“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”

Thomas Edison

Where does your  inspiration come from?  Other people, books, social media? Daydreaming or travel?

What does inspiration mean to you?

The concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as a noun

“1. Drawing in of breath.

2. Inspiring: divine influence, esp. that which is thought to prompt poets etc.”

The verb to inspire also has two meanings. 

“1. Breathe in, inhale, (air etc.) :

2. Infuse thought or feeling into (person; esp. of divine or supernatural agency) animate: (person etc with feeling); infuse (feeling into person etc)

I am going to take a deep breath, an inspiration and fill my lungs with fresh air. I will do this several times before starting my meditative reflection, or daydream and allow my mind to clear of the daily chatter. By the third inspiration, my heart rate will have slowed, my facial muscles relaxed and my eyes may have closed. The thoughts and ideas of the day will start to sort themselves out, unravelling through the tangled skein of neural pathways until there is a quieting of my mind.

As the various muscles unwind with the improved  blood flow resulting from conscious inspiration,  the subconscious starts to step out to play. As the mind starts to drift steadily and rapidly from the daily dross,  an occasional fleeting thought passes across my awareness like a cloud scudding across the sky. Random thoughts; are they divinely inspired? Foremost in my mind are questions that I hope will be answered by this exercise.

The breathing slows and for a moment time and space ceases to exist. Aaahh! Nothingness! Elusive and yet achieved by steady inspiration. A sudden jolt and it is as if I have moved through a membrane into a different space. All my senses heightened,  I take a deep breath in and open my eyes slowly. The light seems to have changed imperceptibly and I focus on what is in front of me.

There is the physical environment, the same as before, but now there is clarity of thought.

An answer to what I thought was a difficult problem has come to me in that moment. The reflection has revealed there is more to the picture.

So this is the other inspiration!