Where Does Your Inspiration Come From?

Is it Your Inspiration? Or Are We a Conduit?

What is inspiration? Where does your inspiration come from? As a writer I have many moment of inspiration and yet I cannot always comprehend their source.

Inspiration can create new beginnings...

I remember living in the desert in Arizona, I would take long walks in the early morning as the desert stirred to life. There was a stillness in the air as if the earth was holding it's breath just before dawn, getting ready to awaken for the day.

Breathless from my morning run, I reached the top of the stairs to the apartment. I spent the rest of that day on the balcony, listening to the church bells and cooing doves. A bronze hawk flew above me, wings almost transparent against the sun spilling through its feathes from above. Then it was gone, circling above the dunes in a rush of softly fluttering feathers.

Here is a picture of Fountain Hills, a suburb of Phoenix where I used to live...

Evenings were often even more miraculous, inspiration seemed to live in this place. The sun set slowly, drawing away the heat of the day and casting shadows from the tall saguaro cactuses, reaching ever upward towards the pale moon. I leaned forward, taking in the evening air. Something stirred all around me. The desert wakened at this time of night.

Questions filled the air, teasing my mind, bumping into my consciousness. I picked up my journal and held if for a moment.

Are internal conversations really our own thoughts? Where does the inspiration come from? Could we be picking it up from some other source? I pondered.

That night my pen flew across the pages so swiftly I could barely keep up. It was turning out to be an interesting ‘conversation,’ though I couldn’t fathom its true origin. I stretched and looked down at what I had written, pausing to listen to the bells ringing again…then pressed on...

"Your inspiration may be expressed in many different ways, but we all have the ability to tap into an unseen ocean of consciousness." I had written.

I began to feel like something of a philosopher at this point, my pen making its way to paper again:

"Here we are, hurtling through space on a tiny ball of rock in the middle of a void surrounded by burning suns…this is beyond imagination and yet we limit our perceptions to a mere fragment of reality. How can a bumble bee fly? Where did the universe start? Perhaps we have it backwards, the physical world is the outcome of our inspiration. As Wayne Dyer says: 'I'll see it when I believe it.' So is it my inspiration, or your inspiration or something else."

I set down my journal, satisfied that I had worn my mage's hat for the day.

Here is one of my Arizona neighbors (a wild desert pig called a javalina) taking a stroll beneathe my balcony...