Week 3 : Recovering a Sense of Power

Anger.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
– Gloria Steinem

Checking in.

How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you? If you skipped a day, why did you skip it?

Did you do your artist date this week? [Yes, yes, and it was awful.] What did you do? How did it feel?

Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.

The Third Week. Recovering a sense of power.

This week may find you dealing with unaccustomed bursts of energy and sharp peaks of anger, joy and grief. You are coming into your power as the illusory hold of your previously accepted limits is shaken. You will be asked to consciously experiment with spiritual openmindedness.

Anger

ANGER IS FUEL. When we feel the emotion of anger we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a tantrum, throw a fist into the wall, tell off all those idiots. But we are nice people, so we've learned to stuff our anger, deny it, bury it, block, hide and lie about it, medicate, muffle and ignore it. We work hard to do everything but listen to it.

Take care this week to trust in the healing power of anger. Listen to it, feel it out, sit with it and look for the direction it points you in. Treat it like a compass. Respect it. Feel out the boundaries it's defining for you. Having anger present while you unblock your equestrian self is a sign of health.

Try to channel your anger into action. Avoid acting out and utilize that burst of anger to reroute your old, dying life, towards the birth of your new creative self. Trust that your anger has a purpose.

Treat anger as a tool, not a master. Tapping into it and drawing upon it at our will. Used properly, anger is use-full.

Sloth, apathy, and despair are the enemy. Anger is not. Anger is our friend. It will always tell us when we've been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interests.

Anger is not the action itself. It is action's invitation.

Synchronicity

As we've learned in the first two weeks, we can become comfortable and have a sense of safety by allowing our dreams to escape us. For our dreams to go unanswered, or even unasked. How frightened would you be if suddenly faced with the possibility of having your biggest dream come true?

• A woman admits to a buried dream of riding her horse across the country. At an event the next evening, she's introduced to a group planning to ride across America.
• An equestrian journalist acknowledges a dream to document the history of Asian horse breeds. A single exploratory phone call puts him in touch with a documentarian looking for a partner to travel to Asian next month with to research the same project.
• A girl is thinking about interning at a famous Dressage facility and opens her email to find an invitation from the same farm for her to submit an application.

Take the time this week to work on small wishes, get your feet wet so to speak. Put them out to the universe and take a deep breath.

Even the most timid life contains such moments of commitment: “I will get a new horse after all!” And then, “I found the perfect one. It was the strangest thing. I was at my trainer's and her best friend was needing to sell her horse because she was moving to Europe in a month!”

C. G. Jung dubbed synchronicity, loosely defined as a fortuitous intermeshing of events. Whatever you choose to call it, once you begin your creative recovery you may be startled to find it cropping up everywhere.

Don't be surprised if you try to discount it. It can be a very threatening concept. Jung also explored the possibility of an intelligent and responsive universe, acting and reacting in our interests.

Try it out, feel out this possibility in your own life, starting this week. Instead of asking whether you can do something, say that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things can follow.

Feel out the universe's tendency to fall in with worthy plans and most especially with festive and expansive ones. Put the what before the how. First choose what you would do. The how will usually fall into place on it's own.

Remember that creativity is a tribal experience and that tribal elders will initiate the gifted youngsters who cross their path. This may sound like wishful thinking, but it is not. Sometimes an older artist [or equestrian] will be moved to help out even against his or her own wishes. “I don't know why I'm doing this for yu, but . . .” Again, this may be the universe falling in line with your plans.

Be watchful this week for any miserly reactions. All gift horses are looked in the mouth and usually returned to sender. We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.

Take a small step in the direction of a dream and watch the synchronous doors flying open. Seeing, after all, is believing. Remember the maxim “Leap, and the net will appear.”

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.

– Goethe

Shame

Those of us who get bogged down by fear before action are usually being sabotaged by an older enemy, shame. Shame is a controlling device. Shaming someone is an attempt to prevent the person from behaving in a way that embarrasses us.

As equestrians we can often feel a great deal of shame handed down to us by trainers, instructors, bystanders, unwitting family members and friends. “What do you think you're doing?!” your trainer shrieks at you as you struggle to control an excited horse.

