Inspiration

What is inspiration? And how does one gain/lose/find it?

We are all inspired by places, things or people. For me it’s anything remotely visual and/or emotive. Art, colour, photography, poetry, generally well written work… that sort of thing. But due to my recent lacklustre for…well…everything, I’ve been pondering on what inspiration is, and how the hell I should go about reviving my spark for all that is beautiful, witty and everything in between. It’s not always positive or negative. Inspiration itself doesn’t have a specific emotion, but that urge is power to a person, a drive to do SOMETHING. I guess it is just emotion, in a raw and bubbling form.

In my research I have stumbled across some theories of inspiration as to how the bible was written. Being Agnostic but from a Catholic background, this sparked some interest. The four key theories in my opinion were these:

Inspiration as natural intuition: The authors of the bible had the natural instinct to write the scriptures, due to a high level of religious insight.

Inspiration as Illumination: God influenced the writers, but only to the extent that their human powers could take them.

Concept Inspiration: Proponents contend that God has inspired the concepts which the authors of Scripture were to write, but left it to the human author to choose the words.

The Dynamic Theory of Inspiration: That inspiration itself is natural as well as a supernatural fact, and it is the immediate work of a personal God within the soul of the authors. That inspiration belongs, not only to those who wrote the Scriptures, but to the Scriptures they wrote.

Whether or not I’ve perceived these theories as intended, I strongly believe they can be stretched and applied to inspiration in general, of anyone. Is it a subconscious pursuit on our own part, an innate need, to be inspired? Something we turn to, that’s within our power? Or is it outside influences triggering…maybe memories, thoughts, wants, experiences… Inspiration that is out of our control, entirely due to outside influences? Or perhaps it’s a bit of both… External influences inspire us initially, but it’s our minds, personalities and life experiences that shape it into inspiration that is useful and acute to our needs.

Personally, I think it’s that last one…a bit of both. But there is a part of me that thinks, even wishes, that it were something deeper than mere understanding. It is often declared drunkenly at university parties during discussions of religion and souls (and everything in between…over and over until the subject it in useless tatters amongst various cans and bottles) that a weight disappears from the body at the moment of death, and this is rumoured to be ‘the soul’ leaving the body.

“So, out of six tests, two had to be discarded, one showed an immediate drop in weight (and nothing more), two showed an immediate drop in weight which increased with the passage of time, and one showed an immediate drop in weight which reversed itself but later recurred.”

Even though I dislike the word soul, because I find it too limited, I rather like the idea of some unfathomable place deep within the body that is not dissimilar to what lies outside the universe; incomprehensible. So now I come to a fourth inspiration theory. It is some supernatural, unintelligible, unfathomable wonder, slice of gold that reaches out from the depths of our (for the sake of argument let’s say) souls.

That zing…not quite butterflies, but a vibrancy that lifts your body when you’re inspired by something good is golden and bright. Where it comes from, I don’t know, and it is yet another thing that I am more than willing to accept that I will never know. But as long as I can keep my half an ounce yearning, striving and surging forward to great things, all will be well.