If thought is creative, logos is even more as it embodies thought in matter. And if each sound is vibration, it is logical to understand that each word pronounced also has its own vibration. This vibration is the result of thousands of years of evolution, from the very first stammerings to the words we know and use today. Words have thus acquired a meaning - or definition - that results from the association of ideas. If I tell you that the grass is green, you will admit that it is true because everyone has adopted this "evidence" as the only reference, in all cultures and in all languages. It is the same for all subjects and objects, a unique reference has been created and adopted to name them: the sky is blue, the sea is composed by water, the fire burns, etc.
In the same way, it is accepted by everyone that to be a baker, one must make bread and to be a surgeon, one must operate on bodies. It is indeed easy - through these two examples - to make the link between the person and his profession/function since a tangible result is verifiable because it can be quantified in the matter.
Where it gets more complicated is when we try to determine a profession/function that touches the unmanifested, the invisible. I am talking here about shamans, healers, magnetizers, mediums and other bonesetters, in short, about all these professions/functions which are not validated by a state diploma and whose visible results depend essentially - but not only - on the subjectivity of the person benefiting from the support.
Because if an improvement of the state of the "client" or even a healing is physically observable in most cases, it is important to remember that the change is not only due to the shaman or the healer, but well and truly to the inner healer that I like to call the body intelligence.
In the fields of personal growth and "spirituality", I read more and more texts where the words shaman and inner healer are synonymous and therefore interchangeable. Illusion when you hold us...
The inner healer is not exceptional in itself. Every living being, in whatever form, has its own inner healer: animal, vegetable, mineral. And to enable this inner healer to do its job, no living species - apart from the human species - does anything. Absolutely nothing! Observe a wounded wild animal or a sick tree. It welcomes the injury or disease without question and lets the process of life or death take place. Naturally. Without interfering. Only the human thinks he has to fight what he considers "wrong". Injury is "wrong". Illness is "wrong". Death is "wrong". The dark side is "wrong". The occult - in its meaning "that which is hidden" - is "wrong". And so on. So the human, in his need to control everything and to purify himself, will interfere in the natural process, ignoring that he is going AGAINST Life rather than accompanying it. A schizophrenic paradox specific to our species, we eat impoverished, adulterated food that is toxic for our organism and then we take chemical drugs that only treat the effects and not the cause. In the same way, we adopt an incoherent belief system as true and we become dazed by a flood of toxic images and information and then we try to lighten our brains by learning transcendental meditation or by trying to become a shaman because we have read somewhere that the shaman = the inner healer. But...
If the inner healer is common to all living species, it is not the case of the shaman. Being a shaman is unique to the human species. Being a shaman is a function. Being a mother or father is also a function. Being a baker or a surgeon or a mathematician or a top athlete is a function. Because we are all human, we have in common and possess within us the aptitudes to become a mother or a father, a baker, a surgeon, a mathematician, a top athlete... and a shaman! But we don't all develop that ability. I can bake bread, but I am not a baker. I have some knowledge of anatomy, but I am not a surgeon. I can do math in my head, but I am not a mathematician. I can run 100 meters, but I am not a top athlete. The illusory omnipotence of your intention will not make you an architect on the wave of a magic wand or because you have an interest in architecture. Nor will you become a shaman after taking a course in which you learn that your totem animal is an eight-legged ant wearing yellow boots or a golden eagle who has become a vegan because he is an animal activist. I was born a shaman and it took me many years to explore, understand, work and use this skill. And in the years I have left to live, this skill will never stop developing because nothing is fixed and everything is bound to evolve. Again and again.
So I have a piece of advice for you and do with it as it fits you: if you really want to be at peace and find happiness, if you really want your inner healer to be fully active, then stop interfering by trying to become what you are not meant to be and before you pretend to heal others, then start by healing yourself. Because no shaman can ever do that for you. Because that is the job of your inner healer.

