The Nature of Inspiration

What is inspiration and where does it come from? Inspiration is like a myth and may actually be the only real myth we have and it has been with us since the dawn of time. The nature of inspiration offers the possibility of transcendence and it is an unfailing ideal that fosters courage and the hope of triumph. We inherit inspiration from the generations that went before us.

Inspiration gives birth to ideals and those ideals are vital to the human experience and to the world. They represent justice and mercy, truth and honor, courage and sacrifice, romance and altruism, love and faith, glory and triumph, vision and hope etc... We share these ideals with each other, and out of these ideals and every good and virtuous cause flow our purest motivations, and when we destroy ideals we also destroy the motivations that we derive from them and not just that but also the purest of virtues.

Ideals and beliefs are not the same.

Ideals are standards of what we deem perfect and ideals can be corrupted when we use them as defensive excuses that protect us from beliefs that fail.

Our beliefs offer us the safety of certainty and sometimes fail because of fear.

It isn't a matter of what do you trust more...your ideals or your beliefs...but rather how we get them to walk side by side.

We tend to categorize our beliefs into true, false or still pending. Ideals exist as archetypes and icons to reinforce our beliefs and that creates courage of conviction. Transcendence is derived from a constant that has been with humanity since the dawn of time. It is a certainty that persists wherever we find life. That certainty is inspiration.

We live in a world and in a universe of limited observability. Although some of that limitation has diminished, meaning we can peer into the cosmos or explore the micro cosmos, it is mostly a limited and linear exploration. We are searching for freedom in an existence of limitation. Inspiration is freedom from limitation into transcendence. Inspiration is our greatest remedy.

We crave safety and certainty because we observe a dangerous environment. That danger is the risk of death. The reality of death is a shadow that never leaves us. Ideals are our way of seeking immortality. We behave differently in childhood and take more risks and engage our imagination because of a lack of awareness in regards to death. We don't see ourselves dying as a result of any risk we may take as children towards death. As adults we tend to minimize risks and move away from death. These are prime motives of the human condition.

Michelangelo said, "The greatest danger never lies and setting our aim too high and falling short but aim too low and achieving our mark." He was talking about an openness to transcendence by way of inspiration as an unfailing ideal that asked...how much more courageous is it follow after inspiration despite the awareness of the risk associated with finding expiration instead?

We are ultimately at the mercy of our beliefs and our ideals. It is true that there is nothing new under the Sun. The mechanism of the universe operates the same from birth to death. We create truth around that mechanism or we are influenced to continue in someone else's truth and form ideals to reinforce a belief but what I've discovered is that truth, despite our inner motives maintains itself, without the necessity of our beliefs or ideals to uphold itself.

Robert Frost said, "We dance round and ring in suppose but the secret sits in the middle and knows." That secret is truth. Truth is beauty and beauty is truth, we've heard this before but what is truth? This isn't a new question and we all offer a different answer. For me inspiration offers a glimpse at the secret that sits in the middle. Inspiration may be the only truth that has ever been.

Inspiration has been my chief motivation since I was a small boy. What is the nature of inspiration, the breath of life that offers transcendence? Where does inspiration come from? Does it exist somewhere deep within ourselves or does it come from something external or both simultaneously? How is it connected to our imagination? Is it outside of our control? May we summon it at will? My belief is that the epiphany follows after openness.

Inspiration, as mysterious as it may be, spurs the engines of creation and human limitation is broken by the freedom that inspiration offers. When it seems like we've reached our full potential, inspiration is what gives birth to transcending that potential. Maybe inspiration is just a consolation for the limitations that we face, showing us that we are more than what we appear to be. And, who knows, maybe limitations exist so that we can experience transcendence.

Imagination and creation engage our beliefs and ideals but inspiration transcends them.

Honestly, I don't have any answers beyond simply this...the fact that we experience inspiration at all is our triumph over limitation. Inspiration compels us to ascend to realms beyond our manifestation of being into the triumph of freedom and victory over fear and doubt.

Inspiration is the engine of creation.

