My Muse Inspires Something

Where do our half-baked, nebulous, wisps of ideas come from? I usually think they're just from the hodgepodge of dreams, moods, and the unconscious stacking one thing on top of another in the parts of your brain you're not aware of.

I set a goal for myself to do something. It has a general theme, something to do with the incessant demands of self-esteem, confidence, and pride. Then everything I see reminds me of something having to do with that, however unformed or misshapen it might be.

So where it comes from? The Muses? My own muse, your own muse? Angels? Spiritual companions from the ether? Unseen forces? Inspiration by the Spirit? Synapses firing and misfiring?

If there's some kind of outside force, I need to sit down and have a talk with it. Such as, "When you show up, please come prepared. So I don't have to wear out my brain working with the little bit you give me." It'd definitely be helpful if there were outside forces, muses, because then I could let them do the work. And I could let my mind wander unrestricted and maybe really come up with something.

What if muses aren't all equally intelligent and talented? If I have a muse, how come mine isn't as good as everyone else's? What? I don't know music, I can't write symphonies, books, poetry. I have trouble with grocery lists. I'm basically stumbling through life going "Duh." If I have a muse, maybe my muse needs a muse. Piggyback muses. Muses could get together and pool their talents. If I had a whole team, maybe I wouldn't be struggling like this.

The way I usually think is that it's all internal. And that would explain the disparities between what I do, what you do, and what Beethoven did. The only one to blame is myself. If blame is the right word. There could be blame if I haven't adequately prepared myself for tasks I could do. Maybe I sat on the couch and watched TV too much. Or slept away the day instead of improving myself through culture. Or let anxiety get the best of me and rob me of my attention. I do that a lot.

But I wouldn't really be to blame if it were a matter of being functionally incapable of doing this or that. Like if I'm old and there's natural deterioration of mental abilities. I am getting old and sometimes feel about half dazed. So I can't blame myself for that, just like I can't blame myself for losing hair loss when it's just a matter of age and genetics.

There might be a way of bringing the muses back into the picture. Like if we get rid of the whole inner/outer framework. And say there just is. Like one reality. No separation. What we call inner being one with the outer, and vice versa. In that case -- and here I'm starting to get lost, which is probably a good thing -- the consciousness I think of as my own personal thing is the one consciousness beyond parts. But why's it doing different things in different people? And why does it generally take a particular tone with me and a different one with someone else?

OK, I've sat here for a while, the limit of time I set for myself. And whether the muse has been here or whether it's been just my own misfiring synapses, I wrote several paragraphs about something.