The Vein of Gold

Description

In the Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, draws from her remarkable teaching experience to help readers reach out into ever-broadening creative horizons. As in The Artist’s Way, she combines eloquent essays with playful and imaginative experiential exercises to make The Vein of Gold an extraordinary book of learning-through-doing. Inspiring essays on the creative process and more than one hundred engaging and energizing tasks involve the reader in “inner play,” leading to authentic growth, renewal, and healing.The Vein of GoldAcknowledgments

Setting Out
In Your Backpack: The Basic Tools
Morning Pages
Why by Hand?
Task: Morning Pages
Artist Dates
Task: Do a Weekly Artist Date
Clusters: Your Traveling Companions
Task: Cluster List
Your Mode of Transportation: Walking
Task: Walk Daily
Task: Walk an Hour-Long Walk Weekly
Task: Walk Prayerfully
The Gateway: Entering the Imagic-Nation
Task: Manifesting—Enter Your Imagic-Nation
Creativity Commitment

The Kingdom of Story
The Narrative Time Line
Task: Filling in Notes
Task: Post a Sign on Your Mirror
Task: Contact Someone and Commit
Task: Do Your Narrative Time Line
Task: Filling in Blanks
“Cups”: The Key to Self-Disclosure
Task: List Five Secrets
Task: Make a Narrative Time Line Photo Album for Yourself
Words Do It
Task: Alchemy—Converting Dross to Gold
Task: Post Your Golden Words Where You Can See Them
Task: Kill a Creative Monster
Task: Celebrate a Creative Champion
The Wizard of Words
Secret Selves
Task: Name Five Secret Selves
Task: What’s in Those Closets?
Task: What Would Your Life be Like?
Cinema Self
Task: Cinema Self
The Vein of Gold
Technique One: Favorite Films
Task: The Vein of Gold Quiz
Task: Binge Reading
Task: Grab-Bag Collage
Task: Matching
Task: Write Up Your Findings
Robert’s Field Report
Breaking Camp

The Kingdom of Sight
Sight
Task: Time Capsule Collage
Task: Create a Treasure Map
Color
Task: “Fabricate” a More Colorful Life
Task: Speculate on a Different Spectrum: Try On Colors You “Never” Wear
Doll
Task: Make a Creativity Doll
Task: Make a Creativity Monster
Basic Black: The Mystique—and Mistake—of the Suffering Artist
Task: Dress as a Serious Artist
Task: Dress Like You Might Be Having Fun
Cracking
Task: Look at It This Way—On the One Hand . . . On the Other . . .
Task: Mirror, Mirror: Apply a Facial Mask
Task: Face It: Make a Power Mask
Breaking Camp

The Kingdom of Sound
Sound
Task: Sing a Spirit Song
Task: Lullaby
Task: Washing with Sound
Task: Forming a Sound Round
Task: Songlines
Silence
Task: Silence
Safety
Task: Building a Sound Shield
Task: A Sense of Safety
Task: Playing It Safe
Task: Expanding Your Light Through Sound
Breaking Camp

The Kingdom of Attitude
The Paydirt in Pay-tience
Task: Patience
Task: Use “Just a Little” Patience
Courage
Task: Dance a Power Dance
Baby Steps
Task: Playing House
Task: List Every Place You Have Ever Lived
Boredom
Task: Do Something That Has Been Done Before
Task: Oh, All Right! Make Something Unique
Time
Task: I Never Have Time to . . .
Task: I Never Take Time to . . .
Task: Stay Up Late and Read a Book
Task: A Stitch in Time
Containment
Task: Creative Snipers
Task: Believing Mirrors
Getting Current
Task: Getting Current
Task: Get Current in Your Household
Task: Get Current in Your Spiritual House
Breaking Camp

The Kingdom of Relationship
Equality
Task: Write a Positive Prayer
Task: Illuminate Your Prayer
Task: The Blame Game, Round One—Events
The Voluntary Victim
Task: The Blame Game, Round Two—People
Task: Play a Little
Where Does It Hurt?
Task: Taking Back Your Power
Task: Relationship Collage
Task: Abundance Collage
Task: Counting Coup
Task: Who’s Got the Gold?
Batteries
Task: Assault on Being a Battery
Task: Write Your “Shadow Résumé”
Obsession
Task: Obsessions (Past Tense)
Task: Obsessions (Present Tense)
Task: Snap Out of It
Task: Get On with It
Breaking Camp

The Kingdom of Spirituality
Name That God
Task: Recall Your Childhood God
Task: Invent a Creativity God
Task: Invent a Creativity Totem
Guidance
Task: Clearing a Clearing
Task: Spend One Evening in Silence—of All Kinds
Task: Write a Spirituality Cup
Task: Create a Deck of Spirituality Cards
Spiritual Experience
Task: Open the Door
Task: It’s a Wide World After All
Saying “Thank You”
Task: Accepting Gifts
Task: Synchronicity Notepad
Task: The God jar
Task: Accepting Help
Task: Watch Your Tongue
Task: Walk Prayerfully Daily
Breaking Camp