How dare you not instinctively know how to handle a strange horse? How dare you try out competitions when you ride for a Classical Master? How dare you take fifteen years to get to Grand Prix? How dare you work with a Natural Horsemanship clinician? How dare you say someone's being too rough with their horse?

Art brings healing. Remember you first need to see that wound before you can expose it to the air and light.

Often we are wrongly shamed as creatives. From this shaming we learn that we are wrong to create. Once we learn this lesson, we forget it instantly. Buried under it doesn't matter, the shame lives on, waiting to attach itself to our new efforts.

This is why many great riders never make it beyond the basics. Why those who dream of becoming professional trainers give up and settle for being exercise riders.

Does this mean no criticism? No. It means learning where and when to seek out right criticism. As artists, we must learn when criticism is appropriate and from whom. Not only the source but the timing is very important here. A first draft is seldom appropriately shown to any but the most gentle and discerning eye. It often takes another artist to see the embryonic work that is trying to sprout. The inexperienced or harsh critical eye, instead of nurturing the shoot of art into being, may shoot it down instead.

Take care of your newborn art, give it a safe hatchery to grow in. When those thoughts sneak in . . . “I know that work is good . . . I thought that was good work . . . Could I be kidding myself? . . . Maybe that critic is right . . . Why did I ever have the nerve to think . . . ?” be firm with yourself and refuse to pick up the first doubt.

Be vigilant. “Maybe that critic was right . . .” and take action: “You are a good artist, a brave artist, you are doing well. It's good that you did the work . . .”

Take to heart that the antidote to shame is self-love and self-praise.

Dealing with criticism.

There are certain rules of the road, useful in dealing with any form of criticism.

1. Receive the criticism all the way through and get it over with.
2. Jot down notes to yourself on what concepts or phrases bother you.
3. Jot down notes on what concepts or phrases seem useful.
4. Do something very nurturing for yourself — read an old good review or recall a compliment.
5. Remember that even if you have made a truly rotten piece of art, it may be a necessary stepping-stone to your next work. Art matures spasmodically and requires ugly-duckling growth stages.
6. Look at the criticism again. Does it remind you of any criticism from your past — particularly shaming child-hood criticism? Acknowledge to yourself that the current criticism is triggering grief over a long-standing wound.
7. Write a letter to the critic — not to be mailed, most probably. Defend your work and acknowledge what was helpful, if anything, in the criticism proffered.
8. Get back on the horse. Make an immediate commitment to do something creative.
9. Do it. Creativity is the only cure for criticism.

Detective work exercise.

Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and figts. Without being acknowledged, they are often used as batteries by their families and friends, who feel free to both use their creative energies and disparage them.

When these blocked artists strive to break free of their dysfunctional systems, they are often urged to be sensible when such advice is not appropriate for them. Made to feel guilty for their talents, they often hide their own light under a bushel for fear of hurting others. Instead, they hurt themselves.

A little sleuth work is in order to restore the persons we have abandoned — ourselves. When you complete the following phrases, you may feel strong emotion as you retrieve memories and misplaced fragments of yourself. Allow yourself to free-associate for a sentence or so with each phrase.

1. My favorite childhood toy was . . .
2. My favorite childhood game was . . .
3. The best movie I ever saw as a kid was . . .
4. I don't do it much but I enjoy . . .
5. If I could lighten up a little, I'd let myself . . .
6. If it weren't too late, I'd . . .
7. My favorite musical instrument is . . .
8. The amount of money I spend on treating myself to entertainment each month is . . .
9. If I weren't so stingy with my artist, I'd buy him / her . . .
10. Taking time out for myself is . . .
11. I am afraid that if I start dreaming . . .
12. I secretly enjoy reading . . .
13. If I had had a perfect childhood I'd have grown up to be . . .
14. If it didn't sound so crazy, I'd write or make a . . .
15. My parents think artists are . . .
16. My God thinks artists are . . .
17. What makes me feel weird about this recovery is . . .
18. Learning to trust myself is probably . . .
19. My most cheer-me-up music is . . .
20. My favorite way to dress is . . .

