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Seeking Wisdom summary

Julia Cameron

A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection (A Six-Week Artist's Way Program)

3.9 (191 ratings)
22 mins

Brief summary

Seeking Wisdom by Julia Cameron is an insightful guide on how to live a more creative life. Through personal anecdotes and exercises, Cameron encourages readers to tap into their inner creativity and find inspiration in everyday experiences.

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    Seeking Wisdom
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    Week 1: Adopt a more benevolent God concept.

    You’ve all heard the story of Adam and Eve: Eve offers Adam an apple from the forbidden tree. Suddenly, God’s voice thunders from the parting sky above, banishing them from Eden and condemning them to a future of pain and suffering.

    If this jealous and punishing version of God is the God you’ve grown up knowing, you’re not alone. 

    The story of Adam and Eve., as well as other stories in the Bible, have shaped a concept of divinity which teaches us to fear God and scold ourselves for having desires.

    But what if we were able to flip the script? 

    What if we could rework our God concept, creating a God who is loving and encouraging – one who promoted original blessing instead of original sin?

    In week one of this six-week program, you’ll be inviting a God into your life who encourages you to reach higher and higher. A God who wants you to eat the apple, so to speak.

    By changing our God concept, we start to build a conversational relationship with God. We allow ourselves to believe in a benevolent and supportive world, a world which encourages us to pursue our dreams and desires, and no longer humble ourselves or shy away from talent. 

    If you’re like the author, you may have some trouble with this at first. Perhaps you were told all along to think of God as a man sitting high up in the sky. When the author was advised to pray during her recovery as an alcoholic, she was hesitant. As an agnostic, the idea of praying to God wasn’t something that came naturally to her. 

    But since she wanted to get sober and needed to pray to something, she admitted that she did believe in some things. She believed in a line written by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” While other people in her recovery group prayed to Mick Jagger or sunspots – the point, she discovered, is that God can be anything you choose God to be. 

    In order to arrive at this shift in thinking, try forming your own God concept, come up with a list of  adjectives to describe the God you grew up understanding. And then, ask yourself, What if you could create a new, personal God? A God who likes to tango, a God who wants you to write a best-selling novel, a God who doesn’t want you to slog away at a 9-5 for the rest of your life. Construct a God who is tender, compassionate, a listening God.

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    What is Seeking Wisdom about?

    Seeking Wisdom (2021) is a six week program for learning the power of creative prayer. Whether you are a blocked artist or an aspiring screenwriter, in these blinks, you’ll learn how one’s spiritual life can unlock creativity and create a meaningful artistic life.

    Who should read Seeking Wisdom?

    • Blocked creatives
    • Fans of The Artist’s Way
    • People with a history of addiction

    About the Author

    After years of struggling with alcoholism, author Julia Cameron found a way to sobriety through discovering a Higher Power. Through the tools in this book, she was able to unblock herself as an artist and see a path forward for her creative life. In the four decades which followed, she has become the best-selling author of over forty books, including The Artist’s Way, which has been translated into forty languages and sold over five million copies.

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