The Kingdom of Possibility
Passion
Task: Valentine to Your Past
Task: Valentine to Your Present
Task: List 100 Things That You, Personally, LOVE
Risk
Task: Taking Your Life into Your Own Hands
Ceilings
Task: Remembering the Possible Dreams
Task: Playing at Dreams
Task: I Trust Myself Dance

Breaking Camp
Tribal Rules
Artist’s Tribal Rules
A Guide for Starting Creative Clusters
Artist’s Way and Vein of Gold Glossary of Tools
Discography
“Pop”ography
Filmography
Bibliography
“Avalon”
Index

“For those seeking the wellspring of creativity, this book, like its predecessor, is a solid gold diving rod.”
–PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Praise for THE ARTIST’S WAY….

“THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron is not exclusively about writing—it is about discovering and developing the artist within whether a painter, poet, screenwriter or musician—but it is a lot about writing. If you have always wanted to pursue a creative dream, have always wanted to play and create with words or paints, this book will gently get you started and help you learn all kinds of paying-attention techniques; and that, after all, is what being an artist is all about. It’s about learning to pay attention.”
–Anne Lamott, Mademoiselle
 
“The premise of the book is that creativity and spirituality are the same thing, they come from the same place. And we were created to use this life to express our individuality, and that over the course of a lifetime that gets beaten out of us. [THE ARTIST’S WAY] helped me put aside my fear and not worry about whether the record would be commercial.”
–Grammy award-winning singer Kathy Mattea
 
“Julia Cameron brings creativity and spirituality together with the same kind of step-by-step wisdom that Edgar Cayce encouraged. The result is spiritual creativity as a consistent and nourishing part of daily life.”
–Venture Inward
 
“I never knew I was a visual artist until I read Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY.”
–Jannene Behl in Artist’s Magazine
 
“Julia Cameron’s landmark book THE ARTIST’S WAY helped me figure out who I really was as an adult, not so much as an artist but as a person. And award-winning journalist and poet, Cameron’s genius is that she doesn’t tell readers what they should do to achieve or who they should be—instead she creates a map for readers to start exploring these questions themselves.”
–Michael F. Melcher, Law Practice magazine
 
“This is not a self-help book in the normative sense. It is simply a powerful book that can challenge one to move into an entirely different state of personal expression and growth.”
–Nick Maddox, Deland Beacon
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY (with its companion volume THE ARTIST’S WAY MORNING PAGES JOURNAL) becomes a friend over time, not just a journal. Like a journal, it provokes spontaneous insights and solutions; beyond journaling, it establishes a process that is interactive and dynamic.”
–Theresa L. Crenshaw, M.D., San Diego Union-Tribune
 
 “If you really want to supercharge your writing, I recommend that you get a copy of Julia Cameron’s book THE ARTIST’S WAY. I’m not a big fan of self-help books, but this book has changed my life for the better and restored my previously lagging creativity.”
–Jeffrey Bairstow, Laser Focus World
 
“Working with the principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Cameron developed a three month program to recover creativity. THE ARTIST’S WAY shows how to tap into the higher power that connects human creativity and the creative energies of the universe.”
–Mike Gossie, Scottsdale Tribune
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY is the seminal book on the subject of creativity and an invaluable guide to living the artistic life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published in 1992, it is a provocative and inspiring work. Updated and expanded, it reframes THE ARTIST’S WAY for a new century.”
–Branches of Light
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY has sold over 3 million copies since its publication in 1992. Cameron still teaches it because there is sustained demand for its thoughtful, spiritual approach to unblocking and nurturing creativity. It is, dare we say, timeless.”
–Nancy Colasurdo, FOXBusinessJulia Cameron has been an active artist for more than three decades. She is the author of more than thirty books, including such bestselling works on the creative process as The Artist’s Way, Walking in This World, and Finding Water. Also a novelist, playwright, songwriter, and poet, she has multiple credits in theater, film, and television, including an episode of Miami Vice, which featured Miles Davis, and Elvis and the Beauty Queen, which starred Don Johnson. She was a writer on such movies as Taxi Driver, New York, New York, and The Last Waltz. She wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning independent feature film God’s Will, which premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival, and was selected by the London Film Festival, the Munich International Film Festival, and the Women in Film Festival, among others. In addition to making films, Cameron has taught film at such diverse places as Chicago Filmmakers, Northwestern University, and Columbia College. She is also an award-winning playwright, whose work has appeared on such well-known stages as the McCarter Theater at Princeton University and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.US

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