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