Interview with Julia Cameron

Samuel Bercholz: Your work is nominally about creativity, but it seems to be as much about tools for spiritual growth. What is the connection?
Julia Cameron: People often say to me, "Your book is a Buddhist book," or "This is a book about mysticism, really, or this is a Sufi book." That is probably because creativity is a spiritual path, and at the core of the various spiritual paths are the same lessons. For instance, I recently read Thich Nhat Hanh for the first time, and I found myself thinking that he sees the world with an artist's eye. I think that's because he is very heart-centered. Even though we think of creativity as an intellectual pursuit, in my experience creativity is a heart-centered pursuit. We actually create from the heart. I think it's interesting that the word "heart" has the word "art" embedded in it. It also has the word "ear" embedded in it.
So both Buddhism and creativity involve the art of listening to the heart. That's where the creative impulse arises from. That's why I cannot distinguish between creativity and spirituality. When you're practicing creativity you become a grounded individual, and that communicates the universal.
I've been a writer for more than thirty years, and the issues that arise in the creative practice are the same kinds of issues that arise in a spiritual practice. You get to look at your insecurity. You get to look at your inquisitiveness. You get to look at your fantasy that a satisfied desire will lead to satisfaction. As near as I can tell, this is what happens with a grounded meditation technique: you go through all of the shenanigans of the restless nature of the mind and what you are left with is, just be. Out of being, things are made. So creativity is the act of being.

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