Morning Pages:

It has been a number of years since I actually practiced a daily act of journaling, what Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages. I joined a group yesterday with the thought that it would do me good. Immediately, I saw some of the old familiar questions that haunted me so long on my now defunct Artist's Way* listserv. So today, here, I am going to give the advice I won't let myself give there. I'm just going to be a participant this time, a member of the group. Ideally, it is a circle, anyway.

My mind played with the immediate objective of releasing the creative person within. It sells the process. But, as I considered that somebody was asking if they should join the group at Chapter 5 because they joined late or begin at the beginning and I was considering my own advice--which I refrained from giving on the grounds that I am not the facilitator in this group--I would say to begin at the beginning because the process builds on itself and the first three chapters are crucial. What releases our creativity or unblocks us is, in actual fact, far more than a mere block. We are constipated or, to be even more harsh, crippled by the cumulative effect of these monsters that haunt us. The process heals us and releases us from a great deal of emotional baggage we've been hauling around. When I had my list, I was convinced that the process would be good for everyone, not just blocked creatives.

Those first three chapters release a tumultuous deluge of emotion. As I recall, and it has been ten years since I first worked through the book, it began with dreams--vivid, sometimes nightmarish, memorable. It began almost as soon as I began doing MPs. It brings the subconscious to the conscious. And as the process evolves and the book works on the various ways we have allowed blocks to form in our creative flow we begin to see that our mind has been attempting to protect our selves from destruction, but the ghosts of the truths it has hidden from us often turn out to be merely mirages, or mists. These are not real ghosts, they are laughably inept and powerless ghosts, to say the least. Some turn out to be rather inane, really. They are like the monster that hid under your bed when you were five.

Many drop out in these first three chapters. The third is the most difficult, if I remember correctly. Later, once through the book and through the process, it is difficult to figure out by rereading the book what caused so much tumult at the time. It seems so benign. I think it happened again in the seventh lesson, or so. If I recall correctly, I entered a desert--and we don't like deserts!--from lessons seven through nine. I used to work very hard at encouraging those who were dragging and I feared may drop out to keep struggling. To raise the ghosts that haunt us, if you will, and then not prove them to have no power over us--I think--is to do ourselves more damage than had we never begun the journey. They resuscitate the monster under the bed but never get out of the bed to look under it in order to see that it is little more than a dust bunny hiding there. My best advice to anybody before they begin the journey is to keep that contract by all means! Do not even begin or else finish.

This is oft repeated advice: Begin at the beginning. Come to the page every day. Morning Pages are best done first thing in the morning, but if they are forgotten before the habit is firm, do them later if necessary. Morning is important because we're looking for the biggies, not the daily grind. If you don't have time to write, try to make note of those first thoughts of the day and deal with them when you do get to the page. Try by hand first. Save them for six weeks exactly as you are told to do (I can't check this fact) and then read them--the garbage is so much more beautiful and more meaningful than it felt! Hide them, whatever, but use them to HEAL. Do your work and move right along. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you need to spend more time on a lesson! Make it in twelve weeks.

Note: I do not have my book in my possession in order to be more specific or double check my memory.