Another way to say it is that we create motivated by the triumph of inspiration and this in my opinion is the essence of life and it's ever-increasing enhancement. Transversely, how often do we experience the nudge of inspiration and fail to act only to experience life and creation as fleeting as a windblown kiss.

This divine spark is the initial cause of every motivation found in the human experience. This triumph is a triumph in our awareness that ultimately expands our perceptions and leads us towards the wonder of truth and beauty even in the darkness of lies and ugliness and chaos.

One thing I've always trusted as much as myself is inspiration. I'm always seeking to magnify my openness to it. Inspiration is the God of my being. It is the light of a firefly in an attempt to magnify that light to illuminate a universe that exists within.

Da Vinci said, "For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth ever more with your eyes turned skywards for there you have been and there you long to return." I think this statement perfectly describes the nature of inspiration. When I draw or paint or embrace my imagination and create, it is an attempt to take flight and climb the winds of inspiration and transcend my own mode of existence.

Men have always dreamed of flying. I've laughed at some of the attempts they've made and even my own attempts but never at the attempt to reach the expectation of triumph and the expression of inspiration. We see the wings fold up and a man falls face first into the ground. You see these hopping umbrella machines or any number of contraptions that were doomed to fail at conception. We hear the story of Icarus and Daedalus and witness the tragedy of loss, and the triumph of freedom intertwine, and we see the risk and reward of inspiration and transcendence.

 What never ceases to amaze me is man's unwavering persistence to retain the expectation of triumph. That expectation, though often met with abject failure, is not the defeat but rather triumph because of how the expectation is reborn in the next attempt. We've all seen the failures of someone or even ourselves as we fall face-first into the ground, and the dust flying up as a result and then that slight movement attempting to get up yet again. There's more pain and getting up than falling down at times and shame can be our undoing in regards to this. We fall out of planes and the parachute fails. The expectation isn't death, instead we brace for impact and we're not unrealistic we know we're going to break every bone in our body, but our expectation is that we will somehow crawl away and survive it.

One of my favorite cartoons as a child was The Roadrunner. In this cartoon a coyote spends his whole life attempting to catch a roadrunner for a meal. He experiences one failure after another whether it be falling off a cliff or being crushed by a boulder or blowing himself up or catapulting himself face first into the ground. As funny as the premise of that cartoon is, no matter how great the Coyotes attempt and failure, each new scene began with the same expectation and enthusiasm towards success.

Evel Knievel was a daredevil whose career was prominent in the 1970s and in his attempts to take flight drew thousands of onlookers who he remarked, gathered to watch him die. He broke every bone in his body over the course of his career and his life and suffered greatly and old age as a result. His was an expectation of triumph. Nothing can ever take that away from him. This man took enormous risks just to experience transcendence and he succeeded not only in being motivated by inspiration but by leaving an inheritance of the same. I think it's ironic that his feats were performed on Triumph motorcycles.

Life is the place where we experience inspiration, transcendence and hopefully, triumph. It comes with high risks and costs but the people who truly live their lives will leave a mark of inspiration, transcendence and triumph.

Inspiration offers the ability to transcend and spurs the engines of creation and that's what we're seeking...we're seeking to give birth to inspiration the same way inspiration gave birth to us. The experience of transcendence that somehow turns our gaze skywards towards freedom.

We think. We do. We reach a destiny. We have these notions about our existence and that it is finite and about leaving a legacy. Ultimately, knowing myself,  I'm trying to leave the same thing inspiration gave to me...the same motivation...the same transcendence...the same inheritance...to leave a physical trace of the inspiration that says I was here.

I was here.

That is what's so remarkable about humanity, it is our record of inspiration that began at the dawn of time till now and onward.

Who knows maybe inspiration is the consolation for all the limitations we face. If that's the case then maybe life is about experiencing again and again that transcendence till we finally get to a place where we become the inspiration and we are always in connection with it. It doesn't come and go or somehow show up unexpectedly but rather is always present in our being. If it is, I can think of no better destiny to strive towards.

So, what is our triumph?

