An Atheist's Companion to "The Artist's Way"
Rethinking a problematic assumption in Julia Cameron's classic on living a creative life
Creativity is hardly the domain of the religious alone, and inspiration takes as many forms as there are those of us willing to attempt the creative. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is chock-full of exercises and discussions to help us break things loose if we’re stuck, but a lot of the value seems to be hiding there behind a relatively dense layer of “god stuff”. I’ll be completely honest - if I hadn’t had the book recommended so highly by people I trust (one of whom is also an atheist, no less), I’d probably have tossed it aside no more than a couple pages in!
Open up a copy of The Artist’s Way to the main introduction and start reading. You won’t get more than a couple pages in before being confronted with this somewhat awkward attempt at inclusivity:
Because The Artist’s Way is, in essence, a spiritual path, initiated and practiced through creativity, this book uses the word God. This may be volatile for some of you—conjuring old, unworkable, unpleasant, or simply unbelievable ideas about God as you were raised to understand “him.” Please be open-minded.
Remind yourself that to succeed in this course, no god concept is necessary. In fact, many of our commonly held god concepts get in the way. Do not allow semantics to become one more block for you.1
It seemed earnest enough upon first reading, if a bit combative right out of the gate. Still, something feels a bit “off” in her pitch, and it took me a while to really figure out what was going on. Continuing on, just a few paragraphs later:
Do not call it God unless that is comfortable for you. There seems to be no need to name it unless that name is a useful shorthand for what you experience. Do not pretend to believe when you do not. If you remain forever an atheist, agnostic—so be it. You will still be able to experience an altered life through working with these principles.
And there we have it. We’ve moved from “attempting to be inclusive” to what could even go so far as to be “thinly-veiled contempt” (though I suspect the author was merely aiming for “matter-of-fact”). It’s remarkably dismissive, especially coming from someone who was, just a few pages earlier, asking us to “[p]lease be open-minded.” But things are looking up for us wishing to navigate this program sans-God, because we’re starting to uncover clues that can help us understand the author’s blind spot with regard to atheism. Cameron, again:
When the word God is used in these pages, you may substitute the thought good orderly direction or flow. What we are talking about is a creative energy. God is useful shorthand for many of us, but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source, and Higher Power. . . .
Cameron’s Problematic Assumption
These are all, at their core, outside powers. All of these make the same basic assumption that there’s something bigger out there playing the role of God, regardless of what you call it.
Cameron seems to assume that even without God, we still need something external to which we can ascribe our creativity to. Something to surrender our worries and problems to; something outside ourselves that can be the source of our creative energies; something we can trust to be there for us when we falter. It’s a key underpinning of many exercises and concepts in The Artist’s Way, and seems to be ingrained enough in the author’s mind that she never (at least not in this book) seems to consider that there could be another option.2
It’s a basic structural incompatibility of worldviews: looking outside ourselves vs. looking inward. The upside is that once we recognize it, it’s far easier to identify it in the ensuing discussions, and adapting the exercises often becomes relatively straightforward. Just because we’re looking in different places doesn’t mean we aren’t looking for the same things, but it does mean we need to ask the questions differently.
Rethinking Creative Energy
Now that we recognize that we are at odds with some of the basic assumptions in The Artist’s Way, it’s time to consider what we are actually seeking when we look inward. What is it that lies at the foundation of our creative journey, and how can we use that in our efforts to become unblocked?
I believe that creativity is a key part of what makes us human beings. It’s part of a package deal - it comes along with opposable thumbs, the capacity for learning, and all the other trappings of humanity, both good and bad. Creativity isn’t optional, or something only some people get - it’s one of our defining characteristics.
This also means it’s not something we can lose or run out of. As such, we need not look outside of ourselves in search of some mystical source of our creativity - we already have an unlimited amount right here with us, we just have to remember that it’s there! Armed with this concept, we can start to reframe portions of The Artist’s Way that don’t really resonate with our concept of the world.
What’s Next?
Over the course of the next 12 weeks (and beyond!), we’ll be working through each of the chapters of The Artist’s Way from our newly-flipped perspective. We’ll dive into the topics from each chapter, discuss some alternative approaches to the various exercises, examine some outside resources that can add to the experience, and maybe even throw in an interview or two to round things out. Thoughts, questions, observations? Think I completely missed the mark? Comment below and let’s discuss!
Cameron, J. (2016). The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. TarcherPerigee.
In her defense, I believe this to not be a deliberate exclusion, but rather just something that didn’t occur to her at all. The Pew Research Center shows as few as 5% of Americans identified as atheist or agnostic at the time of publication of The Artist’s Way, so the attempt at inclusivity at all might be considered rather progressive for the time!