No, I don't take a swipe at New Age followers, but I do deplore the aberrations conveyed by this cult/religion as well as the psychological damage suffered by a large number of people in search of a better quality of life.
Because what New Age followers do not realize is that they do not embark on a spiritual path because they feel intimately drawn to the search for meaning. Rather, they approach spirituality as a refuge in which they imagine that all their ills and ill-being could be magically cured. But because the basic job has not been done - job that allows for real learning and self-knowledge - the awareness that leads to awakening is truncated and a new illusion is thus nourished, an illusion whose roots are identical to the original illusion that these people reject. These disciples then fall prey to so-called well-meaning manipulators who make them mistake bladders for lanterns.
There is thus a repetition, purely and simply, of the ideology proper to monotheistic religions and in our Western countries, the money of the faithful no longer fills the coffers of the Christian Church, but rather the pockets of self-proclaimed gurus who are masters only in the art and manner of plucking and abusing the credulity of suffering people. Words and traditions are more and more appropriated and diverted and everything is now a pretext for the most extreme delusions.
An example among many others: today, we no longer call ourselves therapists, we systematically call ourselves shamans without even having had an intimate experience of what shamanism is and of its practice. Today, one calls oneself a Celtic shaman rather than a Druid, a Lakota shaman rather than a medicine man, a Shuar shaman rather than an Uwishin, etc. One invents hypothetical origins for oneself. We invent hypothetical Mongolian or Siberian origins because we have vaguely heard that the word "shaman" originated in the Tungus language and that the Tungus never lived in the tropics or even in Western Europe.
So...
No! You are not a shaman because you advocate love always.
No! You are not a shaman because you play the drum.
No! You are not a shaman because you do sage fumigations.
No! You are not a shaman because you talk to trees and animals.
No! You are not a shaman because you smoke the firecracker and you are cool.
Obviously, to point out the abuses of the abusers, to denounce the lies of the liars, to show the illusions of the illusionists, it is to register them in false and to make vacillate the fragile balance to which they cling, desperate as they are not to be known or recognized in a role and a responsibility of which they are unaware.
To be a shaman is not to surf on the New Age wave which has been raging since the end of the 60's and which has not stopped swelling since.
If you are ever led to tread the path of shamanism - for real! - know that you must first learn to heal yourself before claiming to be an actor in the healing of others. Remember that you do not have the power to heal others and that it is up to each person to heal himself or herself. The way of shamanism is a way of inner strength, a way that is rather Fire and Earth oriented, Fire to transmute, Earth to experience the incarnation and to breathe in the change necessary for evolution. The path of shamanism is a path that breaks the emotional mental barrier so dear to Westerners, this emotional mental barrier governed essentially by the elements Air and Water.
Whatever the spiritual path that attracts you, follow it in all awareness and to follow it in all awareness implies not to call shamanism what is not! Perhaps you are attracted by animism, neo-shamanism, neo-paganism or Wicca or whatever. Remember that there are many spiritual practices, that none of them is better or superior to another and remember that not all of them are systematically related to shamanism as such.
Each of us has a richness of his own and each of us has a role to play in the experience of his incarnation. But if we really want to change the world, it is essential that each of us starts by stopping lying to ourselves and consequently lying to others. We are here to live an embodied experience and it is therefore essential to confront our illusions with the structure of matter. This is the sine qua non condition to really unify ourselves internally rather than maintaining the separation within ourselves and with our environment.

I journey to the upper world to meet a guide.

I choose to rise through the fire: I place myself in the centre of a hearth, among the burning wood, and my body ignites. I have a fleeting thought for the witches sacrificed at the stake while my physical envelope disappears.
I reach a first level. I am in a desert, huge stones are erected towards the sky. I find in this place an old man already met during a previous journey. He sits on the ground, staring at a second fire. I sit in front of him on the other side of the hearth. After a short silence, I ask him if he is one of my guides. He ignores me. I stand up and place myself in the center of the fire. New decorporation, I join a second level.
This time I’m in an eagle’s nest among eggs not yet hatched. The nest is perched at the top of a huge tree totally devoid of leaves. From my position, I can see in the distance the peaks of the mountains. An impressive eagle lands at the edge of the nest and looks at me. Without fear, I ask him if he is one of my guides. He flies away.
What should I do? Should I get off my promontory or rise again? As I choose to explore a higher level, my right hand opens a large white door. The picture is not very clear, but I do get into a dark room that lights up as I move forward. I then discovered the interior decoration of a late 19th century residence. There is a fireplace, wooden furniture, a round table, armchairs. A woman is sitting. She wears period clothes, she is thin, has a great class and I find her very beautiful. I politely ask her if she is one of my guides. She smiles at me, gets up and walks towards me. "Would you like a cup of tea?" , she asks me. She hands me a steaming cup that I accept, takes a second cup for her and we sit opposite each other, on each side of the table. Curious, I ask a new question: "Who are you?" The woman and the scenery disappear and I find myself standing in the dark, alone, with the sensation of floating. I no longer have any notion of top or bottom, left or right. My head turns a little, I feel disoriented, but that’s not unpleasant. Sometimes, the smiling face of the woman appears and then disappears.
The drum rings and I come back.

