My beloved speaks and says to me
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away
for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom
they give forth fragrance
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

My dove, in clefts of the rock, in a secret place of the ascent,

Cause me to see your appearance, Cause me to hear your voice

For thy voice is sweet, and your appearance comely

Song of Solomon 2:10-14

The second key function of the creative mind is Intuition, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as "immediate apprehension by the mind, without reasoning", in other words the perception of insights.

Communicating with the Creative Mind
Odd as it may appear at first, we can speak to our creative mind as to another person, and it can speak to us in return, by a stream of insights that tumble gently into our consciousness, a kind of "pillow talk" – which is why Solomon has the girl saying in the first line — "My beloved speaks to me".

Solomon is not referring to hearing strange voices in the head, but of simply being more aware, more sensitive, and noticing insights of understanding as they arrive and accumulate, ready to piece together like a jig-saw puzzle.

Fluttering Insights and Images
Like a dove hidden in the clefts of the rock, in a secret place in a cliff face, the creative lover may be close at hand but hidden. In encouraging the lover to communicate with her, the girl says, rather oddly: Cause me to see your appearance, and Cause me to hear your voice – in other words, to provide insights and images.

An additional insight here may be that just as doves may suddenly flutter out from secret places in the clefts in the rock and become visible, so insights can flutter into a receptive mind – and, as creative individuals report, in moments of inspiration a bewildering number may arrive, like a flock, making it important to catch and record them before they are lost for ever.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, commented: "When having lain musing on my sofa, a number of interesting thoughts have suggested themselves, I conquer bodily indolence and rise and record them in these books . . . my thoughts crowd each other to death."

Speak and Listen
The inspirational writer, Ben Sweetland, who presented a highly successful 30-minute daily broadcast in San Francisco for over then years, offered the following insight into his simple but highly effective method of generating ideas when writing or preparing a talk: “Before sitting down to the typewriter I talk to my Creative Mind. I usually say something, such as: ‘I am being guided in the thoughts which will make this book a helpful one to all who read it.’ And, just as though an inner voice were dictating to me, the thoughts flow and flow.”

Populist poet Murray Young has similar experiences, saying in a newspaper interview: "The weird thing about poetry is if you ask for it, it comes: it’s a bit magical like that

Follow Rudyard Kipling's Example
This principle was, I suspect, well understood by Rudyard Kipling who famously said that he wrote his stories with the assistance of his little helpers — Who? What? Why? When? Where? and How? The method he used, however, was not merely mechanical, but must have been to pose the questions, then stop and listen with complete inner stillness for the answers to arrive – adopting a patient, meditative manner, rather than struggling and striving to answer them himself.

Insights in Business
In his autobiography, “Be My Guest”, Conrad Hilton described his working method as follows: "I keep listening in a sort of inner silence until something clicks and I feel a right answer."

Many successful people throughout the ages must have discovered and exploited some of the principles formalized by Solomon in the “Song”. According to Napoleon Hill, in “Think and Grow Rich”, “One of America’s most successful and best know financiers followed the habit of closing his eyes for two or three minutes before making a decision. When asked why he did this, he replied, ‘With my eyes closed, I am able to draw upon a source of superior intelligence.’ ”

Insights in Script Writing
Spike Milligan, writer of the cult radio series, the“Goon Show”, said of the arrival of insights: “It came in bits and pieces -- like dysentery!” .

What Else Do I Need to See or Understand?
Edward Matchett urges designers to pose it questions such as: "What else do I need to see and understand?" – and to keep doing so until no further help arrives, and there is a feeling of finality.

Truth is the Offspring of Silence and Unbroken Meditation
Isaac Newton would sit passively for several solid hours at a stretch, day after day, just letting understanding of a situation develop incrementally in his imagination, slowly budding, branching and flowering like a plant. He said that this practice of holding a subject "ever before me" was the secret of his great genius, and that Truth was "the offspring of silence and unbroken meditation".

Sometimes when getting up, he would sit on the edge of the bed, following a train of though, and remain totally absorbed, until his reverie was interrupted by somebody calling him for lunch several hours later.

How Genius Thinks
The way genius thinks was well described by Rosamund Harding in her book "Anatomy of Inspiration" as follows: "In order to inhibit irrelevant ideas, the dreaming must be combined with a certain intensity of feeling . . . so that when the thinker gets into the mood associated with his subject, all relevant ideas become available . . .

Dreaming over a subject is simply the faculty of allowing the will to focus the mind passively on the subject so that it follows the train of thought . . . allowing them to form and branch naturally until some useful or interesting results occur.

The thinker must learn not to obtrude his own personal wishes but to follow where truth leads him . . . watches but does not disturb the natural development of the ideas; merging himself into the great sea of life beyond himself in order that he may become at one with it."