Have you ever felt that intuition and poetic inspiration come from the same place?

[ravenest]

This might be confusing to people who've only had strong intuition but no poetic inclinations or vice versa but for those who've had both, do you think that this little window that opens up and inspiration come out is also where intuition comes from? Does it feel like a similar mental or emotional state? From my limited experience with intuition, it feels very similar to me. I'd like to see if anyone else has noticed any similarities.

Similar but different. Poetry ... well, good poetry, for me, comes from a higher place, it is an inspiration not an intuition. My intuition comes from a 'deeper' place ; unconscious calculations and assessments, that can come from unconscious (or at least unaware) senses, some of them instinctual. Messages or results then get delivered to my conscious as feelings or images or pictures.

Just the other day, on another forum, someone was claiming psychic powers and a few challenged them to prove it . He asked one guy if he had certain things around him, where he was posting from ( it was a rather pathetic and calculated guess, I saw through it immediately and could see the reasons why he chose those things that he claimed to be 'getting a sense of' ) ... he totally struck out. Then I 'predicted' what was around the claimed psychic poster as he wrote ... and got it right.

... without being psychic I picked up enough of his character from his posts to be able to tell, but I didnt do it consciously ... it came as a 'hunch' or a 'feeling' then my internal workings filled in the gaps and made a picture. If I had been psychic, I would have got it exactly accurate ... not 'near enough' to impress the gullible.

So I see 'intuition' as a function of the unconscious that delivers its results to consciousness, - like your computer .... the unconscious has a vast capacity to process inits internal workings ... we dont really need to know all about that .... we just work through the screen and the keyboard controls .... 'input controls' and the conscious mind (which is like the computer screen ).

The higher world of inspiration, where great art and poetry come from, is different. Firstly as it has a strong creative element linked to it. Intuition need not be 'original and creative' to work. The great song writes itself ... the great orator isnt present - words flow from them ... the best creative types are those that can 'channel fire from heaven ' they are a conduit for their ( ? or 'the' ) 'super consciousness ' , parts of our 'higher aspects' ( levels of consciousness or 'trance' that we can enter into ) are non-local , and seem independent of time and space .... the imagination certainly is !

So in a away, using the same analogy, this faculty is like the computers connection to the internet. Then an unknown or unaware - to us - faculty puts our own individual stamp / interpretation onto it and produces a 'great work' .

I think things like good poetry come in as an inspirational process and intuition 'comes up' as an evocative process.

 

[ravenest]

.... I meant mostly when you create. In my experience there's no analysis or thinking going on when that happens. Probably like automatic writing, your hands feel like someone else's instruments and you only think about what you've made after you're done. Like the right hemisphere completely taking over.

... my best piece of short story writing (according to others ) :

I woke up at about 5 am - bing! wide awake immediately , ' Got a story ! ' went to the deck, scribbled out the plot and a few lines of dialogue I had 'heard' in my sleep. Went back to bed and immediately back to sleep. Woke up later and wrote the story from my notes. During the writing part, there was no creative process much, more like a secretary taking notes and tidying things up a bit ....


Hmmmmm .... I always said I needed a secretary

 

[Grizabella]

... my best piece of short story writing (according to others ) :

I woke up at about 5 am - bing! wide awake immediately , ' Got a story ! ' went to the deck, scribbled out the plot and a few lines of dialogue I had 'heard' in my sleep. Went back to bed and immediately back to sleep. Woke up later and wrote the story from my notes. During the writing part, there was no creative process much, more like a secretary taking notes and tidying things up a bit ....


Hmmmmm .... I always said I needed a secretary

That's interesting how you separated the two processes. Good points. It's food for thought.

 

[DaughterOfDanu]

Interesting you mentioned this. The ancient Celtic concept of Awen is described as poetic inspiration or flowing wisdom. It is also lesser associated with diviners, who are said to be in tune with the same force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awen

The concept of Awen is pretty important to me as I study modern Druidry. I like to view this energy or flow as the energy of creation itself- the divine.

 

[chaosbloom]

It has to do with the two sides of the brain. What I found when I first tried to read for someone out loud is that I could look at the cards and know the message but putting it into words seemed so hard! I thought a lot about it and I think it's because when we look at the cards, we're absorbing the images, which is the realm of the right side of the brain. What we learn factually about Tarot, though, is a left brain act where math and other concrete things live. Trying to use the two sides of the brain in tandem as well as putting words to the ideas is what's difficult for a lot of people. We're not used to using both sides of our brain at once, maybe.

Yes, that makes sense and actually, the pineal gland located right in the center middle brain has been linked with what's called the third eye although that's not a scientific connection. Inspiration, poetic or otherwise, could very well be an all-brain, perfectly natural process. I'm not sure about intuition though. The brain definitely processes it, but is it a process or a sense?

