The War of Art by Steven PressfieldEveryone is an artist. Everyone has some or the other form of art to create, craft and contribute to the burgeoning functioning of the universe.
But most of us are artists in disguise waiting for the glasshouses of our minds to crack open so that we can perceive fresh possibilities out of the things we sense and interpret.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a book on creativity, on writing, on what prevents and blocks us to express our true self, and how to take a leap by understanding what blocks us.
Different people call this block by different names. In this book, the author calls this blocking element by the name of ‘Resistance’.
The book is divided into three main parts. Part one deals with knowing the characteristics and tendencies of resistance. Part two deals with ways of combating resistance and part three deals with what lies beyond resistance.
In this review, I share useful and functionl pointers from the book. So, let’s begin with these.
A Secret That real writers know
There is a secret that real writers know and wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.
The Unlived Life
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life. Between the two lives stands resistance.
What is Resistance?
Every sun casts a shadow and a genius’ shadow is resistance.. Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.
CHARACTERISTICS OF Resistance
#1 Resistance is invisible
#2 Resistance is internal
#3 Resistance is insidious and always lying
#4 Resistance is implacable, means that it cannot be reasoned with. It understands nothing but power. It is an engine of destruction, programmed from the factory with one object only, to prevent us from doing our work.
#5 Resistance is impersonal. Resistance is not out to get you personally. Resistance is a force of nature and it acts objectively.
#6 Resistance is infallible, which means that it will unfailingly point to the calling or action it most wants us to stop doing. The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we’ll feel towards pursuing it.
#7 Resistance is universal. Everyone who has a body experiences resistance.
#8 Resistance never sleeps. The battle must be fought anew every day.
#9 Resistance is fueled by fear. Fear is an indicator of resistance. It has no strength of its own. If a calling meant nothing to us, we’d never feel resistance towards it. When we master th fear, we conquer resistance.
#10 Resistance opposes and obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to the higher.
#11 Resistance is most powerful at the finish line.
#12 Resistance recruits allies – When the writer begins to overcome resistance, when she actually starts to write, she may find that those close to her began acting strange. They may become moody or sullen, they may get sick; they may accuse the awakening writer of changing of not being the person she was.
#13 Procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance.
#14 Resistance leads to self-dramatization and victimhood.
#15 Resistance feels like unhappiness
#16 If you find yourself criticizing other people you are probably doing it out of resistance. Individuals who are realized in their own lives never criticize others.
#17 Resistance can take the form of self-doubt, because self-doubt is an indicator of aspiration.
#18 Sometimes we experience resistance because we are afraid of being isolated or alone.
#19 Resistance can take the form of seeking healing. But the part of us who thinks that we need to heal before we can pursue our true calling is not the part from where need to create. It stems from a lower sphere of the self. In reality the more trouble we have got, the better and richer our work becomes.
#20 Resistance can show up as Rationlization. Our minds can lie and make us believe in the seemingly rational justifications of why we shouldn’t do our work.
#21 Resistance can be beaten. It is like giving birth to ourselves.
#22 Resistance is a bullying critter that keeps coming.
Ways of Combating Resistance
#1 The term of our life can be divided into two parts – before turning pro and after. Amateurs believe in resistance. Professional does not. A pro shows up every day, show up no matter what, stay on the job all day, committed over the long haul, do not overidentify with their jobs, master the technique of their jobs, accept praise or blame for their jobs and have a sense of humor about their jobs.
#2 The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you’ll fear it, and the more resistance you will experience facing it.
#3 Patience – Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. The professional is patient and understands delayed gratification. The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each ndividual work.
#4 A pro views her work as craft not art. She knows if she thinks about it too much, it will paralyze her, so she focusees on the technique. A professional dedicates himself to mastering technique
#5 A professional accepts no excuses. A professional knows that resistance is like a telemarketer, if you say hello, you’re finished.
#6 The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops, rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces, all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is heaven, the professional understands, only in heaven.
#7 A professional is prepared each day to confront his own self-sabotage. He understands that the field alters every day. His goal is not victory but to handle himself, his insides, as sturdily and steadily as he can.
#8 A professional distances herself from her instrument – her person, her body, her voice, her talent; the physical, mental, emotional and psychological being she uses in her work. She doesn’t identify with her instrument. It is simply what God gave her and what she has to work with.
#9 A professional doesn’t take failure or success personally. A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul.
#10 The professional self-validates. A professional cannot allow the actions of others to determine his reality.
#11 A professional endures adversity by keeping his eye on the doughnut and not the hole.
#12 A professional recognizes his limitations and brings in other pros and respects them.
#13 A professional reinvents himself
#14 A professional takes herself as a corporation. She can hire herself and fire herself. This reinforces he idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work to the will-and-consciousness-running the show. Besides, it gives her a healthy distance from herself. She’s less subjective and doesn’t take blows personally.
#15 There is no mystery in turning pro. It is a decision brought about by the act of will. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.
Nature of the Higher Realm, Beyond Resistance
#1 As resistance keeps us from who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are poised against it. These are our allies and angels. Angels are the agents of evolution. The Kabbalah describes them as bundles of light, meaning intelligence, consciousness.
#2 When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron fillings. Ideas and insights come to us.
#3 The Muse is the daughter of Zeus,, the father of the gods, and Memory Mnemosyne. Before I sit down to work, I’ll take a minute and show respect to this unseen power who can make or break me.
#4 The Magic of Making a Start – the moment one commits oneself, the providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events raising in one’s favour and material assistance would come his way.
#5 Without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us on how to do our work and live our lives. Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise, occupied? What exactly it is doing? It’s organizing. The principle of organizing is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits, rivers make their way to the sea.
#6 The Ego is the part of the psyche we think of as the “I”. Our conscious intelligence, our everyday brain that thinks, plans, and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The Self is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of unconscious dwell there. It is the sphere of the soul.
#7 Angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two. The Ego is the part of psyche that believes in material existence. Ego believes that Death is real, time & space are real, every individual is separate from every other, the predominant impulse of life is self-preservation and there is no god. The Ego doesn’t like us to evolive. It likes the things just the way they are.
Read all the review pieces written by me! | Follow on Goodreads!
Subscribe: Neha's Notebook | My Little library | Raindrop Stories
Comments
Post a Comment