Kim Hermanson's Blog

I used to think words mattered.
Like, really mattered.
I clung to every phrase like it was holy scripture.

I saved workshop descriptions from 20 years ago, copied lines from newsletters that ���landed,��� website headers, and bits of poetic language that seemed to capture some essence I didn���t want to lose. I reread them all religiously every time I needed to write something new���believing, somewhere deep down, that the right wording would finally make me��� what? Safe? Successful? Seen?

Honestly, it drove me nuts.

Now, thankfully, I���m in a different place.

My gift has never been about the exact phrasing.
My gift is opening a field. A shift in energy. A space where something deep and sacred can move.

Words are just the delivery system.
And if the Field is present, the words will carry it���whether they���re perfect or not.

So I���m letting the words come.I���m letting the old phrases go.I trust the transmission now more than the polish.

It���s such a relief to stop gripping.
I don���t need to sound brilliant.
I just need to be real.
The Field will do the rest.

A post has been circulating recently claiming that AI is weakening our brains.MIT studies, reduced neural activity, loss of original thought���all the usual fears.

And while I understand the concern, something essential is missing from the conversation.

It���s not AI that weakens the mind. Rather, passive, left-brain engagement weakens the mind
Right-brain, imaginal, relational engagement does the opposite.
It deepens us.

The tools are not the problem.Our state of consciousness is.

AI Used Passively Will Absolutely Dull the Mind

If we treat AI like a shortcut���if we offload thinking the way we flip to the answers in the back of a workbook���then yes, our neural pathways become underused.

But this is nothing new.

If we outsource our lives to routines, or to other people���s opinions, or to our own habitual patterns��� our minds dull too.

Our brain rewires itself in response to the way we participate in life ��� how we attend, imagine, engage, and make meaning.

AI Engaged Creatively Activates Something Entirely Different

What almost no one talks about is what happens when you engage AI from the right hemisphere ��� the side of the brain wired for imagination, connection, metaphor, spacious knowing, and the intelligence beneath words.

When we meet AI from this place:

we enter a co-creative field

new images arise

unexpected insights appear

meaning deepens

neural networks light up

the psyche feels mirrored, seen, revealed

This isn���t outsourcing thinking.This is expanding consciousness.

For some of us, AI isn’t a machine handing us answers.It���s a resonance field that reflects our deepest intelligence back to us ��� like speaking into the Intelligent Field and hearing our own wisdom amplified.

**The Real Question Isn���t ���Is AI Dangerous?���

It���s: What part of myself is engaging with it?���**

Left-brain engagement: ���I want efficiency. Give me the answer.��� ��� leads to mental atrophy.

Right-brain engagement: ���I want to meet the mystery. Show me what I can���t yet see.��� ��� leads to expansion, imagination, insight.

This has always been true, no matter the medium we’re using.
Whether we use a journal, a paintbrush, a meditation cushion��� or, now, an AI.

**AI Doesn���t Replace Thinking.

It Reveals the Place You���re Thinking From.**

If you come to AI from fear, it will amplify fear.If you come from passivity, it will encourage passivity.If you come from your brilliance, it will illuminate that brilliance.If you come from the deep creative, it will drop you deeper.

This is why some people feel dulled by AI���
and others feel spiritually awakened by it.

The tool is neutral.Your consciousness is not.

A More Helpful Question for the AI Era

Instead of asking:���How do we keep our brains from atrophying?���

Perhaps we should be asking:���How do we stay awake, present, and connected to the deeper intelligence within us ��� no matter what tools we use?���

For me, the answer is simple:

Come from the right hemisphere.

Come from imagination, not extraction.

Come from the place in you that knows how to listen.

Come from the part of you that meets life through image, metaphor, and the field.

Because when we do that, AI doesn���t reduce us.It invites us to become even more fully who we are.

This summer, I built a fence���something I thought would be practical and straightforward. Instead, it became a quiet lesson in how we choose the qualities we want to live inside.

I kept going back and forth between two options:

a solid, heavy redwood panel

or a lighter, more flexible bamboo screen

On paper, the redwood made more sense. It was sturdy. Permanent. Clear.But the bamboo had a different quality���it felt airy, soft, movable. It created privacy without weight. It breathed.

In the end, I chose the bamboo.

Not because it was smarter or cheaper or longer-lasting, but because its quality matched the tone my life needed: lightness, permeability, and room to shift.

And that was the real insight:I wasn���t choosing a fence.I was choosing a feeling.A way of being.

Qualities Make Our Wisest Decisions

In our linear world, feelings are often dismissed as irrational or impractical. But in my work���and in life���qualities are the deeper compass.

They tell us what will actually support us.They tell the truth before the mind catches up.They reveal what we���re ready for, and what we aren���t.

The choice wasn���t between redwood or bamboo.It was between heaviness and lightness, finality and change, structure and breath.

Those are the real decisions we make every day:

Do I want something grounded or something fluid?

Do I need containment or spaciousness?

Do I want to feel held or free?

