A.R.T.S. Anonymous Basics

• Why We Keep Coming Back
  

  “There is nothing to prove. No forms to fill out. No dues or fees. You’re an artist if you say you are. There’s no big message, no drum to beat, no enemy to fight, no cause to die for, and no big shots. No one person runs the show. No one is turned away. Nobody can kick you out. Everybody is creative. Everyone is an artist."

• The A.R.T.S. Basics Pamphlet
  

  “Our art is a gift to be shared." This brochure includes all the basics of the A.R.T.S. Anonymous program: the Twelve Steps of A.R.T.S., the Traditions, Traits of Avoidant Artists, Tools for Recovery, and Talents for a good life.
  Download The A.R.T.S. Basics (pdf)

• Starting Your First Meeting
  

  "Based on our own experiences, we feel confident enough to say that your new A.R.T.S. meeting may be one of your most rewarding creations. Many of us have found that the A.R.T.S. members we see regularly at meetings become our new, supportive ‘artistic family’ and the A.R.T.S. meeting itself becomes a new home – a place where we can openly and honestly share the joys, fears, achievements and disappointments of the past week and a place where we are supported for being the creative, evolving and multi-dimensional spiritual and human beings we truly are."
  Download Starting Your First Meeting (pdf)

Literature for the Spirit

• The Anorexia of Avoidance
  

  "And so I try to kill my love of my art, my love of doing my art, and I kill my yearning, my dreams, my appetite, my aspirations, my upward look, and I do not, as Emerson put it, “hitch my wagon to a star.” I’m “safe” from my creative gifts. And meanwhile something once wonderfully alive in me is dying…"
  Download Anorexia of Avoidance (Word doc)

• Facing Avoidance: An Inventory of Attitudes
  

  "27. Does my concern about how my work will be received keep me from doing it?
  54. Do I make appropriate efforts to share my art?
  74. Do I present, promote, and preserve my art with the respect it deserves?" Download Facing Avoidance (Word doc)

• The Creative Block and A.R.T.S.
  

  "The Twelve Steps of A.R.T.S. Anonymous offer a recovery path out of darkness. They are the means whereby past traumas and life problems can be overcome. The Twelve Steps accept that nothing about the past can be changed -- but people can separate from their past. The Steps spiritually change the fear-based personality." Download A.R.T.S. and the Creative-Block (Word doc)

• The Inspired Life
  

  "Although our will has no power over the coming and goings of inspiration, we can set up our creative life so that we can receive inspiration when it comes calling. Two writers were having lunch and at 1:00 PM one writer said he had to go home because “I have a date with my Muse.” “Oh,” said the other, “When is she coming?” To which he replied, “I don’t know exactly so I have to be home when she knocks on my door.”
  Download The Inspired Life (Word doc)

• When Your Work is Your Worth
  

  "When we listened to other artists share their inspiration, struggles, and triumphs with their works-in-progress, we came to see we were not alone."

• Art & Our Spiritual Awakening
  

  "We tried to be grateful for whatever happened – big deals or tiny breaks. We learned to accept graciously and not demand that our good come in a certain way. We found that by appreciating what we had, we received more. Mishaps and setbacks became opportunities for growth."

Step Literature

• Step One Essay
  

  "Not only is creativity in the genes of every human being, it is a force of nature, powered by inspiration. We had no say in what Gifts we received at conception. We have no say over that which inspires us. Our creative abilities will endure until our last breath is taken, and what we create might live on beyond our own life for generations to come."

• Step Two Essay
  

  "Blocking out our Gifts and/or great parts of our life to be unlived is insane. We hurt ourselves with our need to block. We constantly say “no” when we should be saying “yes.” The need to isolate, to not join, to not try, to drop out, go it alone, and push others away is our way of staying safe."

• Step Three Essay
  

  "It is we who choose to block, that is our will, and it deprives us of our greatest joys -- our creativity and a wonderful life. The decision to NOT be, to NOT do, to NOT give, is when we take our will back from God. "

• Step Four Essay
  

  "Our “moral inventory” lies in our memories of all those people, places, and things that we have remembered since childhood. Through these memories our lives could be retold frame-by-frame, just like a movie – if it was put in chronological order. But we do not hold our memories in chronological order. The mind holds them as immoral fragments. The more severe our fragments are, the more our personalities are fragmented, as in faulted, and our good character subjugated beneath our traumatic fears."

• Step Five Essay
  

  "The job of Step Five is to now expose our defensive personality, which has doomed us time and again to repeat our victim tapes. Our personality is full of habitual responses and these habits have been blocking the flow of our life for a long, long time. In going forward, we must leave behind a personality that no longer works for us."

• Step Six Essay
  

  "Actually, we are now ready to cast ourselves away from our past. Good character can triumph over our personality defects only in the present, as in this very moment, as in “today I have a choice. I can do as I always have done, or I can choose not to do as I always have done.” "

• Step Seven Essay
  

  "Morally we are accountable for how we give to the fellowship of man and for how we receive from the fellowship of man. The heart of life is this eternal exchange of giving and receiving. The act is tangible; the desire to be heart led is a miracle."

• Step Eight Essay
  

  "There were times when we were not the victim, when others were because of what we did. We make our list of amends for the wrongs that we did to others. What is important in this Step is to acknowledge that we have harmed."

• Step Nine Essay
  

  "Let us realize that we are not alone when we make our direct amends-- that the spirit of heart and truth go with us. They are our safety, our net of security, no matter what the response from those to whom we now make amends."

• Step Ten Essay
  

  "By now, we can feel without thinking when we have stumbled into the “wrong”. We can feel ourselves contracting, and actively retreating inward. We can feel it in our heart when we resist and withhold our friendship or love or acceptance from another."

• Step Eleven Essay
  

  "Through daily meditation with a sustained quiet we can find an inner still point, a grand silence, where we lose consciousness of our physical being. This state of being where we have left ourselves behind quiets and calms our mind."