I'm going to do today, or this is what happened to me yesterday. And it's just whatever is on my mind. But then once in a while, if I have something due I've written presentations, I've written parts of a play I've written song lyrics, but the  pages are there for you to dream or to vent first thing in the morning. And again, if, if you didn't have enough time to finish them, it's, it's better to write them even later in the day if you have to, but they're best first thing in the morning when you first get out of bed. And I've found when I have put off doing the morning pages that my day doesn't seem to go as well, that I'm not as focused. The thing is you are, you will be tempted to

Kyle Ariel Knowles (14:01.753): not do the pages. You'll wonder if you're making progress. And there might be days and days or weeks and weeks without understanding the progress you've made. But what happens is you are moving and moving towards being a more creative person and living a life of creativity. She says in the book, "Morning pages are non-negotiable. Never skip or skimp on the morning pages. Your mood doesn't matter. The rotten thing, your sensor says doesn't matter." And again, the morning pages are to overcome that sensor, to make fun of the sensor, that voice inside your head that says you're not good enough, you're not prepared enough, you're not smart enough, you're not talented enough, you're not an artist. And she says "the logic brain is our sensor, our second and third and fourth thoughts faced with an original sentence phrase, paint squiggle. says, what the hell is that? That's not right." Questioning your art, questioning whether you're good enough. And "the sensor is part of our leftover survival brain." And she talks about the sensor is the reason why we are blocked as creatives. And the morning pages help us send out a signal that says I am an artist. The other basic tool is called the artist date. She says, think of this combination of tools in terms of a radio receiver and transmitter. It is a two step, two directional process. Out then in, doing your morning pages you are sending, notifying yourself in the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes. Doing your artist date, you are receiving, opening yourself to insight, inspiration and guidance. And the artist date, is it's not talked about enough a lot of people talk about the morning pages But the artist date is something that I still to this day a year and half later have a hard time committing to But the artist date is one to two hours Where you're going to go? Basically take your artist self on a date just you i've gone to a movie by myself And it's a very interesting experience to do that because i've never really done that before.

Kyle Ariel Knowles (16:19.826): Last week it was Led Zeppelin's Becoming Led Zeppelin. She says, take $5 to go to a Five and Dime store. That's kind of an old reference, but go to the dollar store. It's not about spending money. You don't have to spend $200 to go see a Broadway play, but that could be an artist date. Definitely. Could be going to Guitar Center and looking at guitars, buying some guitar strings. It could be going to an art store and buying some paint supplies. So yeah, the artist date like she says is to receive once a week planning this and she says in here she warns that things will come up and people will want to go with you on your artist date. People will be jealous. Something will come up and it's very easy to put this off. And this is one reason why we're blocked as artists is because we don't think that artist self our artist self is worth it. She talks a lot about how Art seems to be, you know, like you're getting away with something when you're doing art. And I've struggled with this throughout my whole life. I've had a lot of creative U-turns. I've been fully into writing songs, writing blogs, and then I shut it all down because I think, and I've sold guitars before, right? Because I just felt like it wasn't practical. I need to focus on money-making. I need to be a businessman, which many times...I'm now referring to as a busy-ness man, busy-ness man instead of business man. And this whole idea, if your art is not generating money, then it's not valuable. And I think especially in America, the idea that we have to make money to be a successful artist instead of just, we can be successful just making something. And I think we're, if you're an artist and you really desire to be an artist, you are going to do this no matter what. You are definitely going to create, you're going to write, you're going to make songs, you're going to make pictures, you're going to paint, whether it pays the bills or it doesn't. But many of us put those sort of creative impulses on hold to go chase the brass ring and busy ourselves up in other projects, even still to this day a year and a half later

Kyle Ariel Knowles (18:45.308): it's very hard for me to make it a priority to have an artist date and to really come up with ideas that are going to feed my artist self. "Art is an image using system and we need to fill the well" and that's what our artist date does. But again, morning pages are to send a signal out to the universe and our artist date is to receive signals back from the universe and to inspire us to keep going and do our art.

In the book, she has a contract that you sign that says, "I understand that I'm undertaking an intensive guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the 12 week duration of the course. I commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date and the fulfillment of each week's tasks." And she does in each week have a list of tasks. These aren't talked about often enough, and many of them are, difficult. Talk a lot about morning pages when we're talking about The Artist's Way, but we don't talk about some of the tasks that she asked you to do each week. Basic tools, warning pages, the artist state. And then this week I've completed going through recovering a sense of safety. It's only a 15 page chapter. "One of our chief needs as creative beings is support. And unfortunately this can be hard to come by. Ideally we would be nurtured, encouraged first by our nuclear family and then our by ever widening circles." And what she talks about is many, many creatives become shadow artists. They connect themselves to creative people. They love artists and they'll be around them, but maybe they, instead of writing songs, they decide to manage artists. Instead of writing their novels, they become an editor. And there's this great quote. I love this quote by CG Young. "Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent." So yeah, shadow artists surround themselves with artists and artifacts instead of doing the art they want to do. So this idea and this sense of safety, she refers to your artist self as a child. Children are very easily offended, don't want to be yelled at. They need to be nurtured. And many of us have