Our triumph as human beings is that we still look up. We still feel that deep brewing movement of inspiration that calls us skywards. It's been said that when love and skill work together expect a masterpiece. How often do we see our life as the masterpiece that it is meant to be? How often do we see inspiration as the flight of our being? That is where our life literally exists and inspiration is the connection our soul has to anything we call divine.

Within the ideals associated with inspiration we discover perfection and that perfection is you...experiencing inspiration and ultimately flight that is unfailing.

May your inspiration be as open as the sky is to anything that takes flight, even if that flight is as fleeting as a windblown kiss.

In honor of those who dare to follow after inspiration.

GB

Finding Camelot

Finding Camelot

Camelot is an ideal. It's the hope that courage will remember you. It's about finding something larger than yourself and believing in a shared hope and vision for the future. So where do you look for those ideals but within.

I've been divorced since 2009. I took the divorce very hard and I didn't understand how I could give everything of myself to my marriage and family and still have no support. I stopped believing in everything because if you do your best and that's still not good enough, it means that no one shares the same beliefs anymore.

One night I had a dream where I was climbing a mountain and as I climbed the mountain I thought about events from my life that made an impact on me along the way. I wasn't alone in the dream. There was a woman who was like a guide as we climbed. When we made it to the top there was a golden cup resting on a stone and it was empty. She explained that as I climbed up the mountain, the higher I climbed the more the cup emptied. She also explained that the cup will refill itself on the way back down but the cup had to stay there. Somehow climbing the mountain allowed me to pour out the old to make room for the new.

Before we embarked on the climb my guide said something to me, she said, "The sword in the stone cannot be removed alone." I barely remembered what those words she spoke were but she led me to a plateau on the mountain and I couldn't believe my eyes. I saw a gleaming sword sticking out of a stone. She told me that the sword was my own Excalibur. Then she repeated her words, "The sword in the stone cannot be removed alone." I walked up to the sword and tried to remove it but it wouldn't budge. I asked her to help me and that it takes two people to remove the sword but she turned her gaze downward and refused to help me get my sword. This made me very angry. Why would she lead me to something I can't have? I didn't understand. She told me that I was no different from Arthur and that If I was able to remove the sword it would only be to wave it in the face of my enemies and vanquish them. The sword represents revenge to me rather than a way to establish justice. The stone is my heart and if I remove the sword I will bleed to death. She told me that I was only meant to see it and know that it exists. The reason Arthur was able to pull the sword was because unlike any other that went before him he saw every hand that believed in Camelot joined to his and pulled the sword for a shared hope and vision of Camelot.

My guide at this point made it very clear that I would have to go the rest of the way alone to the very top. When I climbed the rest of the way, I stood there and I looked across the span and saw people also standing on their own mountains. It was perfectly silent. All we did was look at each other. I'm certain that moment was different for each of us. There was a kinship. It was humbling.

I turned and started my way back down the mountain passing the sword and cup and seeing myself as having fulfilled a quest to find Camelot only to find a belief instead. And maybe that belief is only shared by those who complete the quest. I woke from that dream unable to recall any more that what I've shared here.

I wrote a poem to commemorate it...

Dear King Arthur now I know

Your wisdom fails not to bestow

Those who went before your story

Were only seeking selfish glory

The secret door to Camelot

Is found in simple counterplot

The sword held tight inside the stone

Will never be removed alone

We all have our own personal quests and our own mountains to climb. I don't even know if anyone wants to find Camelot anymore. I only know that what I found was the courage of my convictions again and that I have a purpose and vision and values that are worthy.

As a hopeless romantic, one of my favorite stories is that of the Lady of Shallot. This story is one of many in the tales of King Arthur. It is a romantic tale of a mysterious Lady imprisoned on the Island of Shallot. She is cursed to never look upon Camelot for if she does, she will die. She has a magic mirror with which to see the world. She embroiders a tapestry of everything she sees in the mirror. One day she sees Lancelot in the mirror, and turns to look at him directly and falls in love with him and the mirror cracks. She then gets into a boat and drifts away from the island towards Camelot but before she reaches Camelot, she dies.
When she arrives in Camelot, she's laying on her tapestry. When Lancelot sees her he says a prayer on her behalf.

The nature of love idealized becomes romance. Those ideals produce courage and glorious motives that will never die.

