Kim Hermanson - Deep Knowing: Entering the Realm of Non-Ordinary Intelligence

PRAISE FOR
KIM HERMANSONS WORK

Kims work is absolutely path-breaking. She guides us to access source energy within our body and our being. Through image, sensation, and metaphor, we experience a place of deep knowing and non-polarity. This embodied experience of source energy/deep wisdom creates the shifts needed in both my inner and outer worlds with ease. In our work together Ive gained immense clarity on my unique path and my unique gift. For the first time in my life, I feel a sense of alignment and flow, not as one-off moments of grace, but rather as my preferred way of being. Lately in our work together, Ive been so excited to witness this energy at work not just in my personal process but in the larger collective as well. I can see how invaluable Kims work is, in this moment, given the devastation we are witnessing in our world.

~ BRINDA JACOB-JANVRIN, FOUNDER, STUDIO FOR MOVEMENT ARTS & THERAPIES TRUST

When I work with Kim, I get a depth of understanding that goes far beyond my mind or even my heart. Images arrive spontaneously and they speak to me through a very strong felt sense that causes a powerful and transformative shift of my whole being. Her sessions are a deeply profound spiritual experience. Quite literally, they are life-changing.

~ MIM KOHN, DEPT. OF TEACHING & LEARNING, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Ive been deeply involved in the Jungian movement for more than fifty years, and during those fifty years, I have worked with many world-renowned teachers. In the very first session with Kim, I immediately saw an inner image. Its the first time in all these years that I was able to do that. Shes the real deal.

~ J. G.

Ive done a lot of dream-work, active imagination, and imagery work, and nothing goes as deep. What Kim does shifts me at my core. When she speaks, I have an immediate change of energy. The energies and truth of her words flood in immediately and I enter into a different state of mind. Her work has created changes in my inner and outer worlds that I wasnt even aware that I needed. Its profound.

~ BRIGID BARRETT, RN, CONSULTANT AT BARRETT HOLISTIC SERVICES

Copyright 2022 by Kim Hermanson

All rights reserved.

Deep Knowing: Entering the Realm of Non-Ordinary Intelligence

ISBN-13: 978-1-7377920-0-0

Cover and Interior Design: theBookDesigners

Author Photograph: Susan Adler

Production: theBookDesigners

PUBLISHER:

Rawberry Books

1260 Hopkins Street

Berkeley, CA 94702

For my mother, whose life was about beauty.

PREFACE

Since the Enlightenment, our view of what is real has been organized around the hegemony of a technological and materialistic worldview [our] mind-set has made the very idea of other worlds unthinkable.

~ SUZI GABLIK, The Enchantment of Art

O ver the course of my life, Ive experienced non-ordinary realms, alternative states of consciousness, and a variety of encounters with Divine energies. Although I didnt know it at the time, I now understand three of these experiences to be shamanic initiations. In general, although I often enjoyed the startling potency of my encounters with the Spirit realm, I dismissed them. There was no place inside me to put these unusual occurrences. I had no spiritual mentor, no guru, no shamanic teacher, framework, or theory where any of it made sense.

Each of the three shamanic initiations involved a difficult test that brought me to the brink of physical or spiritual death. And in each case, I was able to survive the ordeal by entering an intelligent vibrational field and drawing upon its power.

I was a tough subject. It wasnt until Spirit gripped me with a third and final shamanic initiationan encounter that rattled me to my corethat I came to a point where I could no longer dismiss my own experiences.

Something was being requested of me.

I spent the following years on an inner journey, developing the work contained in these pages. I hope that Ive answered the call and that Ive done it justice.

The shamanic initiations confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that there exists an intelligent field of energy that sincerely wants to help us. This realm is wise, powerful, and otherworldly; its healing gifts are not ordinary. Its also exquisitely beautiful.

Still, I felt that whatever Spirit was asking of me, I was the wrong person.

Im the last person to teach about how we humans can enter mystical realms. I grew up in a conservative Midwestern familya world away from anything remotely new age. My friends and family never spoke of non-ordinary reality and I certainly wasnt going to attract their scrutiny. My conventional upbringing was solidly grounded in Midwestern practicality, hard work, and the value of science and rational thought. I graduated from a large state university with a degree in computer science and went to work in a corporation. That was the family trajectory. I wasnt about to question it.

However, for as long as I can remember, Ive wanted to understand how adults learn. Upon entering the computer science field, my interest quickly shifted to artificial intelligence. I researched how experts know so that I could program that process into a computer. The first shamanic initiation occurred during this time. I share more about it in Chapter 1, but for now I will say that the experience sparked drastic change.

It was as if I had suddenly been plucked from one life and plopped down into a completely different one.

In this new life, I had the incredible opportunity and financial means to attend the University of Chicago to get a Ph.D. in adult learning. This opportunity was beyond anything I ever would have dreamed could happen for me.

At the university, I received a second surprising and extraordinary gift: the opportunity to be mentored by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the New York Times bestseller Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and many other books. His pioneering work on flow largely initiated the positive psychology field and launched alternative research methods within the academic community.

Mihaly taught in the Psychology department and had no reason to be interested in me. He and his work were world-renowned. He was very busy and surrounded by lots of enthusiastic graduate students and I was a student in another department who had never even attended a psychology class. But I wrote up a couple of pages of what I was interested in studying and my words touched something in him.

He agreed to be my advisor.

Words cant convey how much Mihaly would influence me. Its rare to have had a mentor who was so highly creative and innovative in his scholarly work. He inspired and supported my passion for pioneering research and exploring unanswerable questions. Together we co-authored an article and book chapters on learning in museums (see Museum News, 1995; The Educational Role of the Museum edited by Hooper-Greenhill, 1999; Learning from Museums by Falk and Dierking, 2000.) Im deeply grateful for Mikes support, encouragement, and the sturdy foundation he gave me. I learned that I could be both an academic