Growth.

Growth is not a steady, linear process. It is circular; even as you move forwards you are also beginning to move backwards, as you are moving backwards you are also beginning to move forwards.

Creative recovery is a healing process. You are capable of great things on Tuesday, but on Wednesday you may slide backwards. This is normal. Growth occurs is spurts. You will lie dormant sometimes. Do not be discouraged. Think of it as resting.

Very often, a week of insights will be followed by a week of sluggishness. The morning pages will seem pointless. They are not. What you are learning to do, writing them even when you are tired and they seem dull, is to rest on the page. This is very important. Marathon runners suggest you log ten slow miles for every fast one. The same holds true for creativity.

“Easy accomplishes it.” If you will hew to a practice of writing three pages every morning and doing one kind thing for yourself every day, you will begin to notice a slight lightness of heart.

Practice being kind to yourself in small, concrete ways. Look at your refrigerator. Are you feeding yourself nicely? Do you have socks? An extra set of sheets/ What about a new house plant? A thermos for the long day at the barn? Allow yourself to pitch out some of your old ragged clothes. You don't have to keep everything.

More than anything else, experiment with solitude. You will need to make a commitment to quiet time. Try to acquire the habit of checking in with yourself. Several times a day, just take a beat, and ask yourself how you are feeling. Listen to your answer. Respond kindly. If you are doing something very hard, promise yourself a break and a treat afterward.

Yes, baby yourself. Leave being tough, cynical and intellectually chilly to the critics. As a creative being, you will be more productive when coaxed than when bullied.

Tasks.

1. Describe your childhood room. If you wish, you may sketch this room. What was your favorite thing about it? What's your favorite thing about your room right now? Nothing? Well, get something you like in there — maybe something from that old childhood room.
2. Describe five traits you like in yourself as a child.
3. List five childhood accomplishments. [straight A's in seventh grade, trained the dog, punched out the class bully, short-sheeted the priest's bed]
   And a treat: list five favorite childhood foods. Buy yourself one of them this week. Yes, Jell-O with bananas is okay.
4. Habits: Take a look at your habits. Many of them may interfere with your self-nurturing and cause shame. Some of the oddest things are self-destructive. Do you have a habit of watching TV you don't like? Do you have a habit of hanging out with a really boring friend and just killing time [there's an expression!]? Some rotten habits are obvious, overt [drinking too much, smoking, eating instead of writing]. List three obvious rotten habits. What's the payoff in continuing them?
   Some rotten habits are more subtle [no time to exercise, little time to pray, always helping others, not getting any self-nurturing, hanging out with people who belittle your dreams]. List three of your subtle foes. What use do these forms of sabotage have? be specific.
5. Make a list of friends who nurture you — that's nurture [give you a sense of your own competency and possibility], not enable [give you the message that you will never get it straight without their help]. There is a big difference between being helped and being treated as though we are helpless. List three nurturing friends. Which of their traits, particlarly, serve you well?
6. Call a friend who treats you like you are a really good and bright person who can accomplish things. Part of your recovery is reaching out for support. This support will be critical as you undertake new risks.
7. Inner Compass: Each of us has an inner compass. This is an instinct that points us toward health. It warns us when we are on dangerous ground, and it tells us when something is safe and good for us. Morning pages are one way to contact it. So are some other artist-brain activities — painting, driving, walking, scrubbing, running. This week, take an hour to follow your inner compass by doing an artist-brain activity and listening to what insights bubble up.
8. List five people you admire. Now, list five people you secretly admire. What traits do these people have that you can cultivate further in yourself?
9. List five people you wish you had met who are dead. Now, list five people who are dead whom you'd like to hang out with for a while in eternity. What traits do you find in these people that you can look for in your friends?
10. Compare the two sets of lists. Take a look at what you really like and really admire — and a look at what you think you should like and admire. Your shoulds might tell you to admire Edison while your heart belongs to Houdini. Go with the Houdini side of you for a while.

I’ll be posting my check-in notes to the comments. Please share your experiences from Week Two's exercises, if you need support in an area you’re struggling with reach out for encouragement.