Your question is interesting. Speaking of my own experience, creativity is nothing that comes to me. I think of it as a psychological state of flow, where my mind is at rest: and open to let in something new.
I believe everybody has the capacity of being creative, just look at kids! Somehow, a lot of people unlearn that capacity when they stop believing in themselves. Creativity expresses itself in many ways. It is a meeting of idea and matter – through my own being as a medium. There is an intention and a seed starts to grow. This intention has a potential, a tension that works as a creative principle.
This is a quote I really love about the creative state by the psychologist Carl G. Jung:
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Think about that. What has love to do with creativity? Love makes us thrive, and that is really a creative principle. So, if I was to let the ball roll on I would ask; where does love come from? And can love be seen as som kind of welldoing tension?
Inspiration on the other hand comes to me when I let go of my worries, and get absorbed by some phenomena for a while. After getting that “fresh breath of air”, which inspiration really is, I have an urge to express the values revealed.
Creativity and innovation is possible when we clear our minds of the noise, and open up for something – yes as I wrote earlier – new.