So, where is Camelot? Well, I don't know really, but maybe it's enough that the best of Camelot lives within each one of us.

Live forever my Lady of Shallot...Long live Camelot.

 

GB

Empathy...Ah the humanity

 

Empathy...Ah the humanity

When people talk about empathy it's usually in the context of individual empathy unless a tragedy occurs then of course that will trigger mass empathy. I bring this up because I'm always reminded of Bartleby.

Bartleby is a short story by Herman Melville, written in 1853 after he wrote Moby Dick. The story was also made into a 2001 movie starring Crispen Glover. In the story Bartleby is a scrivener or legal copyist or a more modern and sterile description would be a copier machine. Bartleby suffered a loss that no one is paying attention to and so, in response to every request made of him he simply says, "I'd prefer not to." Until finally his boss sees him and his loss without triumph and cries out, "Ah the humanity...the humanity. This is empathy on an individual basis.

Those words echoed across time from 1853 to 1937 when the Hindenburg disaster took place. Herbert Morrison was a reporter on the scene when the crash occurred and crying out the words, "Ah the humanity...the humanity. September 11, 2001 that same cry was heard around the world. This is empathy on a mass basis.

Empathy means to be able to understand someone else's position and feel what they are feeling, and usually it produces compassion and some form of intercession if the circumstance calls for it.

People rarely understand the nature of empathy. Have you ever noticed that people tend to be more cruel when you are in the midst of suffering? It feels like the whole world lines up to kick you when you're down. The reason that is, is because people are terrified of the possibility of loss without an accompanying triumph to go with the loss.

People find it impossible to identify with someone who has suffered loss with no triumph because the thought of putting themselves in the place of powerlessness and hopelessness is terrifying. In fact it's more terrifying than anything you find in a horror film because human loss is rooted in reality. So when they kick you when you're down, and they will, just know that they are doing so because they are confronted and terrified by the possible reality that they could end up in a similar situation without hope.

So, they will say things like pull yourself up by your bootstraps come on get up GET UP!

But what if there is no getting up? You can't have triumph without loss...that's true enough, but what if there is no triumph to be won?

It is more difficult to express empathy on an individual basis than en mass simply because of the way we see triumph and loss. If all we have is loss, who wants to empathize with that? We want a happy ending more than relating to those who have suffered loss. Empathy has become an afterthought emotion that is only displayed after a triumph is gained, reserved only for those who overcome the odds. People easily empathize with that because they say to themselves...Even if I suffer similar loss I have hope. I will rise above. I will overcome the odds because if that person can do it so can I.

Empathy in its' purest and truest form becomes the motivation behind compassion. Empathy is not an afterthought. It is from a compassionate heart without judgment or condemnation, not a heart of righteous indignation.

If you want to experience real empathy you must first give up your self-given right to judge and condemn and in order to do that you have to face your own fear of loss without triumph.

"Ah the humanity." If only we saw the individual tragedy the way we see mass tragedy.

If we are to advance as human beings we are going to have to look at the nature of empathy within ourselves and each other unless, of course, you'd prefer not to.

GB

The Fig Leaf

The Fig Leaf

The saddest expression I have ever seen is when someone smiles through the dying. More and more we are suppressing emotion because the emotional experience has become so predictable that even the mere thought of expressing an emotion of any kind presents us with a fear that people will start pointing out our behaviors to us. It has become quite easy to identify the behavioral and psychological dynamics that people operate from and because these human traits are common to man, all of us are susceptible to displaying them. And the more we display them, the easier it is to point and make an accusation. Fear of shame and the perception of weakness causes us to recoil away from expressing our emotions and this naturally causes us to suppress emotion. So, we pretend that we're not bothered by that, but we are. People have adopted the belief that any expression of emotion is the equivalent of behavioral and psychological disrobing...sharing honestly has become self prohibitive as a defense mechanism because no one has the right to be vulnerable without shame or fear of attack. We watch what we say, what we do, even what we think because of social ramifications and the possibility of being behaviorally identified and classified. So, we ultimately conform and resort to living in emotional stealth mode. Conformity is social camouflage that allows us to hide in plain view, and the more we learn about human nature, the more camouflage we need.

