Guidelines for The Artist’s Way Women’s Circles

principles guiding the EXPERIENCE & expectations

As an Artist’s Way facilitator I, Eugenia, endeavour to support, encourage and hold a space built of respect & trust, heartfelt connection and humility.

In gathering together, “we can act as mirrors to potentiate each others growth” (The Artist’s Way, pg.207). In this way, we are compelled to bring our best selves to the space.

The Artist’s Way offers the following ‘Sacred Circle Rules’ (p.210) which we explore and are inspired by:

1. Creativity flourishes in a place of safety and acceptance.

2. Creativity grows among friends, withers among enemies.

3. All creative ideas are children who deserve our protection.

4. All creative success requires creative failure.

5. Fulfilling our creativity is a sacred trust.

6. Violating someone’s creativity violates a sacred trust.

7. Creative feedback must support the creative child, never shame it.

8. Creative feedback must build on strengths never focus on weaknesses.

9. Success occurs in clusters and is born in generosity.

10. The good of another can never block our own.

Participation in my circles requires radical self-responsibility

and a preparedness for deepening self-intimacy.

I find The Four Agreements, a book by Don Miguel Ruiz, a helpful model for this experience.

The following precepts provide a code not only for working in community with The Artist’s Way, but also for life: a personal development model and template for behaviour, communications and relationships.

The FOUR Agreements

1. Be impeccable with your word - Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t take anything personally - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t make assumptions - Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

The nature, and themes, of this work intentionally asks us to excavate our past.

It brings us into transparency and honesty with our present.

And invites us to dream big and take action for our future.

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It is unavoidable that you will come into relationship with sometimes painful, sometimes joyful truths about your experiences.

If emotional & spiritual unfolding will be destabilising and unsafe for you at this time, or if you have any expectations around receiving specific personal advice, instruction or developing co-dependancy on the group, myself or the process (as would be more appropriate for a therapeutic context), this experience is not suitable for you.

Whilst The Artist’s Way makes a wonderful companion to professional therapeutic support (counselling, psychological, psycho-therapuetic), it is not a substitute.

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If any of what is stated here has challenged you, triggered or offended you - out-with the scope of the ‘normal’ feelings of fear/excitement that comes with new endeavours, change and exploring the unknown - you will not enjoy my style, facilitation or methodology.

Please reflect honestly on your capacity for commitment and intention for joining in this process, before booking.

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If you commit and book to any Artist’s Way work I offer, and for any reason do not attend, complete, or find unreasonable issue with experience, you will not be issued or eligible for a refund.

when we gather as a member of The Artist’s Way Circle we agree to:

• Presume good faith in all interactions and exchanges

• Listen to the entirety of a person’s sharing (ie. withhold interjection or unsolicited opinions or advice)

• Practice Active Listening

• Show up with ‘Beginners Mind’

• Leave our professional knowing at home, and participate as an equal

• Allow for flux and flow of speaking, reflection and sharing

• Keep comparison thinking and competitive behaviour at bay

• Resist engagement in debate or conflict

• Address any concerns privately and directly with Eugenia either via email or phone.

The following has been copied directly from Julia Cameron’s GUIDELINES for groups in the The Artist’s Way.

1. Use a Twelve-Week Process with a Weekly Gathering of Two to Three Hours. The morning pages and artist dates are required of everyone in the group, including facilitators. The exercises are done in order in the group, with everyone, including the facilitator, answering the questions and then sharing the answers in clusters of four, one chapter per week. Do not share your morning pages with the group or anyone else. Do not reread your morning pages until later in the course, if you are required to do so by your facilitator or your own inner guidance.

2. Avoid Self-Appointed Gurus. If there is any emissary, it is the work itself, as a collective composed of all who take the course, at home or otherwise. Each person is equally a part of the collective, no one more than another. While there may be"teachers," facilitators who are relied on during the twelve-week period to guide others down the path, such facilitators need to be prepared to share their own material and take their own creative risks. This is a dialectic rather than a monologue – an egalitarian group process rather than a hierarchical one.

3. Listen. We each get what we need from the group process by sharing our own material and by listening to others. We do not need to comment on another person's sharing in order to help that person. We must refrain from trying to"fix" someone else. Each group devises a cooperative creative "song" of artistic recovery. Each group's song is unique to that group – like that of a pod or family of whales, initiating and echoing to establish their position. When listening, go around the circle without commenting unduly on what is heard. The circle, as a shape, is very important. We are intended to witness, not control, one another. When sharing exercises, clusters of four within the larger groups are important: five tends to become unwieldy in terms of time constraints; three doesn't allow for enough contrasting experience. Obviously, not all groups can be divided into equal fours. Just try to do so whenever you can.

4. Respect One Another. Be certain that respect and compassion are afforded equally to every member. Each person must be able to speak his own wounds and dreams. No one is to be"fixed" by another member of the group. This is a deep and powerful internal process. There is no one right way to do this. Love is important. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to one another.

5. Expect Change in the Group Makeup. Many people will – some will not – fulfill the twelve-week process. There is often a rebellious or fallow period after the twelve weeks, with people returning to the disciplines later. When they do, they continue to find the process unfolding within them a year, a few years, or many years later. Many groups have a tendency to drive apart at eight to ten weeks (creative U-turns) because of the feelings of loss associated with the group's ending. Face the truth as a group; it may help you stay together.

6. Be Autonomous. You cannot control your own process, let alone anyone else's. Know that you will feel rebellious occasionally – that you won't want to do all of your morning pages and exercises at times in the twelve weeks. Relapse is okay. You cannot do this process perfectly, so relax, be kind to yourself, and hold on to your hat. Even when you feel nothing is happening, you will be changing at great velocity. This change is a deepening into your own intuition, your own creative self. The structure of the course is about safely getting across the bridge into new realms of creative spiritual awareness.

7. Be Self-Loving. If the facilitator feels somehow "wrong" to you, change clusters or start your own. Continually seek your own inner guidance rather than outer guidance. You are seeking to form an artist-to-artist relationship with the Great Creator. Keep gurus at bay. You have your own answers within you.