The origin of creative ideas remains a profound mystery. While science identifies the brain as the generator, the specific processes involved are not fully understood.
Plato, the renowned Greek philosopher, offered a different perspective, suggesting that a higher “ideal reality” serves as the wellspring of true knowledge and creative thought. His allegory of the cave vividly portrays this idea. In it, prisoners confined to a cave mistake flickering shadows for reality, oblivious to the figures and fire behind them. This allegory reflects Plato’s theory of Forms, positing that our sensory world is a mere shadow of a more real and perfect realm. These Forms are abstract, immutable essences, such as beauty, justice, and geometric ideals. Plato theorized that our souls, before physical embodiment, possessed knowledge of these Forms, thus “learning” is essentially recollection.
Notably, the notion of our physical world as a “shadow” aligns with accounts from near-death experiences, where individuals describe a heightened sense of reality in a non-physical dimension.
We are so much more than our human body, and as spiritual beings we are always connected to the higher spiritual realms. When that connection is strongly felt we may experience not only creative ideas but joy, wonder, inward fulfillment or other peak experiences as described by the psychologist Abraham Maslow.
So when you have inspiration, do not take credit for what you bring forward. It already existed and you were blessed to be the vessel for what has come forward.