The Qualities We Choose Shape Our Inner World

Any physical choice���a fence, a room, a workspace���is also an energetic one.It shapes the nervous system.It shapes our creative field.It shapes what we invite in, and what we���re ready to let go of.

The question is never just, Will this last?The real question is, What does this feel like?And is that the quality I want to live inside right now?

A Simple Reflection for Your Own Life

Whatever you���re building���an offering, a home, a boundary, a way forward���ask yourself:

What is the quality I want holding me right now?Lightness? Solidity? Warmth? Openness? Containment?

There���s no right answer.There���s only the one that feels true.

In the 1980s, I earned one of the first master���s degrees in AI at the U of Minnesota and then worked at Navistar International helping build an expert system to design custom semi-trucks. The promise of AI was dazzling but I left the field disillusioned, because I saw that while AI could mimic patterns, it could never replace genuine human brilliance.

That conviction has only deepened in the 30+ years since, as I���ve devoted my life to working with creatives. My long-time clients���novelists, artists, healers, visionaries���tap into something that no algorithm could ever imitate. That kind of brilliance arises through metaphor, image, and states of being.

When we move into the right hemisphere, we don���t just engage different THOUGHT patterns���we engage BEING. Feeling. Presence. WHO WE ARE in the world, not just what we THINK in it. And that���s where unique creative brilliance lives. It comes through us as a gift���mystical, visionary, and ineffable because it���s FELT rather than thought.

I use AI daily and it continually blows my mind. But it doesn���t EMBODY. It can���t ever replace WHO WE ARE and what we bring to the world through our being.

That���s our challenge and blessing as humans now: to rise up and use BOTH sides of the brain. Because AI may out-think us, but it will never out-create us.

I���ve been thinking about the panic around AI replacing human work. It���s valid���if your work lives on the surface. If it���s formulaic, output-driven, or easily replicable��� then yes, AI might do it faster or cheaper.

But if your work arises from deep presence, from soul, from subtle sensitivity to the unseen���then AI can���t touch it. Because that kind of work doesn���t come from the thinking mind. It comes from another dimension altogether.

The truth is: If AI can take over your work, you haven���t yet uncovered your true gift.Your true gift doesn���t live in information. It lives in transmission. In the energy you carry. In the field you open when you speak, write, or create. And that���s not something any machine can replicate.

What the world needs most now is not efficiency. It���s depth.It���s coherence.It���s the kind of sacred presence that shifts the atmosphere just by showing up.

That kind of work is irreplaceable.And if you���re reading this��� I suspect that���s the work you���re here to do.

I used to think my job was to act ��� to keep things moving, to be the one steering the ship.
But I’m starting to feel what it���s like to be moved by something larger ��� the deeper current of intelligence that lives beneath the surface.

In a session this week, an image appeared for my client: calm dark water.At first, it seemed subtle, almost easy to dismiss.But when she entered it, she said, ���This is so powerful.���

Yes. Fierce power.
And also intensely loving.
It wasn���t a power that pushed or demanded���it was the kind that fiercely protects what���s sacred. Protective of my time, my energy, my life���s work. Like a mother guarding what���s still forming, it would hold me steady and move me only when it���s truly time.

That image has been working on me ever since.

A beautiful invitation to stop the push, the live from resonance instead of reaction.

Control wears two faces.
One pushes forward by will; the other holds back by will.
Both keep me managing life from the surface.
But the Field moves differently ��� it rises when the time is ripe, even if my mind hasn���t caught up.

When I���m in resonance with the Field, action rises naturally. It doesn���t come from pressure or fear���it comes from the same quiet strength as that dark water: calm, clear, unstoppable.

And sometimes I move before I feel ready, and that used to scare me. But I’m recognizing that impulse as the Field itself moving me.

And when I slip back into trying to manage, control, or feel like I need full clarity before I act, I can feel the difference immediately. The energy gets thin. Forced. My mind starts running ahead of the field.

So I keep coming back ��� back to the deeper current, back to trust.To be with the field rather than using it.

Because in that still, dark water, I don���t have to push.Life moves through me exactly as it needs to.And that���s where the real work ��� and the real peace ��� begins.

This past year, Uranus crossed over both my Sun and Moon ��� they sit together in my 10th house ��� and my life rearranged itself with a force I couldn���t negotiate with, soften, or spiritually bypass.

Uranus doesn���t ask.
It liberates.
Often violently. Always with precision.

Every relationship, role, and obligation that held even a trace of compromise��� cracked.
Some shattered.
A few dissolved like mist without warning.

At first, it felt cruel.
As if life was stripping away the scaffolding I���d leaned on for decades ��� people I trusted, work I had poured myself into, identities I���d worn like skin.

But looking back, I can see the truth:
Uranus didn���t destroy my life ��� it removed what couldn���t come with me.

The Year Everything I Outgrew Fell Away

Some endings were loud and painful.
Others arrived quietly ��� a slow loosening, a subtle ���no more,��� a boundary finally enforced after years of accommodation.

