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Why inspiration itself is a creative process and depends on mental guidance

We know that inspiration is at the heart of any creative endeavor. When you’re creating a piece of art or poetry, or coming up with a new scientific theory, you need inspiration. Even simple creative activities like cooking or making love require some level of inspiration. Inspiration is a kind of creative impulse, and sometimes it can be based on external factors like a person, a book, a movie, or even simple patterns in clouds, anything really.

Inspiration can also be internal and depends on our thoughts and what we draw from our mind. It is a very active mental process, because we are only inspired when we accept the inspiring thing or thing. This means that our inner acceptance is very important. In order to find inspiration, we must be receptive and have an open mind. Our mind should be like a soft mold on which impressions can be easily formed. A rigid, rigid mind is hard to inspire, so mental flexibility is important if you need to find inspiration and stay hyper-creative.

When you actively look for inspiration, you will find it. It is almost like searching for the truth about life and reality. The artist or photographer draws inspiration from sunsets or from a naked human body, because she wants and actively uses the inspiration to create her piece of art. So the object can exist, but only the creator can turn the object into inspiration. So, inspiration itself is a creative process, because our mind actively changes a simple object into a source of inspiration.

Inspiration can also be derived from an internal mental process, such as a sudden thought, dream, or idea. Suddenly you imagine or dream about a car, a painting, or some kind of flower that doesn’t exist, a new planet with a yellow sky or people with red eyes and that becomes your inspiration for a movie or a book. However, our imagination will have its limits according to the limits of our senses, and so our inspiration levels will be affected.

Psychology needs to do a lot of research on 1) what inspires us and why, 2) why certain things inspire people differently because some people will overlook something while others will observe the same thing and become inspired to create something. Although we need empirical study in these areas, it is generally accepted by psychologists that our personal circumstances, preferences, childhood experiences, subjective tastes, attitudes, and personality will all play a role in what we find interesting or inspiring. Our levels of knowledge and understanding also guide how much we draw inspiration from external things. A simple ripple in a pond can inspire one artist to paint but will have no effect on a person who is too focused on catching a fish. Thus our mental orientation or focus is an important aspect of inspiration.

Thus inspiration depends on a combination of internal factors such as our personality, attitudes, knowledge, thought processes, and interests. These internal factors must align with the things we encounter in the external world. Inspiration occurs when an external object perfectly matches our inner need or mental orientation. Contrary to intuition, inspiration does not happen out of thin air, creative minds actively seek inspiration and there is always a need for something inspiring, so just like a physical or physical need, inspiration is a mental need and when this inner need for creativity meets an external object, inspiration occurs.

Creating inspiration is the first stage towards creating a piece of art or a scientific theory and inspiration is an active creative process of the mind. Scholars have often spoken of the inspiration that came from an internal source, such as a sudden moment of enlightenment. A scientist might have been working for years to discover the perfect chemical ingredients for a drug, and then suddenly some chemical equation occurs in the mind and he knows that’s it. Inspiration can occur in the mind, but it may have external antecedents and depend a lot on our personal knowledge and interests. We can take inspiration from a new object, person, event, environment, or idea.

Psychologists will really have to define and understand what inspiration really means and what processes are involved. Inspiration is more than a simple thought process, it is a complex web of creative phenomena based on both external and internal factors. Now let me talk about the types of inspiration. I have identified four types.

On the basis of knowledgeKnowledge-based inspiration is facilitated through personal knowledge or understanding. Let’s think of a ray of light passing through a hole and falling on a wall, forming a pattern. Quantum physicists see this as revealing the underlying quantum nature of light. An artist who is inspired by the pattern and wants to paint it, and the poet writes about the beauty and aesthetics of the light pattern. The mathematician was probably inspired by the pattern’s inherent geometry and the film producer was inspired to use this as the background lighting pattern for his new film. So the inspiration is based on our personal knowledge and ‘what we want to see’. This brings us to need-based inspiration.

need based: Inspiration is also about what our brain needs. Just as we have our physical needs, we also have our mental needs and our inspiration feeds into those needs. Inspiration happens according to our mental orientation and the artist needs inspiration for his painting, so he will actively seek inspiration in the things or places around him. The explorer will seek inspiration in travel stories or books. Likewise, a scientist needs inspiration for his or her new theory and will look for it in news articles, the latest scientific discoveries, or research studies. This means that you may not feel inspired if you really don’t need inspiration because without mental needs, your brain will not be receptive. Highly creative people usually have more mental needs and are guided primarily by need-based inspiration.

object basis: This can be anything external and it can be an event, a place, an object, or anything recognizable. Object-based inspiration may lead to feelings of immediate admiration and the inspiration may be something personal like love or impersonal like an appreciation of beauty. An artist visits San Francisco and is inspired by the natural beauty of the place. A technologist visits San Francisco and is inspired by the culture of innovation, so the same place (or thing or event) affects different people differently according to “what our brain needs” and how we perceive the thing or thing. So mental orientation is again central to what we find inspiring.

On the basis of thought: Thought-based inspiration can be internal to an artist, writer, explorer, or any person and can be based on his thoughts, ideas, or dreams, or it can be external and depends on the thoughts and ideas of others. A friend might suggest a new idea and the suggestion will inspire you to actually implement the idea. An architect might dream up new designs and use this as inspiration for his next project. So all dreams, thoughts and ideas will be considered under thought-based inspiration.

Finally, inspiration is about what we want to see, what our mind needs and what we actively seek. This is how inspiration differs from all other mental processes because our minds actively create inspiration according to our mental orientation. We progress and evolve as human beings because we are inspired to create, love, travel, accomplish, discover and invent, explore, change, and inspiration is that mental stimulator that drives us to do what we really want to do.

Copyright 2013 Saberi Roy. These articles are archived by the University and are copyrighted. Any misuse of these articles will be noted and complaints will be filed.