Past - Sunday 3/28/2004 Morning Pages

Morning Pages: 10:05 am writing very fast. This is the first day of truing ot do this. Writing this stream-of-consciousness stuff is not new for me. i ahve quaite a few notebooks full of exactly that. There are a couple of differences with this. First and foremost, these morning pages are a way to begint the day. The real test of this process will begin tomorrow when i attempt to rise early enough in the morning to complete this exercise before I go to work. I am very anxious to see if this is the "practice" that breaks me free of my "stuck" palce and -- well and I don't know what. One of the main reasons that I am stuck, I think, is that moving at all will take me around a corner and I have no idea what is over there in that new place. Very scary. The second thing about these morning pages that makes them different from my journaling in the past is that in some sense I always viewed that effort as a development of "product". That is, the words I lay down needed to have value in an of themselves. Morning pages (from The Artists Way, by Julie Cameron, 1982) are a process. These words themselves specifically do not have value. They are put on paper only to indicate that the process is moving along, until the 3 page mark is reached. I suspect that if this works I am going to start to working on these in a laptop because it hurts my hand to write this much in longhand. But the longhand process is what we are told to use in the book. It flashed into my mind that this act of rapidly collecting throw-away thoughts that no one sees is a very good technique to use in a creative JAD-like session. I'm going to read up on those next week. Th third key point about thse morning pages is that they are a reminder that creativity and good ideas do not come from the stream of word-based left-brained thoughts that spill out of the pre-frontal cortex. These word clusters are primarily mini-moviesl those scripts that the mind keeps on file and runs on request from the emergency management center. They are little rote-based connectors of memories that the left-brain keeps on file for assisting in emergencies. They are used to: soothe distress by presenting the familiar, tie-up thoughts and so to surpress incoming input from outside-- like pain from the body or visuals that are terrifying, and to create emotional states and impulses to action that are rehearsed and efficient. Right-brained, creative ideas waft into the mind as complete metaphors, as new connections of disparate parts, very much like a Picasso painting, and they arrive having no baggage- no connections to emotional content, no direct impulses to action, no connection to family, tribal, personal history, especially of trauma. Is art the act of liking the two in a deliberate fashion? Do creative ideas only have value when this is don by teh owner/possessor of the idea? So we have a well of images that make new thoughts when we pull one up from the well and put it to use.
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Twelve weeks - Artist's Way + walking again + 20 lbs
Task Classification: * Really attracted to doing this one, X really resisting this one, -- Neutral

weeks run from Sunday to Sunday. She recommends end-of-week check-in on Saturday. I may do Sunday. 20 mins for review-> tasks done? Feelings?

Week One Tasks:
* 1 Morning Pages
X 2 Artist Date
* 3 Blocks- 5 years-life negative self-worth
X 4 Write horror story
X 5 Letter from my wounded child -- her voice
-- 6 Champions of self worth
X 7 Letter to mentor who encouraged me
* 8 Imaginary lives - 5 of them
-- 9 Turn blurts from negative to positive
* 10 Take your artist fro a walk to absorb images