Hmmmm…. looks quite similar to this one, except it costs $199 to “join.” Julia is supposed to actually participate there. Dang, we’d let her participate here for free, wouldn’t we Horsewings?

Lady’s gotta make a living. I’m just glad they didn’t commercialize this site. I’d just as soon it not start looking like facebook. Maybe she’ll give us old timers a discount?

Someone mentioned this on another thread here, which kind of rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps I should post it there, but, I’ll bring it up here as it’s related, as Horsewings also joked about it above. It was about why can JULIA have people pay her $199 for her work and not other people teaching the TAW process? For one thing, Julia said in the back of TAW that she didn’t want other people setting themselves up as an expert or to be paid as a facilitator of TAW processes and using it to make money. SHE is the creator of the process. It’s her process (along with Mark Bryan.) She sets the rules. Why shouldn’t she get paid for her creation? Wouldn’t (general) you expect to be paid for your creative endeavors? Maybe this is an area where some of (general) you are blocked? Do you consider your own work to be of enough value to expect to be paid for it and that it is indeed unique and different?

Second, doesn’t she have a right to protect her work from being used by other people to profit off of? Again, that goes to valuing one’s own work. Would you want other people taking your original ideas and making money off of it? Would you say this about anyone else’s book or idea?

Perhaps as someone who did attend her seminars twice, with years of a break in between, I know how much WISDOM she actually has that she puts into her seminars. When she charges, we are paying for that wisdom. She doesn’t just follow her own TAW book verbatim and phones it in. She pulls from several processes she’s created and a lifetime of working with blocked artists. She changes things up or adds processes, depending on the group dynamic that day and what comes up in discussion. It isn’t just the exercises or tasks. She spends a good deal of time sharing her own life experiences of times she’s been blocked, or stories of other people who’ve been blocked and how they used the tools to get through being blocked. Those are the nuances that one only has from a lifetime of experiences working intimately with this stuff. That’s not something someone can simply, intellectually get from reading and following the books. The books are the framework. Just as a house’s framework is the wooden 2x4s. The experience of living in it for years as a home is something deeper and richer.

Do I think she is worth paying for? Obviously, yes, I do. But, then, I have studied with a lot of experts. I love learning. It’s one of the perks of living in a big city where they come to do seminars & workshops. I have no problem about paying to study with experts. They have more knowledge, understanding and most of all experience & wisdom which are what makes them the expert over someone else teaching a derivative version. THAT’S what I am paying for. I am paying to by-pass or shortcut through a lot of the trials & errors and mis-steps they made that brought them to an expert level. It’s about learning off of their mistakes, so hopefully my own journey will start out at a more advanced place and I’ll get to my goals faster.

I didn’t see that part. I am glad that we are given a choice whether to participate in all of that and whether we want to pay, instead of changing this site into a paid site. Then we’d be forced to move elsewhere.

I’m hoping that the simple questions that are asked over and over and over again, by people who do not even bother to do a search or sometimes, not even skim down the first page to see if someone else already asked the same thing and got answered, go over to the other site’s forums to ask the questions. Have you noticed, some people don’t even come back later to find out if their question got answered. Maybe they finally did do a search? I hope those forums will remain public and Google-able.

In some ways, I wish this was a closed group, like at Yahoo. We have a great, sensitive, wonderfully supportive core group here. I’m honored that you guys have so embraced me. The only part I get a little weary of at times is being an info booth for the same questions. And I haven’t even been here that long.

If Julia is going to be doing Q&As for parts of her process that aren’t clear to a lot of people. I hope that info will be archived and made public. She could really work that angle, to go deeper into the books and parts that were left out due to editing or the publisher restricting the number of pages, or having found out people are still unclear about stuff, like what size paper for Morning Pages. She could also do a whole section on VOG, for those people finding it hard to slough through that book, and explains, yes, she too, realized afterward that it’s a tough book.

