Experiment with this two-step process: ask for answers in the evening; listen for answers in the morning. Be open to all help.

Using them, the light of insight is coupled with the power for expansive change. It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action. The pages lead us out of despair and into undreamed-of solutions.

One way to achieve clarity about our time expenditures is to keep a daily checklist and record of our time spent. Even an hour of creative work/play can go a long way toward offsetting the sense of workaholic desperation that keeps our dreams at bay.

To become unblocked we must recognize our either/or thinking.

Often audacity, not authentic talent, confers fame on an artist. The lack of audacity—pinched out by critical abuse or malnourished through neglect—may cripple many artists far superior to those we publicly acclaim. In order to recover our sense of hope and the courage to create, we must acknowledge and mourn the scars that are blocking us.

Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And “What’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair.

Just as a recovering alcoholic must avoid the first drink, the recovering artist must avoid taking the first think. For us, that think is really self-doubt:

It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action.

“Leap, and the net will appear.” It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance. It is a little like opening the gate at the top of a field irrigation system. Once we remove the blocks, the flow moves in.