Awakening Your
Everyday Genius
BY COLLEEN MAURO
Our famous artists, writers, scientists, and entrepreneurs are often seen as rare and special beings endowed with gifts and talents that most of us lack.
I have discovered that many of our most celebrated creative thinkers—the people we call geniuses or visionaries—credit their greatest achievements to their contact with the soul. Many spoke of the soul as a portal to a universal source of inspiration and beauty.
The ageless wisdom teachings have long provided the training we need to tap this universal flow of wisdom and knowledge. These teachings, also called the esoteric or mystery teachings, were once taught in the ancient mystery schools and first put into book form by the Hindu sage Patanjali, author of The Yoga Sutras.
In this classic book, Patanjali wrote that the mind has two levels—the lower, or rational, mind and the higher, or intuitive, mind. The soul, our gateway to the higher worlds, is the link between our higher and lower minds. When we train the lower mind to make contact with the soul, the soul transmits information from the higher mind to our brains. We then have direct access to the subtle worlds where information on all subjects can be found.
We see the fruits of this experience all around us, from our most beautiful works of art to the scientific breakthroughs and inventions that have revolutionized our world. Many of our most renowned artists, writers, scientists, and business leaders have left a record of this experience.
In the late 1800s, Arthur Abell, an American violinist living in Europe, interviewed wellknown composers about the source of their creative genius. As you’ll see below, their experiences are remarkably consistent. Each spoke of the soul as the portal to a universal source of inspiration. Once they were connected to this source, ideas and images simply flowed into their brains.
As Puccini explained to Abell, “The great secret of all creative geniuses is that they possess the power to appropriate the beauty, the wealth, the grandeur, and the sublimity within their own souls, which are a part of the Omnipotence, and to communicate those riches to others. The conscious, purposeful appropriation of one’s own soul force is the supreme secret.” Puccini experienced inspiration as a divine force, a “vibration [that passes] from the soul-center, into my consciousness, where the inspired ideas are born.”
Richard Wagner also spoke of inspiration as the ability to become one with the “universal currents of Divine thought [that are] vibrating everywhere.” According to Wagner, “This universal vibrating energy binds the soul of man . . . to the Supreme Force of the universe, of which we are all a part.” He also spoke of “appropriating” this force when composing his famous operas, and described his creative process to Abell: “I see in my mind’s eye definite visions of the heroes and heroines of my music dramas. I have clear mental pictures of them before they take form in my scores, and while I am holding fast to those mental images, the music . . . the whole musical structure, occurs to me.”
Richard Strauss also spoke of inspiration as coming from a higher self: “In my most inspired moods, I have definite compelling visions, involving a higher selfhood. I feel at such moments that I am tapping the source of infinite and eternal energy from which you and I and all things proceed.” Strauss, who called his ability to register inspired ideas a “divine gift,” described a similar experience while writing one of his operas: “The ideas were flowing in upon me—the motives, themes, structure, melodies . . . in fact the entire musical measure by measure. . . . I was definitely conscious of being aided by a more than earthly power.”
Johannes Brahms called his method of composing music “communicating with the infinite.” Composing, Brahms said, “cannot be done by will power working through the conscious mind. . . . It can only be accomplished by the soul-powers within.” He described inspiration as “a condition where the conscious mind is in temporary abeyance and the superconscious is in control, for it is through the superconscious mind, which is part of Omnipotence, that the inspiration comes.”
Writers and visual artists have also reported this experience. In his 1844 essay “The Poet,” Ralph Waldo Emerson explained, “It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy . . . a great public power on which he can draw . . . by unlocking his human doors . . . he is caught up in the life of the Universe.” And Leonardo da Vinci stated that “the painter’s mind is a copy of the Divine Mind,” and “the painter has the Universe in his mind and hands. . . . Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
We also have examples in the business and scientific worlds. Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Matsushita, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer electronics products, believed his extraordinary success was due to his ability to access kongen, a Japanese term meaning the “root or origin of universal energy.”
Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 came in a moment of inspiration when, in his words, “a storm broke loose in my mind, and with it came the answers.” Einstein, a friend later said, had “tapped into God’s thoughts and tuned into the master plan for the universe.” After his death, pathologists dissected and probed Einstein’s brain, looking for anomalies that would explain the source of his genius. But Einstein, who wrote, “There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge. . . . All great discoveries have involved such a leap” and “The mystical . . . is the source of all true art and science”—made it clear that his inspiration came from a higher source.
The bridge between the soul and the lower mind is built through the practice of creative meditation. Many meditation practices focus only on quieting the mind. In creative meditation, we go a step further and actively train our minds to transmit information from the soul to the brain, where it is interpreted and used.
The first step in building this bridge is mind control, the ability to hold our attention on an object or thought at will. It is through mind control that we learn to withdraw our attention from the outer world and gradually reorient it to the subtle realms. When we do this, the mind becomes our true sixth sense—the tool we use to enter the subtle world of the soul.
Try this basic form of creative meditation to start building your bridge to the soul.
- Give yourself 15 minutes of uninterrupted quiet time. Calm yourself by closing your eyes and following your breath, in and out, for a count of 10.
- When you are ready, use your creative imagination to lift your consciousness to a focal point outside and above your head. See this as the rational, or lower, mind that is now still and receptive. Project a line of light upward to the soul center, six inches above your head. See it as a brilliant sun, a radiant source of energy.
- Visualize this line of light reaching even higher, toward the higher, or intuitive, mind. Take a moment to hold this lighted alignment. Pause for a moment as you experience the light and energy of your soul.
- Holding the mind steady in the light, meditate for 10 to 15 minutes on this sentence: In silence, I hear the voice of my soul.
- Examine the words first with the rational mind. Carry your thought as far as you can in analysis and analogy as you seek to penetrate the inner meaning.
- To end your meditation, visualize a pure white light pouring down from your soul, illuminating your mind, calming your emotions, and invigorating your physical body.
As we project our attention upward day after day, we anchor small threads of energy that will eventually, thread by thread, form a bridge to the subtle worlds. When we have the ability to bring the treasures of the subtle worlds down to earth, we join the ranks of those people we call geniuses. Imagine the inspired writing, the beautiful works of art, the groundbreaking inventions, and the new healing techniques we will bring to the world as the soul in each of us unfolds. This is the future that awaits us, a future where we will each become an “everyday genius.”
Adapted with permission of Quest Books (QuestBooks.com), the imprint of The Theosophical Publishing House, from Spiritual Telepathy © 2015 by Colleen Mauro. The meditation was adapted and used by permission from Lucis Trust (LucisTrust.org).
Colleen Mauro was the founder and editor in chief of Intuition Magazine. She can be reached at SpiritualTelepathy.net.