A review by bluedilly
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron

inspiring reflective fast-paced

2.5

People have been suggesting this book (or perhaps it's more accurate to call it a "course") to me ever since I was an art student a decade and a half ago, and now that I've finally gotten around to it, I have mixed feelings. While some of the tasks and advice have certainly helped to unblock my creativity (some of it might even turn out to be life-changing), I was deeply bothered by the chapters which focused on money. Here are just a few of the things Cameron says:

Remembering that God is my source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. [...] We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us.

We come to recognise that God is unlimited in supply and that everyone has equal access. This begins to clear up guilt about having or getting too much. Since everyone can draw on the universal supply, we deprive no one with our abundance.

Very often, when we cannot seem to find an adequate supply, it is because we are insisting on a particular human source of supply.

Yikes! While I agree with Cameron that there probably is enough time and resources in the world for all of us to be creatively fulfilled, and we may already have more than we realise if we shift our perspective, it seems privilege has blinded her to the reality that there are a handful of capitalists who keep the rest of humanity from being able to access their fair share of the abundance. To accuse poor people of being poor because they don't have enough faith in their "higher power" to provide for them is immensely insulting to millions of people across the globe. She is a rich American woman with rich American friends, and seems to have written this book with the assumption that the only people reading it are other rich Americans. She insinuates that it is people's own arrogance that keeps them from accessing the resources that they need, but she is the one who is arrogant, boasting that her faith in God to provide for her has allowed God to give her wealth, never acknowledging the privilege she was born into.

Like, I cannot emphasise enough just how disturbing I find Cameron's beliefs when it comes to money. Getting a look inside her mind has taught me a lot about the hoops rich people jump through in order to convince themselves that they deserve to be rich, rather than it being a matter of luck or exploitation. I should give this book one star for this bullshit, but I can't deny that Cameron also has a lot of practical wisdom when it comes to nurturing oneself creatively, and it was only two chapters out of the twelve where she went down such an ugly path. I will take the things from the book which have helped me, and metaphorically throw the rest in the trash where it belongs.
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