Kyle Ariel Knowles (21:12.766) people in our lives that have put our art down or maybe we have parents that said don't pursue that. She talks a lot about core negative beliefs in the book. And let me just read a couple of them. "I can't be a successful prolific creative artist because everyone will hate me. I will go crazy. I will feel too angry. I will get cancer, AIDS or a heart attack or the plague. My lover will leave me. I will die." So all these core negative beliefs that prevent us from being an artist. And there's negative beliefs about artists. Artists are drunk, crazy, broke, irresponsible, and so forth. She offers positive alternatives. "Artists can be sober, sane, solvent, responsible, user-friendly, faithful, saved, happy, discovered, and recovered."" Some of the creative affirmations she recommends, and she also recommends you write your own. Let me just read a couple of examples of creative affirmations that she recommends.

Number one, "I am a channel for God's creativity and my work comes to good." This is my favorite one. "My creativity heals myself and others." Ever since reading that, I've actually expressed that to other artists that their art may be a song they wrote, they wrote to heal themselves, but it actually is helping to heal me too. A couple of other creative affirmations, "As I listen to the creator within I am led. I am willing to create I am willing to experience my creative energy I am willing to use my creative talents" and then the tasks and I'm not gonna go through all the tasks that she asked you to do But I will mention a couple of them one is to time travel "list three old enemies of your creative self-worth Please be specific as possible in doing this exercise." And so you write them down who those three old enemies of your creative self-worth are. And then maybe a horror story from your monster hall of fame, these creative monsters that have torn down your creative self-worth. So you can explain the room you were in, the way people looked at you, the way you felt. I have one specific one and that is Mr. Roundy. He's a good guy. He actually lived down the street from me, but he was a junior high art teacher.

Kyle Ariel Knowles (23:38.748) And I loved art. I really did. And I remember not getting a good grade on some art project that I really loved doing and feeling so bad about it and just thinking that I wasn't ever going to be a great artist. And of course, you're always comparing yourself to other people that have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours on doing working on art. And so sometimes the lack of support and the lack of nurturing from teachers can really do a number on you. And I've had a couple of teachers like that. And we'll get into this later as we go through the book and the course. But she talks about university. Many professors at universities, they're intellectuals, they're academics and frustrated artists, especially if maybe you're in the humanities and you're taking a creative film class, or a graphic design class, creative writing class. Sometimes the teachers there are not there to do anything but critique and it's born out of their own frustrated artist self, their blocked creativity that they don't nurture. 

And I felt that way as an English major. I really love to write, but as I started taking upper division classes and getting feedback on my writing many times it was not supportive. Many times it was critical to the point where you're not inspired to write or you don't think you have good ideas or you don't think you're an artist or a good writer. 

Just wrapping up just a few other of the tasks that she mentions. There's another time travel to talk about, you know, listing your three champions of your creative self-worth and writing a thank you letter to yourself or a long lost mentor.

She talks about imaginary lives. If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? Once you list those out, maybe you can do something. If you wanted to be a professional soccer player and you didn't become a professional soccer player, speaking from my own experience, you can always go buy a soccer ball and spend some time every day just going in the backyard or going somewhere and kicking the ball around, juggling a soccer ball and just kind of tapping back into those former dreams that you had

Kyle Ariel Knowles (26:05.793) at one time in your life. She also does a check-in at the end of every week, but we've basically covered a sense of safety, talking about basic tools in the artist's way, the morning pages and the artist's date. 

 I hope that you run out and buy the artist's way if you are interested in recovering your artist self and working on those creative projects. I've talked to so many people. In fact, I have a friend that I was talking with a couple of weeks ago who surprised me by saying he's, he's working on a novel. And I just think it's so important because we get so lost in technology or our jobs. And that's why the subtitle of my podcast Art & artist, the subtitle is human creativity in the age of AI. Right now you can basically go do a prompt and have AI create an illustration for you. You can use different AI tools, give it a prompt and it will write a song for you, a fully finished song. But the joy in life and the joy in being human is actually doing the work to create the art. 
 
So I really question, I think if we just rely on the machines to do the creative work for us, we're really gonna miss out on something. For myself, I want to recover those dreams that I had at 18 when I was making music with my friend Craig Nybo. I want to rediscover that person I was then who was writing songs, laying down beats, scratching the guitar, not knowing what I was doing. I want to recover that. There's this big thing called the resistance that is telling you constantly not to do your art and not to pursue your dreams. And you have to overcome that every day and I hope that you will and I hope that you pursue your dreams and that you be creative.