unrequited love/obsessions and artists blocks

one of the main texts i use in my creative recovery workshop is "the artists way" by julia cameron. it's like a twelve-step program for blocked creatives (except it doesn't speak in negative affirmations, i.e. i am an alocholic, i have no power over alcohol etc., which is what really disturbs me about 12-step programs) and i couldn't recommend it more highly!

well, this morning i was talking with a girlfriend, who is just about as brilliantly creative as it is possible to be, and we started in on how we sometimes use our preoccupation with relationship, specifically those of the unrequited variety, to stall, stunt and sabotage our creative projects. we were talking about the power of obsession and how it is really a block of fear. and then i remembered this amazing chapter that i read a few months back in another of julia cameron's books called, "the vein of gold". i ran to my bookshelf and found it immediately, and then -get this!- i opened directly to the chapter titled "obsession"!!

here is some of what she has to say:

For blocked creatives, unrequited love has a purpose: it keeps us from loving ourselves. If we don't love ourselves, then we don't deserve any of the adventures, achievements, and accomplishments we might deserve if we were lovable. So pick somone unresponsive, and the payoff is terrific in terms of inertia and the increased capacity to stay stuck...

Wondering takes a lot of time and even more energy. an ambiguous love affair, the kind that leaves you craving more, is by definition addictive. Scientists have long known that sporadic reinforcement will habituate a rat to a desired behavior far more effectively than steady reinforcement will. Ambiguity is always addictive. Put cheese at the end of a maze every time and the rat loses interest in the cheese. Put it there only so often and the poor rat will race to see what's there.

Ironically, sporadic reinforcement is exactly how the rats we love condition us. We make them the focus of all our love. They pay us back for all this attention every so often and...oh, rats! We get hooked.

We get hooked by the stop/go. By the off again/on again. By the chimera, the shadow dance of a now-you-see-it/now-you-don't affair...Many of us use it ot avoid our own creative lives...

Obsession is almost invariably linked with procrastination. In fact, the most surefire way to break obsession is to move into the creative act you are avoiding...

i begin most mornings with conversations like this...more later...cbell