Where do ideas come from?

Where do you think your ideas come from? I'm genuinely curious on your theories. Do they come from someplace outside of ourselves? Or is the imagination just a bunch of random firing neurons that we assign meaning? Are artists genius subconscious mathematicians or is there a stream of ideas that we need to funnel a tap through?

It's very interesting to me that you can teach someone technique, but you can't teach them to do anything with said technique. You can teach someone to be a photo realistic painter, but can you teach them to tap into ideas and make art with those skills? I don't think you can. This seems like a pretty simple problem; can't figure out what to paint about? Paint about your life. But, there is so much more to the process of inspiration that can complicate the process.

Self consciousness and generality/conformity are the #1 art killers. Being afraid of your voice and trying to imitate someone else's is a problem I see frequently within my own acting and painting. This problem is also something I recognize around me in my peers and classmates. Trying to put faith into a higher power with my and "trusting the process" has been really useful to me to fight against self consciousness. The idea that I am not in control helps me a lot. But, is this idea true, or is it just a trick? is there really a higher power out there that I can allow to speak through me, or is the idea of one enough to get me to stop thinking and taking action in painting?

If there is a higher power, how do we know for certain? I don't know if there is a way to tell if dreams are real, if meditation connects you to a network of ideas, or if DMT is a portal to another dimension. False confidence might be just as helpful as religious faith.

Are these questions worth asking, or should we just get back to making art?