I journey to the lower world to ask a specific question to the animals I will meet: is the professional path I envision today the right one for me?

I go down very easily and find myself instantly submerged by water. I feel like I’m in an aquarium and I see a dolphin smiling at me. I immediately asked him if he is one of the animals that I was intended for me on this journey. He utters a cry and I feel his invitation to follow him. While I am not particularly in affinity with the water element, I evolve without fear alongside this animal. I guess in the distance the silhouette of a whale while a huge octopus appears on my right. I do not feel reassured by the presence of the octopus, and as I try to ask my question to the whale, she disappears at the same time as the dolphin. Alone with the octopus, I am resigned to asking him my question. Nothing happens and I wait.
I suddenly see and feel my crown chakra opening and then a white luminous tube starts from the top of my skull, crosses the water and rises straight to the sky. I feel an upward suction movement and observe a white, lumpy substance coming out of my head and heading for the sky. I feel like these are pieces of brains, and I’m a little disgusted with that. When everything seems emptied, the upward aspiration ceases and the movement is reversed. I now receive a clean and pure white light from the sky. This light descends into me and fills all the space of my physical body, even into my feet. Then the connection between the sky and my body stops while my body is now surrounded by a white cylinder that solidifies more and more. I feel like a neon light, like I’m frozen in glass, or rather ice. I shudder.
I had not paid any more attention to the octopus, but he is still present and now he very delicately encloses with his tentacles the white cylinder that I became. He’s dragging me to the depths. It’s getting darker and darker around me and I can’t even distinguish the animal that holds me with a mixture of firmness and softness. In this dark immensity, all I see is the white light that I have become. I feel an immense sadness that grows as I descend, which seems to have no end.
I vaguely hear the reminder of the drum, and the cylinder breaks and bursts of ice in all directions. The octopus and I magically find ourselves in clearer water, his tentacles open he releases me. I lay one hand gently on his head and thank him and I then come back.

I journey to the lower world to meet my very first animal.

I’m having a little trouble getting down. I do several tests, but I always let myself be disturbed by external noises: the fire crackling, the breaths of others who fall asleep, the movements of their bodies. The changes in the tones of the drum sound also bothered me. Then, rather than letting myself be invaded by a possible disappointment, I mentally return to a place I have known for years and which serves as a refuge.
Once in this known and thus reassuring place composed of two dark tunnels, I go to the one I do not usually take. I walk for a long time in total darkness guided by a thin point of light that I guess at the end. The point widens and when I get to the exit of the tunnel, I observe railway tracks fixed on the ground. I go out, turn around and see the stone-adorned entrance of a large railway tunnel.
I wear a canvas bob on my head, a light t-shirt and shorts, strong hiking shoes and I carry a backpack. It’s very hot and bright. I don’t know where I am. Tall, dried-up weeds cover the slopes on either side of the track, which seems to be abandoned. I walk on the tracks, meet no animals, but hear the sound of insects in the grass. I don’t know if they’re crickets or grasshoppers. Tired, I end up sitting on a white and red bollard at the edge of the track and I wait for something to happen.
The drum rings and I come back.

I journey through the snail shell to explore my physical body with the intention of getting to know it better.

