• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Kim Hermanson PhD

Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs

  • Home
  • Books & Courses
    • Books
    • Audio Courses
    • Courses to License
  • Work with Me
    • Doorway Sessions
    • Metaphor Readings
    • 15 Minute Energy Shift
  • Media
    • Interviews
    • Articles
    • Blog
    • Youtube
  • About
  • Contact
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Valuing the unseen

December 12, 2009

Here’s part of a recent conference proposal that is all about valuing inner vision. I hope it inspires you to value your unspoken, unarticulated knowings today…I believe they’re more important than what we can actually “see” in the physical world.

The ancient Sufis believed there are three worlds: the world of the senses, the world of the intellect, and something they called the “imaginal world.” The imaginal world is a real world; it’s not make-believe. But our Western culture is generally dismissive of things that we cannot see or measure. When we look at a tree, for example, we see the branches, trunk, leaves, fruit. Although we know the roots exist, our focus is on the “product”—the tree that we can literally see. When we look at a field that’s empty of crop, we call it “fallow.” The empty field is less interesting than the field that’s full of plants; the empty field is dismissed as unimportant.

It’s not easy to be visionary in today’s world. When individuals have inner visions, they enter a process that requires them to value something that is not tangible; something that they can only vaguely feel or sense. If it’s a revolutionary idea, it’s even more difficult to value it, going against the grain of what’s considered “normal.” And what makes this process yet more arduous, is that the imaginal world of unseen possibility and potential does not articulate its messages in clear words. Until we name it, until we give it a voice, it is voiceless. It is easy to reject what we cannot articulate. Our job as visionaries is to value this unseen world and create a space to protect it, giving it room to grow.

For those of us who care deeply about the health of our planet, presuming that we already “know what to do” or we just need to “figure it out” is a lie. Accepting that we don’t know what to do and allowing ourselves to nurture and protect the unseen is what we are being called to do now. The guidance that we need is in the imaginal realm of vision and insight; it is in the roots that lie below the surface of everyday life.

Previous Post
Next Post

Imaginal, Social Change third space, transformation

Primary Sidebar

Blog Categories

  • Art
  • Books
  • Doorway Sessions
  • Earth/Nature
  • Imaginal
  • Inspiration
  • Learning & Creative Process
  • Metaphor
  • Miscellaneous
  • Social Change
  • Teaching, Coaching & Facilitating

Blog Archives

Blog Tags

aesthetic space albert einstein artist beauty beginner's mind Book Passage carl jung coaching consciousness courage creative breakthrough creativity deep knowing depth psychology eckhart tolle esalen institute form genius george lakoff getting messy goethe heart imagination james hillman john o'donohue key image marshall mcluhan martin foss mihaly csikszentmihalyi play poetry psychology of creativity psychology of metaphor right brain robert henri shamanism singing Sophia Center soul calling square energy stanley kunitz strength thinking third space transformation

Get clarity, see opportunities, and uncover resources that can’t be known any other way.

Copyright © 2023 Kim Hermanson, PhD | Website by Digital PDX