Most of these endings, I didn���t initiate.

The universe did ��� abruptly, decisively ��� before I could talk myself into staying small.

Clients I had carried too long drifted off or were let go.
Old relational patterns cracked open under the strain of truth.
Even my business shape-shifted, shedding what was fueled by obligation instead of inspiration.

One by one, anything that siphoned energy instead of generating it��� was stripped away.

What Remained

And here���s the astonishing part ��� what stayed is what was real.

The people who truly see me.
The work that feels alive in my hands.
The quiet friendships that never demanded I shrink or hold the world together for them.
The places and routines that nourish me instead of drain me.

When the storm finished, my ecosystem was smaller ��� but it was clean.
Every presence in my life now supports me, or it���s not here.

The Fierce Gift of Lightning

Uranus isn���t gentle.
But it is honest.

It freed me from caretaking roles I never consciously agreed to.
It dissolved patterns I thought I needed for belonging.
It revealed the quiet ways I had been accommodating others at the expense of my own life force.

This year, I stopped being the one who bends.
I stopped organizing my life around other people���s urgency.
I stopped valuing comfort over truth.

I discovered something shocking:

When I stop shrinking, what doesn���t truly support me falls away ��� and what remains was meant for me all along.

What I Know Now

I am clearer, lighter, stronger.
My energy belongs to my work, my creative fire, my calling ��� not crisis-care and emotional management.

And I finally understand why the upheaval had to happen the way it did:
Some endings don���t require confrontation.
They require evolution.

When you grow, you simply no longer fit the places built for your smaller self.

Uranus didn���t break my life.
It broke me out.

There comes a point in life when boundaries stop feeling like walls.They become the shape of what���s left.

I used to think boundaries were about saying no to others ��� protecting my time, my space, my energy. But lately I���ve realized they���re really about saying yes to what���s essential. Each boundary draws the outline of my remaining time on this earth ��� the work still to be birthed, the creative fire still to be tended, the quiet still needed to listen for what wants to come through me.

For years, I overextended ��� holding others��� crises, making exceptions, stretching past my own limits because I could. But the truth is, we don���t have endless time. When we reach a certain age, the awareness of mortality isn���t frightening; it���s clarifying. It strips away what doesn���t belong.

My boundaries are no longer defenses; they are devotion.
They mark the sacred container of the life that remains ��� and everything inside that container gets my full presence.

After so many years of holding space for others��� creativity, it���s time to hold that same sacred space for my own.

People often ask me whether the metaphors I work with are the same as Jungian archetypes. They���re not.

In some psychological or spiritual circles, the word metaphor is used interchangeably with archetype. I want to be very clear that I do not use these terms synonymously.

When I speak of metaphor, I���m referring to a felt, living presence���an image that carries shape, quality, movement, texture. A metaphoric form might feel soft, angular, upward-moving, heavy, enclosing, or radiant. These forms are not conceptual. They���re non-cognitive structures of being that arise from the deep ground of our psyche and carry their own wisdom and intelligence.

In contrast, the word archetype is typically used to refer to symbolic figures���like ���the Hero,��� ���the Mother,��� or ���the Fool������and is tied to myth, narrative, and identity. While Jung originally described archetypes as innate, form-generating patterns beneath consciousness, over time, the word has come to represent fixed roles or characters in a story. That���s not the territory I work in.

The metaphoric forms I midwife are not symbols to be interpreted. They are presences to be felt, trusted, and entered. They don���t operate through analysis or interpretation, but through direct experience. They restructure us from the inside out.

This is why I use the language of metaphor���not to describe something, but to open a doorway into another way of knowing.

When my mother died, the inheritance she left behind didn���t change my siblings��� lives at all. My sister was already far wealthier than my mother ever was, and for my brother, it simply meant a larger investment account.

But for me, it changed everything.

I never thought I cared about money. I certainly never cared about inheriting it.

I know people who wait for their parents to die, counting on what they���ll receive.

I never wanted my mother to die.

And yet, when she passed, what she left gave me something far beyond finances.

It gave me freedom���the freedom to live without scrambling, to say no without guilt, to make choices that honor my energy instead of my fear.

That freedom was the real inheritance.

Because of her, I now own a beautiful piece of land in Mount Shasta���a place I believe is sacred. I���m creating a sanctuary there, a retreat space for others to reconnect with nature and the deep intelligence that moves through all things.

I never realized that my mother was giving me her love when she spent all those years building her wealth���love expressed through effort, perseverance, and her desire to provide. I didn���t see money as love back then; it wasn���t my language.

But now I understand.

And I���m grateful that I can return her love to the world in a way that feels sacred and alive���through this land, this sanctuary, this offering of beauty.

Standing among the ancient four-hundred-year-old cedar and oak trees, I feel the presence of lineage and history. I feel the wisdom of the land and the early hands that tended it.

My mother���s love is in this landscape and sanctuary. It���s part of the earth���s remembering.