This is the point where many Cameron readers stop. Spirituality. The universe. A "creative force" greater than us. If you're skeptical, it's understandable. Cameron wrote for both.
This is the point where many Cameron readers stop. Spirituality. The universe. A "creative force" greater than us. If you're skeptical, it's understandable. If you are a believer, too. Cameron wrote for both.
What Cameron proposes (and what he doesn't)
Cameron doesn't ask you to believe in God, or any specific religion. What it asks is something more subtle: that you consider the possibility that Creativity is not something you produce, but something that goes through you. That you are a channel, not a factory.
The practical difference is enormous. If you are a factory, all the pressure is on you: you have to generate the ideas, you have to be brilliant, you have to produce. If you are a channel, your job is be open. And when the channel is clear—when you've taken out the noise with the morning pages, when you've nourished the well with the artist's quote—the ideas flow.
"Creativity is an act of faith. You don't need to know what you believe in, just that you believe in something bigger than your fear."
The idea of the Great Creator
Cameron uses the expression "Great Creator" (Great Creator) to refer to that force, whatever it is for you. It can be God, the universe, nature, the collective subconscious, or simply deep intuition. The name doesn't matter. What matters is the relationship.
Treating yourself like a channel changes the way you feel about creating. You no longer need to have all the answers before you start. You can sit with a question and trust that something will come. Morning pages, in fact, work exactly like this: you start without knowing what you are going to write, and something appears.
For the skeptics
If all of this sounds like magical thinking to you, Cameron asks you for just one experiment: act like it's true for twelve weeks. You don't need to believe it. You just need to try it. If at the end of the process it hasn't worked, you can return to your skepticism with data.
Most skeptics who do the experiment honestly find that something does change. Not necessarily your worldview, but yes its relationship with uncertainty. And it turns out that creating requires, fundamentally, being comfortable with not knowing.
"Jumping into the void and discovering that there is a network is the most common experience among those who commit to their creativity."
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