I see it as a two way street between inner and outer world. I am not hard about it. I find it's the easiest explanation. What one describes as "own" realization, may be something one had experienced long ago but the true insight unfolds in the present. I myself really cannot give any example of an idea or thought I came to formulate on my own, I had it always from other sources. And what I then do is to re-formulate the ideas and to repeat what I think I have understood. That may count as an original idea. You know what I mean?