Secondhand Inspiration

Inspiration. What is it and where does it go? I can only write when I'm feeling inspired to do so, but what does this even mean? And when I'm not inspired, I resort to secondhand inspiration. There are certain thinkers such as Dávila whom I can rely upon to jolt the vertical battery. 

But this doesn't answer the question: what is inspiration? Obviously it has something to do with "spirit" -- spiration -- and with its somehow affecting the psyche that is open to it -- or sometimes even closed, as with Paul on the road to Damascus.

Let's consult another favorite source of inspiration, Schuon:

inspiration simply means that the Spirit guides man in accordance with the divine intention and on the basis of the capacities of the human receptacle. 

Were this not so, there would be no theological elaboration, nor any divergences within orthodoxy, and the first Church Father would have written a theological treatise that would have been unique, exhaustive, and definitive; there would never have been either a Thomas Aquinas or a Gregory Palamas.

So there is a co-mingling of Spirit (↓) and a human receptacle (¶). Thus, as implied by Schuon, there is both "universality" and "particularity," since no two receptacles are identical.

Elsewhere he writes that    

Inspiration, like revelation, is a divine dictate, with the difference that in the second case the Spirit dictates a law-giving and obligatory Message of overriding force, whereas in the first case the Message, whatever be its value, has no dogmatic import, and has an illustrative role within the framework of the fundamental Message.

So, revelation per se is a very special kind of (↓), whereas our kind has no dogmatic import but is for purposes of illustration only. A Raccoon is under no obligation to be one.   

Back to Dávila, does he have any inspirational things to say about inspiration? Well, art is inspiring, because

Strictly speaking, the work of art does not have a meaning but a power.

A mysterious spiritual power that radiates from the object into us. For again,

Aesthetics is the sensible and secular manifestation of grace. 

It is not religion, but nor is it exactly not religion, for

Every work of art speaks to us of God. No matter what it says.

Moreover,

When God absents himself, shutting us up in the world, art is the last shutter that closes.

But what about inspiration?

Man can keep the page clean, but only God can write on it.

Mere talent isn't enough, for

Simple talent is to literature what good intentions are to conduct. 

I'm pretty sure I have more inspiration than talent, but I suppose this is preferable to the opposite, i.e., having talent but no inspiration. 

Here's a nice one:

God's inspiration of the Bible is not ventriloquism. The voice of God passes through the sacred text as a wind storm through the leaves of the forest trees.

More generally,

The soul is fed from what is mysterious in things. 

And

We are saved from daily tedium only by the impalpable, the invisible, and the ineffable.

Ain't it the truth. A world without (↓) -- to be literally enclosed in horizontality -- would be unendurable. Even if it's secondhand (↓).