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Have you ever noticed how books have a curious way of appearing at the right time and place, usually exactly when you need them to? When I was living in Los Angeles in 2021 - 2022, I stumbled upon a book called The Artist’s Way, a Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. At that particular time in my life, I was grappling with the concept of Purpose. This is a concept that I have played with most of my life. At age 3 I lay on the grass beside my parents underneath a sky full of stars. I turn to them to ask, if God created us, who created God? I am no stranger to the question Why or its counterparts and cousins. But at 21, I was nose to nose with it. Meaning, purpose, direction. Los Angeles has a charming way of placing your tender and growing pieces in the pressure cooker.
During this time of my life I was answering the grueling question “What do you do?” multiple times a day, sometimes, with tears of desperation and frustration in my eyes. I was a poet barista soon-to-be already healer who values authentic self expression and wants to teach and facilitate the fundamentals of freedom and maybe incorporate dance in there somewhere, someday. How does one consolidate this? I have a published poem that speaks to this feeling and lived experience that can be found here.
If one were to order my purpose at a cafe they would say something like, hi yeah, I’ll have a large— Surprise me! And leave room for cream and the bottomless pit of ever evolving yearning that lives within me waiting to be discovered, realized, actualized, felt and expressed by me. Make it hot. No, wait! Iced. You know what, hot, actually.
One hot dusty day, my friend and I were roaming the city streets after enjoying our $17.00 Rainbow Lattes at The Butcher, The Baker, The Cappuccino Maker. This was a moment of not only foreshadowing but synchronicity. We found ourselves in a bookstore in West Hollywood called Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard. We got lost in the shelves of brightly colored feminist works and drag queen tarot decks. After the better part of an hour, we were on our way out when I saw it staring at me. A glimmer called The Artist’s Way, a Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
It felt like the gold cover was speaking directly to the part of me who wakes asking how. I believe that each book that we choose, or rather, each book that chooses us — will provide us with a gift in its own right, in its own time and always at the right time, and often – again and again. Books are to be savored and honored in this way. I left Book Soup with one or three more books that day.
I remember how special this find was for me. I remember one particular morning when I walked to a coffee shop near my apartment to sit, read and take diligent notes on what Julia had to say. When I began to read this book, the idea of Morning Pages was first introduced to me.
What are Morning Pages? This is my own definition after having created a relationship with them. Morning Pages are a daily creative devotional practice. It lubricates the spaces of the artistic aka spiritual membrane within the body, mind and soul so that you can exist both within yourself and beyond yourself. They are an expander, a mirror, a container in which you are given the opportunity to meet yourself, the one who does not know you yet.
The premise is to do it first thing upon waking, specifically within the first 45 minutes of waking. This is when you still have access to your truest and most profound depth of relative truth. During this time we have the capacity and urgency to be honest, vulnerable and clumsy in our defenses.
Step 1) Pen to paper, stream of consciousness, without taking any ‘mental cigarette breaks’ as Julia Cameron says.
Step 2) Just write. No thinking. No pauses. Even if all you have to write is ‘I don’t know what to write’ for three lines in a row before something else comes up.
Step 3) Keep writing until the end of page 3.
It’s a beautiful way to squash perfectionism and imposter syndrome, to speak to the parts of yourself that want to be better seen and understood by you. A lot of discoveries can take place in just three pages. Julia Cameron shared that through this practice she has been given the opportunity to meet her inner critic, who she has named Nigel. Anytime he comes in with his criticism and fear mongering tendencies, she simply thanks him for sharing and keeps on writing!
Julia Cameron is a creative genius and she is the Morning Pages pioneer. She says, “Morning Pages are a bludgeon that you can use on your doubts. Morning Pages are a form of prayer. You are writing, and you are saying — this is what I believe, this is what I don’t believe, this is what I want more of. The Universe hears you and it acts on your behalf. Morning Pages are very potent. Morning Pages are naughty. They give you a voice and as they give you a voice they cause you to have a backbone. You find yourself standing up for yourself.”
I started my own practice shortly after getting the book while living in Los Angeles and I recall having many honest revelations with myself about my hopes, dreams, the people in my life at the time, my own feelings, certain challenges that kept appearing in a pattern like way. I started to notice trends. I began to note how I was speaking to myself on a daily basis. Gentle nudges. Annoying pokes. Prompts to take a risk. A crying out for something more, or different. Looking back, I think it’s probably what led me to 1) quit my job, 2) decide to leave Los Angeles, 3) become a certified Reiki Practitioner, 4) join an ecstatic dance community, 5) travel to my homeland of Mexico to learn sound healing, and 6) to choose to lead a life of love instead of a life of fear.
Somewhere along the way, I lost touch with the discipline of the practice. Moving boxes and cross country road trips have a way of tipping routines on their side. There is probably a notebook somewhere out there, half filled with my unfinished grapplings, or their remnants.