I joined one at Yahoo about a year or so ago. But, it turned out that one of the facilitators was also an actress. I think she was jealous of me, even though I was blocked, too. I had done more than she had done. She didn’t have my years of professional experience and not as a NY professional. I just kind of noticed she would never really talk to be, unless I’d be talking about her problems. When ever I’d be discussing something that happened to me, she’d suddenly ‘coincidentally’ have this big drama of her own, and of course the group, would rally around her, as she was facilitator and had been there longer. I just didn’t want to go through that in a group. I was there for my own healing, not to take care of a wounded facilitator who had problems with ME. That experience had actually put me off of coming here earlier.

It did come up in my morning pages today and when I was writing the post above about Julia’s wisdom, that I think what I really need is some type of Elder Women’s group or some Wise Women’s group, over just an Artist’s Way group. Not only am I grieving through some artist blocks, I have other issues at this point in life that I have to come to terms with, grieve, close doors on, let go of, come to terms with my mortality, my parents’ mortality, etc. I’m really craving to be with other women who are going through it and some older women who’ve been through it and kind of share their own experiences, insights and wisdom along the way.

There is an empowerment group that I loosely belong to. I go in & out of that group. When I leave, it’s mainly because they are all younger than me, and at different places in their lives. Rah! Rah! empowerment and setting goals and thinking one can simply blast through all these blocks to an empowered life is fine when one is in their 20s & 30s. But there comes a point when one realizes life is deeper and takes on new meanings than just accomplishing a list of goals and acquiring things. Not meaning to be condescending, but if one talks about wisdom to them, they don’t have any. They think empowerment IS wisdom or empowerment is success – which is different – and that it’s enough. Wisdom is just a vague concept because they are too young to know what they don’t know. They weren’t brought up by wise Elders to understand the concept. They are in fact, learning from people about the same ages as them. Then they turn around and teach it to make a buck or make a name, when they also don’t have enough real understanding, themselves. Empowerment and a lot of self-help processes today weren’t conceived by 60, 70, and 80 year olds. Those 60, 70, and 80 didn’t go through empowerment processes to acquire their wisdom, insights, perceptions and strengths. Sometimes all this new technology doesn’t hold a candle to old fashioned wisdom.

There comes a time when only enough time on this planet and having had enough life’s lessons can bring some wisdom. It can’t be gotten from books, or workshops or learning more techniques or doing more processes, or accumulating material things or racking up accomplishments on a resume or getting fancy titles.

There also comes a time when one has lived enough to have an understanding of the consequences of ones choices, conscious and unconscious, and that there may be sorrow, regrets and lost dreams to come to terms with. One can’t just Rah! Rah! them away.

I miss that we don’t have real elders in our culture that we look up to and learn from their wisdom and experiences. How do they negotiate this time? How do they come to terms with the sorrow that life also brings? Some, not all, truly do have profound perceptions and insights about life, and how to negotiate through some passages. Like in Dances With Wolves, the elders and the chief were really honored, respected for their wisdom. They didn’t get it from books or seminars. They earned their fancy titles from Life experiences and having a longer view than the younger know of.

I spend this weekend bickering with someone over a situation which was completely irrelevant to me in the long run. I was too stuck in that moment to see the longer view of my whole life and what a waste of my time and energy it was. I’m lucky to finally be getting some energy back after all this time down from hypothyroidism. Then I waste it on a really ridiculous argument with someone I realized I ultimately don’t care about or even respect after she showed her true colors.

I wish I had someone like a Maya Angelou or a Tina Turner or a Louise Hay to mentor me. Those women have been through some stuff and they do have wisdom to share. I think they would have kept me focused on what’s important in life and what I do need/want to be focusing on now.

((Laughter.)) Up your nose, PJ.

Seriously, though–the elders are out there. Why not let it be known that you’d like to start a Wise Women’s Group, describe what you’re looking for and see what happens?

If you can’t be silly once in a while, you can’t be too wise. Right, PJ?