This is a question that awakens within us original masterpieces, those genius works and achievements that some people have managed to accomplish as if guided by special forces, certainly superior to those people themselves. What magical force was leading them? Which special currents did they know how to follow?
This is also a question that personally haunts us in those moments when we want to express our best feelings and thoughts, even though we don’t know how to do it. We also ask ourselves this question when we feel empty, without ideas and emotions, as if we were a bag of skin and bones, with no other possibilities of living.
Let us remember, therefore, the great creators who knew how to establish contact with inspiration by touching its secret. Can we assert that there is a bridge between people and the world of ideas that can establish that connection called inspiration? Maybe there isn’t just one bridge, one single connection between us and that world, because if that were the case, those who crossed the bridge would have told us how they did it and where they reached. Maybe there are multiple bridges, multiple connections that lead us to that world of ideas, and it is up to each individual to find their own path.
A person needs to expand their own networks in their own way, and perhaps therein lies the mystery of awakening inspiration.
Furthermore, I fear that the rational mind, which we have made the distinguishing characteristic of humans, has little or almost no connection to this process. Experience tells us that the more we insist on reason, the further we are from inspiration.
Ancient sages spoke of the secret of becoming like a hollow reed through which intuition flows. And then, a miracle happens: we are still empty, but conductive. We are flooded with abundance of images and driven to act extremely fast. What is left unsaid, unpictured, unwritten, or undone in that moment is lost. It’s not really about our actions; someone or something gives them to us, and it is up to us to catch them and transmit them. It’s a moment of ecstasy, a touch with a world different from our own, subtler, more beautiful, perfect in all aspects. It’s like having a receiver of great sensitivity whose functioning is We are unfamiliar with its usage. We can only employ it when it is functioning.
We have various, more or less inspired descriptions that provide us with a possible key for interpretation. If there is an attraction between our personal vibrations and the world of perfect ideas that we wish to reach, contact is established through a strong desire. Therefore, it is up to us to develop and nurture these currents of attraction, in line with the amount of good and beauty that we want to conquer and convey. It is up to us to open the doors to inspiration.
And when we once again ask ourselves what inspiration is, we will likely still be left without a concrete answer. However, in return, we will have an unusual and beautiful feeling that we have been touched by a miraculous light that comes from beyond time and space, from the eternal source from which we have all desired to drink.
From the book Everyday Hero – Thoughts of a Philosopher.