But remember how I said that the gift a book has to give will do so in its own right, in its own time and often — again and again? A year or so later, in late September of 2023, the Artist’s Way found its way back to me. I went to a writer’s workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico where thee Julia Cameron would appear before me in the flesh to talk about creativity and writing. The first thing Julia spoke to us about was the importance of Morning Pages.
Julia told us the story of the time that at 45 years old she asked the page “What’s next?” to which the page replied, “You are going to write radiant songs” to which she replied, “Fuck you, I’m 45, if I was going to write radiant songs I would know it.”
She went on to write two musicals and two albums — one of flower songs and one of animal songs. She shared that she now hears music routinely.
I left the writer’s workshop feeling reminded of my intrinsic curiosity and the power that it has to lead me to where I am meant to arrive. I felt reignited within my own creative expression. Nostalgia surged, and I held my 21 & 22 year old girl in reverence. I thanked her for getting me here. For the breadcrumbs.
I decided thereafter to commit to the practice once again. It must’ve been right around the first week of October of 2023 that I began to document my stream of consciousness, pen to paper every morning. At the same time, I had just arrived to a new town that I had every intention of calling home.
The months that followed were particularly uncertain in nature. I experienced a plentitude of serendipitous joy and splendor, and at the same time, I didn’t know where I was going to live. I was unemployed. And at the end of it, I had to leave the person whom I love, and the dream that I dreamt, in a state across the country from where I find myself today.
Morning Pages have kept me rooted in my connection to Self and Source, no matter what else is happening around me. Every night I go to sleep knowing that I will wake and run wild on the page. It is a place where I can exist wholly and unhinged. And I find myself, usually, at peace on the other side of page three.
Since I resurrected the practice in October, I have filled two whole notebooks and I am currently close to finishing my third. In that time I have only missed a handful of entries due to weird, wonderful or unforeseen circumstances. I don’t say that to excuse myself, but rather, to be honest about the humanness of the practice. There’s a lot of room for grace here. A lot of room to return.
This has been a coming home, in a way I didn’t quite expect or anticipate. A coming home to myself. You never know what a new day might bring.
Today I want to share a recent entry from my Morning Pages practice with you.
2/2/24
morning pages
good morning world, i am here to say that i love you even when i do not get you or understand you. i love myself and i am committed to myself and my life and there is nothing and nowhere that i would rather be. when i close my eyes and think about my ideal life i see myself at peace. i see myself genuinely at peace and i don't see worry or sorrow in my eyes. and i want to live my life like that now. without a rush or fear or sorrow. i want to exist where my feet are and notice how that is good enough, beautiful enough, precious enough. i truly want to stop waiting for something to happen. i don’t want to keep hating the walk up the hill. i want to flow and glide through this life. without getting caught on the hook of my life again and again and again. i no longer care to disappoint myself with my truths. i don't want to let something as simple as i don't want to write right now keep me down. i want to soar and fly and spread myself against the rock of this earth as the water laps the shore and i want to fall in love every single day, every moment. and i want my health to be the wealth that i nurture and treasure, everything else secondary to my wellness and the way my heart is beating. i no longer wish to resist or fight with what is. instead i learn to launch myself face first into the thing, unafraid of the ways in which it may disrupt my known patterns or rhythms. to dare to lead a life outside of the structure that has been provided is to be honest with oneself about the path forward. sometimes honesty looks like a shrug and an encouraging pat on the back from yours truly. and can i, will i accept that there's a very good chance that i get to the end of my life to realize that it looks nothing like i thought it one day would? and can i, will i smile about it? about the ways in which this life surprised me and brought me gifts, practical and impractical? and how i'm standing here, beside a life that is imperfect and very much my own and how when it comes down to it, i always did my best. and can i, will i see that even when my best looked like wanting to give up that day and instead choosing to choose again? it's time to stop waiting for the plane to arrive to take us away to some far away tropical paradise when the humidity of humanity is all around us even when and especially when we turn the ice machine on that lives closely to our hearts. we mistake frozen chest pieces for strength, when really, we simply chose a different temperature. i love my life, however it turns out. i love the city i am in even on the days that i want to get out. i'm going to stop treating someday and somewhere as the twin sisters that i want to be best friends with and instead i am going to be where i am. i am going to extract the lessons from the places least expected with a syringe and i am going to place droplets of the lessons learned on the windowsill of my life and i am going to look out into the horizon of my life and i am going to say, isn’t she beautiful? glitter and all? doesn't she sparkle? and i am going to treasure this moment, that i am never getting back by the way, as my reminder that life is happening now. i’ll stop waiting for my turn, it’s already mine.
x
Pau
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Thank you for being here Paul! I know the practice will serve you well
I've had The Artist's Way on my shelf for a year and decided to finally pick it up a month ago. Julia Cameron has already changed my life. The process has changed my life. It's loosened the soil of my heart to have seeds of creativity planted in it, and I'm learning how to tend to them well. To trust the affirmations that we are expressions of god's creativity and we must trust the process. It feels like a battle some days but one worth fighting. So thankful for you sharing so openly and being a kindred spirit <3