Give that cynical part of you a sedative and stack him up in a corner. I've always just "known things" and I don't see myself as full of crap, so take heart and just go with it. The sudden flashes I get when reading the cards are often the key to the readings I do. It's when I second guess it that I find myself going way off course.

I'm not sure why but I always thought that you always feel you're right when you get intuitive thoughts. But you're saying that second guessing can ruin that, which means that you must learn to trust this thing. I think I understand it better now.

I think that secret desires (and fears) have so much power to muddle. The trick indeed is to recognize them and their influence. I think discerning is tantamount to knowing.

That particular trick is pretty hard. We're just not trained to think like that.

Similar but different. Poetry ... well, good poetry, for me, comes from a higher place, it is an inspiration not an intuition. My intuition comes from a 'deeper' place ; unconscious calculations and assessments, that can come from unconscious (or at least unaware) senses, some of them instinctual. Messages or results then get delivered to my conscious as feelings or images or pictures.

So I see 'intuition' as a function of the unconscious that delivers its results to consciousness, - like your computer .... the unconscious has a vast capacity to process inits internal workings ... we dont really need to know all about that .... we just work through the screen and the keyboard controls .... 'input controls' and the conscious mind (which is like the computer screen ).

The higher world of inspiration, where great art and poetry come from, is different. Firstly as it has a strong creative element linked to it. Intuition need not be 'original and creative' to work. The great song writes itself ... the great orator isnt present - words flow from them ... the best creative types are those that can 'channel fire from heaven ' they are a conduit for their ( ? or 'the' ) 'super consciousness ' , parts of our 'higher aspects' ( levels of consciousness or 'trance' that we can enter into ) are non-local , and seem independent of time and space .... the imagination certainly is !

So in a away, using the same analogy, this faculty is like the computers connection to the internet. Then an unknown or unaware - to us - faculty puts our own individual stamp / interpretation onto it and produces a 'great work' .

I think things like good poetry come in as an inspirational process and intuition 'comes up' as an evocative process.

Your whole post was pretty interesting but I'm going to focus on this because it's intriguing. I've had similar experiences where stories and ideas simply flowed freely in a nearly complete form. That kind of inspiration feels benevolent, elating in general. But you also mentioned the depths and subconscious and I don't see a connection with that in my experiences. That's because a few years back when I was still pretty young and foolish (or at least more than now anyway) I had the bright idea to write something that would be completely sourced from these depths. I'm not going to go into details besides mentioning that there was nothing occult involved, just letting those depths speak, a technique similar to automatic writing and maybe a little too much nectar. The result was that this was by far, not just the darkest thing I ever wrote but the darkest thing I have ever read by anyone. It probably makes Sarah Kane's last play seem cheerful if that is even possible. The process awakened so many demons and it was so unbalancing that it just wasn't worth it.

Obviously that was my own experience and I'm not claiming it's universal. But at least in my case, I can't link that sort of subconscious and its monsters with the kind of light-headed almost thoughtless epiphany I call inspiration. I don't know if it's just a sort of filtered, purified subconscious or whatever else but the door to pure subconscious is one door I always keep locked shut. I have no problem believing it might be completely different for others though.

... my best piece of short story writing (according to others ) :

I woke up at about 5 am - bing! wide awake immediately , ' Got a story ! ' went to the deck, scribbled out the plot and a few lines of dialogue I had 'heard' in my sleep. Went back to bed and immediately back to sleep. Woke up later and wrote the story from my notes. During the writing part, there was no creative process much, more like a secretary taking notes and tidying things up a bit ....


Hmmmmm .... I always said I needed a secretary

Maybe try a voice recorder? They tend to complain less than human secretaries.

Interesting you mentioned this. The ancient Celtic concept of Awen is described as poetic inspiration or flowing wisdom. It is also lesser associated with diviners, who are said to be in tune with the same force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awen

The concept of Awen is pretty important to me as I study modern Druidry. I like to view this energy or flow as the energy of creation itself- the divine.

That's a pretty nice concept. Is there anything more extensive on this? Makes me think of Apollo and how he's the God of divination and the leader of the Muses, therefore both stemming from him. As a sun god and a god of light, there's frequent mention of the rays of Apollo, meaning rays of divine light. Lucas mentioned epiphanies, and those were initially divine inspiration. Commonly imagined or depicted artistically involving rays of light.

Am I just following the same thought process that ancient cultures followed and arrived at a non-scientific idea of a connection between inspiration, intuition and the divine or is there really something there that's self-evident if you start thinking about it?

 

[ravenest]

Interesting you mentioned this. The ancient Celtic concept of Awen is described as poetic inspiration or flowing wisdom. It is also lesser associated with diviners, who are said to be in tune with the same force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awen

The concept of Awen is pretty important to me as I study modern Druidry. I like to view this energy or flow as the energy of creation itself- the divine.