Everyone walks around smiling and sharing pleasantries, but underneath it all, we are groaning. That groaning is a desire to not be so easily sized up psychologically or intellectually...and especially not emotionally.

Human behavior has been so analyzed at this point that it's been chalked up to instinct and stimuli and how we respond to it...all lumped together in coffee table books. That desensitized and clinical approach to the human condition presents a view of the human experience that reduces the emotional being of a person towards obsolescence and human interaction and sharing is in decline right alongside it. Isolation becomes a safe haven for emotions because predictability of human behavior doesn't provide adequate social camouflage so instead, we hide..

As a result, the human experience is facing a relational winter and has been for quite some time. Relationships are distant and superficial despite the fact that we have a very common and intimateunderstanding of what makes us tick. Our intentions, motivations and behaviors have become transparent and hiding is how we cloth ourselves. Since we can't literally hide, we have to camouflage ourselves with emotional obsolescence to mask our emotional and psychological nudity. What appears to others as apathy or in difference is really just a mask to hide our desperation to express emotion without judgment and condemnation.

We have become hyper vigilant and trust is difficult if not impossible to cultivate, because the minute you lower your defenses and become vulnerable, it is seen as weakness and weakness is an intolerable crime in society everywhere. This is why we turn to intimate relationships as a consolation for the suffering of hiding in plain view. Relationships become a place where you don't have to hide.

You take away emotion and you take away experience and both are linked to social interaction. When we reach out to no one or that diminishes to suppression of emotion and we give up on consolation, we become non beneficial to each other. We no longer build relationships because we can gain no benefit of consolation, because emotions are devalued and obsolete.

If taking away the fig leaf of human nature leads us to hiding behind metaphysical masks, fig leaves and apathetic responses to conceal any perception of vulnerability, then our existence has become pathetic. We really have been a buzz kill to each other, and lowering our quality of life by eviscerating emotion and exposing motives is how we've done it. We have stomped the mystery of the human experience into the ground.

People operate from fear of perception. They seek to hide in plain view. They will look for camouflage to conceal their true self. Conformity is that very thing. The emotional and psychological manifestation of the human experience has been laid bare. Everyone is metaphorically naked and conformity is camouflage for being seen. It is the elephant in the room that everyone pretends is not there. Everyone is a social policeman on patrol and there is only one crime and it's recoil.

And what recoil do we attempt to conceal? The fact that we are not ok with detachment and apathy as camouflage. It's recoil from the fact that our camouflage doesn't make us feel safe. It's uncomfortable and we pretend it's not. It's the pretending that bothers us the most. That is the elephant. Take away the fig leaf and we isolate ourselves and we do this because we fear judgment for being our true selves. This is why trust is built on the foundation of non judgment and non condemnation and this is why no one trusts anyone because that's what we do...judge and condemn each other.

The safeguards we seek are trusting relationships and trust is in decline. If people had the power to touch another person and know a person as well that person knows themselves...people would recoil. Rightly so. Taking away the fig leaf of human behavior exposes us to unhealthy perceptions of ourselves and others and we become naturally suspicious of people looking too closely. This can threaten our sense of privacy and personal safety. Mutual disclosure and getting to know someone and allowing someone to know us as well as we know ourselves is a choice to disrobe psychologically, physically, spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. That choice can only be expressed in freedom... And it's a freedom that we afford to each other mutually. The human experience is about experiencing life and the deepest connections that we share, and those connections are deeply personal and based in a desire to be known as well as we know ourselves and have it be ok, but then again, this is why we pull away, because it's not ok.

The minute you can't express the desire to be known and feel safe, we begin pretending. The minute we can't express how the pretending bothers us, we become a suspect and promote our own emotional obsolescence. 

Emotional obsolescence has become our alibi.

Are emotions obsolete?

Well, you tell me. If they are, then maybe the entire human experience is as well.

With that said...May the paths we take in life lead us only deeper into each others' hearts. As for me, I suppose I'll continue to pretend and like everyone else...smile through the dying.

GB