Morning Pages (Julia Cameron)

writing free copy rightsWhat Are Morning Pages?


Have you ever done Julia Camerons Artists Way? In that book she shares an excellent daily exercise called Morning Pages. Here’s what Julia says about morning pages

“Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing,done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages*– they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow.”

How Can Morning Pages Help Me?

  • Morning pages are like a western version of meditation. Instead of sitting there for 20 minutes doing nothing but watching your thoughts you instead spend 20 minutes writing your thoughts out and down on paper, which releases what’s inside.
  • Morning pages prioritise your day.  They set you up so that you are more open and can then hear guidance much more clearly.
  • You do not need to be a writer or artist to benefit from doing the morning pages. It’s a tool for everyone. Julia Cameron teaches that they are particularly a powerful method for business men and women.
  • Within about 2 to 3 weeks you will start seeing some kind of shift in yourself.
  • Peoples colour senses have been known to shift with this process
  • Possible changes in your spacial senses.
  • Feeling more flexible with your ‘choice points’. So, instead of feeling at the mercy of your day you may become more empowered in the knowing that you can make choices and shift things for the better.
  • You become much more clear in your intuition and hunches.
  • Greater connection with spirit and soul starts taking the lead.
  • Morning pages miniaturises your sensor, your ‘inner critic’, that inner negative voice that puts you down. The pages allows space for your sensor to diatribe, and meanwhile you just carry on, being, allowing. This has a portable affect of training your sensor to stay to the side in life, whilst you carry on.
  • You are letting the Universe know what you like and what you don’t like. The Universe tends to cooperate with what you spell out in your pages.
  • When your pages are finished you can ask for guidance and the answers can be scribed through you (you’ve just cleared the channel!)
  • Waking up to your greater potential.

Here’s how you do the morning pages

As it suggests morning pages are done in the morning and they are pages!

You set your alarm, sit up, grab your notebook and pen and pour forth onto the page. You are looking to allow everything and anything, all thoughts, thoughts that seem to have nothing to do with creativity. But here’s the key – pouring it all out clears your mind, like you have taken a little hoover and poked into into all the nooks and crannies of your consciousness and sucked it all out and spillied it out on the page. It doesn’t need to make sense and there is no right or wrong way of doing it. Just spill and pour.

When doing your pages write them in long hand. This is because when you are working on your computer typing you are getting speed and distance but not depth. When you are writing by hand it connects you to your emotions, you really feel what you’re feeling as you write. Writing them by hand you get a more accurate perception of your life.

Should I try and be creative in my morning pages?

No. If you think this is an exercise of being artful it isn’t. It’s just the mess of life coming out; petty, selfish, victim, whining, petty, inspiring, joyful, gritty, pointless, garbled . . . however it just happens to be. Let it flow.

How Should I start the morning pages?

Your morning pages can start anyway. The most important thing is get your pen to hit the page and just write. You might start with ‘I dont know what to write’ ‘I’m feeling tired I dont want to do this’ ‘Ive got this amazing thing I want to write about’ ‘I hate writing morning pages ‘I havent got time for this’ ‘im feeling great this morning’ etc.

Or if you’re like me many may start like this ‘I dont know what to write about I dont know what to write about I dont know what to write about flowers I dont know what to write about I dont know I dont know I dont know oooh I wonder what will be happening in the kitchen at breakfast time rubbbish wjhat am I talking about kittens awwwh lovely . . .’

Just words . . .

You just write out what is crossing your consciousness in that moment and there’s no need to force anything to come to completion. You’re writing down ‘Cloud Thoughts’ thoughts that are just moving and morphing through your consciousness, thoughts that carry all aspects and nuances of you, so you’re becoming aquainted with all the light and dark corners of your psyche.

Allow and release your negativity into your morning pages, it’s OK.

Capturing the darkness is not a negative process, it’s more like you are meeting your shadow and taking it out for a cup of coffee! When you spill out your negativity onto the page it doesn’t so much filter into your consciousness through out the rest of the day.

Morning pages are a clearing exercise, an exercise that makes you have much more consciousness as you pass through your day.

How About   “Mourning”   Pages

Julia Cameron says that she thinks they should actually be called Mourning Pages, because they are really a goodbye to life as you knew it and an introduction to life as it’s going to be.

What the hell doe’s that mean?

Well, I totally get what Julia means by this as I did morning pages for quite a while a few years back and I was astonished when looking back with hindsight. So much is being released, and so much is being born too.

When you write your morning pages you are NOT to go back and read them. You need to leave at least 8 weeks between having written them and then reading them. Why? Well, because you don’t want to fill your brain up again with what you’ve just emptied. Trust it’s ok to let it all go. What needs to stick will stick.

My morning pages experience

After having written about 3 months of morning pages I only looked back on them about 3 years later. I was shocked at what I found. My garbled quickly spilling words were infact describing the life that was yet to come to me. The trails of writing were abundant with higher guidance and knowing. The words were often opening into desriptions of what was yet to unfold for me.

Because I was not going immediately back and reading what had been pouring forth I wasn’t aware of what had been coming out. It was only when I took a long look back, and that only happened because I found a stack of notebooks and thought I’d take a peek, that I realised that not only was darkeness and junk and waste was coming out but also deep insight, knowing, wisdom, guidance, shed loads of it. It was profoundly moving realising that.

So, as an exercise of daily clearing, aligning and creativity igniting I am taking it back up again to see how it shifts my life. See how it fuels my creativity. See how it has an impact on me.

So again, here’s how to do morning pages

Morning Pages Instructions

  • Get yourself some A4 notebooks and some pens
  • Make sure you write and use long hand to do your morning pages
  • Choose a time to awaken yourself in the morning. It could be before you get up, or it could be earlier so you wake up, write and go back to sleep. Its up to you. But let the writing be the first thing you do upon waking, before anything else.
  • Just start writing anything, just write the thoughts that are there, or that seem to not be there. Just write.
  • Write continuously, without analysing, for 3 pages.
  • When done, you can ask for guidance if you wish, and then just write down what comes (my personal experience of this is mega powerful)
  • When done close your notebook and DON’T go back and read it. (leave at least 8 weeks.)
  • Do the same tomorrow morning.

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