A Publication of Lighthouse Consulting Services 3130 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Santa Monica, CA 90403 (310) 453-6556
R ecognized geniuses may be rare, but genius resides within all of us.  There’s no such thing as “luck” or “accident” in this cosmos; and not only is everything connected to everything else, no one is excluded from the universe – we’re all members.  Consciousness, like physicality, is a universal quality; because genius is a characteristic of consciousness, genius is also universal.  It follows that that which is universal is available to each and every person. The process of creativity and genius are inherent in human consciousness.  Just as every human has within himself the same essence of consciousness, so is genius a potential that resides within everyone – it simply waits for the right circumstance to express itself.  Each of us has had moments of genius in our lifetimes, perhaps only known to ourselves or to those close to us.  We suddenly make a brilliant move or decision, or say exactly the right thing at the right moment, without quite knowing why.  Sometimes we might even like to congratulate ourselves for these fortuitous events, but in truth we really don’t know where they came from. Genius is often expressed through a change of perception – a modifying of context or paradigm.  The mind struggles with an unsolvable problem, poses a question, and is open to receive an answer.  The source that this answer comes from has been given many names, varying from culture to culture and time to time; in the arts of Western civilization, it’s traditionally been identified with the Greek goddesses of inspiration called the Muses. Those who are humble and grateful for illumination received tend to continue to have the capacity to access genius; those who credit the inspiration to their own ego soon		lose this capacity or are destroyed by success.  High power, like high voltage, must be handled with respect. Genius and creativity, then, are subjectively experienced as a witnessing; it’s a phenomenon that bypasses the individual self or ego.  The capacity to finesse genius can be learned – though often only through painful surrender – when the phoenix of genius arises out of the ashes of despair after a fruitless struggle with the unsolvable.  Out of defeat comes victory; out of failure, success; and out of humbling, true self-esteem. One of the problems in attempting to understand genius is that it takes near-genius to recognize it.  The world frequently fails to identify genius altogether; society often gives acclaim to its work without noting the intrinsic genius of its creation itself.  Until one acknowledges the intrinsic genius within oneself, one will have great difficulty recognizing it in others – we can only acknowledge without what we realize within.  For example, Mikhail Gorbachev was the subject of enormous worldwide attention, but at the same time, the world never really did acknowledge his genius: Single-handedly, and in only a few short years, he completely revolutionized one of the greatest empires on Earth, and his only sources of power were his inspiration and vision.  (Had the communist regime been based on power, nothing could have overturned it; because it was based on force, it was destined to come to an end under the hand of a charismatic leader who was aligned with power.)
Lighthouse Consulting Services  3130 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Santa Monica, CA 90403 (310) 453-6556