I find that the best kind of creative inspiration, in any field of endeavor, comes from communing deeply with other life presences, in heartfelt, open-minded, empathic attunement with them. The more deeply we invest our heart, mind, and senses, in communion with other life presences, experiences, and activities, in the world, the more does the co-creative heart core of our own being become stirred, and reveal greater gifts of creative inspiration and meaningful insight, as the source of great artistic expression, heart-full living, and enhanced performance in any area of endeavor. When individual hearts resonate in deeply invested attunement with each other, they energize each other, like magnets, releasing the co-creative process of synergy, like electricity flowing only when an electrical plug and socket, or positive and negative electrical poles, are connected to one another.

However, as long as the heart remains egocentrically, narcissistically, selfishly, self-absorbed, or self-possessed, we will be able to make only rather shallow contact with others, with only the superficial levels of our awareness. Without heartfelt communion, the mind and senses, by themselves alone, can contact, understand, and appreciate, only rather superficial aspects of reality, and provide only a relatively shallow, mechanical, level of creative artistic functioning. That is why I agree with what St. Exupery wrote, in his book, "The Little Prince", "It is only with the eyes of the heart that one can see what is most essential in life....Only the heart sees clearly, because what is essential is not visible to the eyes". I might add, what is essential in life is also not available to the analytical intellect, functioning independently of the deeper, relational, insight of the heart, because the analytical mind tends to be self-absorbed in its own thought, rather than making direct contact with other life presences, experiences, and activities, in the world.

To make direct, deep, empathic, contact with anyone or anything, and to tap into the relational source of co-creative insight and inspiration, one must let go of precommitted mental presumptions, preconceptions, and abstractions, which function like an opaque filter, barrier, or distorting mechanism, keeping the mind self absorbed in its own thought, and blocking direct contact and heartfelt empathic communion with actual life experience in the world, which the philosopher Martin Buber describes as the I-Thou relationship, in contrast to the I-It relationship. In Biblical terms, this is the difference between experiencing reality as though through a "poor reflection", or "a glass darkly" rather than "face to face" (I Corinthians 13:12). Communing with the enduring living presence, or living spirit, that the author of any creative work has invested in that creative production can empathically reveal the meaningful intention and originating inspirational experience of that author or producer. The reason why the highest source level of creative insight, inspiration, and production, comes from relational communion is because it is a relational reality nature, rather than a solo, divisive, dualistic, or separate individualistic nature. Therefore, introspective processes that produce greater self-involvement, and break off heartfelt communion with others, cannot reveal and release the highest level of creative functioning.

Caring human relationships can also facilitate creative transformations of individual people and global society by enabling the power of love to gradually transform individual hearts, and the collective spiritual heart of humanity, from selfishness, fear, and brutality to unselfish caring about others.

Author's Bio: 

I am an inspirational teacher, writer, and life coach. My insights have come through heartfelt, genuinely caring, empathic attunement to the energy-experience of myself and other individuals. I have a PhD and extensive teaching experience in interdisciplinary, multicultural, fields of study focusing on World Religions, Spirituality, Transformational Psychology, History, Humanities, and Great Ideas. In earth years, I was born in January 1958, but my spirit is truly ageless and everlasting.

In my writing, life coaching/mentoring and dialogues with other people, I like to explore how meaningful insight and substantive transformation, in any aspect of one's life, field of endeavor, or sector of society, can be enhanced through a process of heartfelt loving empathic communion with other individuals, the world of nature, one's own creative media of expression, or any other activity or situation, as a process of non-dualistic attunement to the momentary experiential truth of oneself and others. I am particularly interested in how openness to rewarding new possibilities can be evoked by a process of loving empathic attunement to the truth of the moment, arising within oneself, or between oneself and others. In the books that I am currently writing, I also discuss how caring human relationships, involving good interpersonal communication, can contribute to the progressive transformation and revitalization of individuals, groups, creative arts, global cultures, and contemporary society. Relatedly, I have a strong interest in contributing to a greater sense of caring community and ethical responsibility, locally and globally, grounded in a sense of compassionate empathic relatedness-of-being and interdependence between all people, and all living beings, as well as between all areas of inquiry and aspects of reality.