Same in Islam and its offshoots .... great Persian poets , prophets ( like Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází and Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí Núr, and even modern western mystics like General J. F. C. Fuller - http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib963.html ) but as well, to be consided 'bona-fide' it should flow spontaneously from them, be perfect and exquisitely compex in structure in prose, rhyme, meter, etc and contain complex patterns and codes that are only revealed later on deep analysis . . . or it is not from a 'divine' source.

 

[ravenest]

Your whole post was pretty interesting but I'm going to focus on this because it's intriguing. I've had similar experiences where stories and ideas simply flowed freely in a nearly complete form. That kind of inspiration feels benevolent, elating in general. But you also mentioned the depths and subconscious and I don't see a connection with that in my experiences. That's because a few years back when I was still pretty young and foolish (or at least more than now anyway) I had the bright idea to write something that would be completely sourced from these depths. I'm not going to go into details besides mentioning that there was nothing occult involved, just letting those depths speak, a technique similar to automatic writing and maybe a little too much nectar. The result was that this was by far, not just the darkest thing I ever wrote but the darkest thing I have ever read by anyone. It probably makes Sarah Kane's last play seem cheerful if that is even possible. The process awakened so many demons and it was so unbalancing that it just wasn't worth it.

You might have been confused in reading what I wrote ? The great writing is inspirational and creative and comes from super consciousness , when I referred to the unconscious, it was in relation to one of its aspects to do with intuition . I was saying that, IME intuition has to do with an aspect of the unconscious and great writing has to do with a connection with the super consciousness , part of which is considered 'non-local'.

Obviously that was my own experience and I'm not claiming it's universal. But at least in my case, I can't link that sort of subconscious and its monsters with the kind of light-headed almost thoughtless epiphany I call inspiration.

I agree.

I don't know if it's just a sort of filtered, purified subconscious or whatever else but the door to pure subconscious is one door I always keep locked shut. I have no problem believing it might be completely different for others though.

That is a door in, the door to the super conscious is a door out .... and its pretty BIG 'out' there.

Maybe try a voice recorder? They tend to complain less than human secretaries.

Ummmm .... yeah - I meant getting it down on paper ... I AM the 'recorder' . Besides .... voice recorders dont make coffee.

 

[Grizabella]

I believe that all humans have an actual need to create and that, if you're a Bible scholar, the passage of the Bible that says man is created in God's image always struck me as meaning that the need to create was part of that shared image. I used to be a Sunday School teacher many years ago and I've done a lot of studying of the Bible in my younger days. I'm not in that mindset anymore (thankfully) but I still remember a lot, of course.

Most people who don't know better say that they're not creative, but that's not true. Everyone, including even babies, are creative and need an outlet to express that side of themselves.

 

[DaughterOfDanu]

That's a pretty nice concept. Is there anything more extensive on this? Makes me think of Apollo and how he's the God of divination and the leader of the Muses, therefore both stemming from him. As a sun god and a god of light, there's frequent mention of the rays of Apollo, meaning rays of divine light. Lucas mentioned epiphanies, and those were initially divine inspiration. Commonly imagined or depicted artistically involving rays of light.

Am I just following the same thought process that ancient cultures followed and arrived at a non-scientific idea of a connection between inspiration, intuition and the divine or is there really something there that's self-evident if you start thinking about it?

http://www.druidry.org/library/modern-druidry/awen Here's an article on Awen. It helped me to get a better grasp on the subject.
http://www.druidry.org/library/awen-revisited-whats-word-part-2 Here's another

http://www.druidry.co.uk/what-is-druidry/awen-the-holy-spirit-of-druidry/ < A historical look a Awen. I haven't read through it just yet but it looks promising.

 

[youareafool]

This might be confusing to people who've only had strong intuition but no poetic inclinations or vice versa but for those who've had both, do you think that this little window that opens up and inspiration come out is also where intuition comes from? Does it feel like a similar mental or emotional state? From my limited experience with intuition, it feels very similar to me. I'd like to see if anyone else has noticed any similarities.

I'm a believer that divinity is subjective. When people speak of divination, their form could range from magicked scientific by nature.

I personally believe that mankind (and most likely other life) has an innate ability to edit the energy around us to better serve us. We harness running water and electricity. We edit light rays by creating bulbs and even by painting a canvas to reflect the colors we want. We take sound waves and layer them and arrange them in specific ways to be "pretty" or meaningful.

Love of sports or cooking or driving. We constantly alter the energy around us, and I think this is our inherent ability: to find the divine in the mundane, and to make use of it. I believe this is why tarot or crystal healing or reiki, etc., is plausible.

So in my mind, divinity can be scientific and vice versa. The great pool of energy in the universe is bigger than me and can't be put in a box. I won't try to label it, but I acknowledge it exists and I am a part of it. So to me that is divine.

Just my thoughts