Discovering a Sense of Authenticity - Encouragement

Week 11 – Discovering a Sense of Authenticity

Author of Walking in this World, Julia Cameron says, “An artist’s life if grounded in integrity and the willingness to witness our version of the truth. Self-respect lies in the doing, not in the done.”


Encouragement

“Artists are people whose ‘real’ job, no matter what their paying job, is the pursuit of excellence by listening carefully and well to what is trying to be born through them.”

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. ~ Shakti Gawain

Julia says, “Like it or not, artists do need pats on the head. We do need encouragement. We do need praise and we do need comfort. It does not matter how accomplished we are; it is a daunting and damaging thing to have our work ignored.”

We will run into discouragements along the way, but we must not let ourselves remain discouraged. Julia Cameron says, “We know how to stay discouraged when we are discouraged. We know how to choose our best negative friend to call. Most of us have a secret number emblazoned in our consciousness under the heading ‘Dial this number for pain and rejection.’ Most of us know how, if we are really feeling bad, we can feel just a little worse by calling it.

My business is not to remake myself, but make the absolute best of what God made. ~ Robert Browning

“We face the choice of thinking, Actually, I ‘m doing pretty well and should really respect myself for my progress, or, as we so often choose to think, I am a spineless wonder, incapable of mustering the integrity, resolve, and inspiration necessary to address a postcard. We all have people who think we are rather nice and doing pretty well and we all have other people who think – as we do often – that we could do better and be better if we would just listen to them…”

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“For most of us, the idea that we can listen to ourselves, trust ourselves, and value ourselves is a radial leap of faith. The possibility that we can trust ourselves, our decisions, and our painstaking progress, that this trust might be enough, even admirable, requires that we muster a soupcon of optimism. Optimism about ourselves and our chances is an elected attitude. We can choose to believe the best and not the worst, but to do that we must become conscious of our own negative voice-over and decide to change our mental sound track.

Optimism is critical to our spiritual health. Is our creative glass half full or half empty? Have we wasted a decade or two not getting where we would like, or are we strong and seasoned and facing another couple of decades where our age and maturity and sheer experience may allow us to actualize areas beyond our grasp when we were younger? It’s a matter of perception – and faith.”

Perhaps loving something is the only starting place there is for making your life your own. ~ Alice Koller