As I enter the shell, a word appears: CIRCUMVOLUTION. I quickly turn away from the main track and take a secondary one. I feel that my face is changing: my eyes are stretching towards the sides of my skull while horns seem to grow on the top of my head and my forehead is projected forward. I saw the beginning of a metamorphosis and the image of a bull imposed itself on me.
I am now back on the main track, in the snail shell, and I discover another Me lurking in the back of the passage. This other Me is folded on the ground, in fetal position and I feel it is scared, frightened. This woman has an ethereal, ghostly appearance. I go to her in order to appease her, but once I reach her, I find only one skeleton, my skeleton.
I continue my way and cross a long tunnel whit a all white exit. The tunnel is narrower and narrower and I dive in head first, then I turn into an arrow point and land on the white surface I saw earlier. It’s fluffy and reminds me of the consistency of a marshmallow or a mushroom. I bend over and discover that I am actually sitting on the head of a Paris mushroom. All around me, many other mushrooms, as in cultivation. I also observe that I am in a dark, circular cave and when I raise my head and look up, I see that there are stone arcades under which a yellowish light shines. I’m in the centre of the cave, down below, and I’m watching movements under the arcades. People are walking there.
My breathing is speeding up, my left arm and my eyes are moving as I find myself thrown under the arcades among these people who walk without stopping. All of these people are wearing brown gowns. Their faces are bent down and covered by a wide hood. I deduce that they are Franciscan monks. I want to see their faces, but ignoring what I will find under the hood, I feel a certain apprehension. I end up making up my mind and rushing in front of one of them and then I stop, firmly encased on my legs. The man also stops, facing me, raises his head and looks at me with indifference. His hood fell backwards and I can clearly see his face. He is about 50 years old, his hair and short beard are pepper and salt. I do not know why I still feel the same apprehension, his face is nothing scary and as I make this thought, he puts on his hood, skirts me and continues his circular walk under the arcades.
I sit on a wooden bench, set along the stone wall, and I look around. Under the arcades, openings closed by thick wrought iron railings lead to other arcades, to infinity. I turn my attention to the monks who wander in silence and I observe that they are more and more numerous. They’re all the same and make me think of clones. I feel tense, impatient, an animal growl rises from my throat and then comes anger and aggression. I set out among these men who paid no attention to me and camped against them to try again to stop one. I then discover with amazement that they pass through me as would ghosts encountering any obstacle. Emotions and feelings mingle in me: fear, rage, hatred, aggressiveness. Unpleasant feeling, but now the drum sounds the reminder.
I come back.

I go to the lower world to meet the spirit of a former shaman from the region where I live (this journey dates back several years).

I am in nature, the sky is bright, no wind, no noise. My feet rest on a ground strewn with clumps of grass. A shadow comes towards me. My brain sends me the thought of an Amerindian woman and the shadow disappears immediately. I then feel guided and begin to move forward. I observe that everything around me has become frozen and I head for an ice cave. I do not feel the cold and enter the cavity. Everything is clear inside and I see it as in broad daylight.
In front of me, on a wall, I guess the body of a prehistoric man, coarsely dressed in a beast skin, his face covered by a dark beard, a long stick of wood in his right hand. He is frozen, as if caught in the ice. Intrigued, I approach and the man immediately sets in motion. I then understand that he is not frozen, but free behind the thick translucent wall that separates us. He is indeed alive. His features are not sharp, distorted by the icy diaper, but I feel anger emanating from him. I ask him if he is a former shaman and see him agitating. I feel like he’s getting mad. I ask him his name. I feel an answer, letters are written in capital letters before my eyes while I hear the word. The man moves more and more and now seems to be shouting. It seems he wants to tell me something, but I don’t hear his words.
Then I find myself with a spike in my hand and I start breaking the ice that separates us. The thick layer resists and it takes a lot of strength and perseverance for a weak hollow to begin to appear. Meanwhile, the man starts to calm down and watches me do it. I’m exhausted and crying with rage, because I can’t break the thickness of the wall and then, suddenly, a tiny hole appears, a hole that runs through all the ice. On his side, the man crouches down and places his mouth in front of the orifice. I imitate him, crouch down, place my mouth on my side of the hole and close my eyes. The shaman pronounces his name and I feel his breath on my face.
When I open my eyelids, I see him straighten up and away. I get up and start to leave the cavity. Everywhere around me floats the image of the shaman, on the walls, the ceiling, behind the ice wall of the cave. When I am out again, I feel his presence behind me as if he were floating slightly above my shoulders, without touching me. I laugh and talk to him, he listens to me and remains silent.
I thank and come back.

When I’m in a relationship, why am I so afraid of losing, of losing myself, but also of losing the other? I go to the lower world to meet the spirit of an animal without knowing which one will be able to answer my questions.

I go down to a dark place where I often go. It is an underground cave in which I systematically find a Spirit who watches over me. As I face this Spirit, I vaguely perceive a movement on my right. When I turn to it, an animal moves in my direction. Halfway between a fox and a dog, I seem to recognize a coyote. As soon as this thought passes through my mind, I find myself thrown into a desert. I see cañons far away from my position, a few rare dried-up tall grasses plow under the wind which raises the dust. It’s hot, very hot, and it’s impossible to get in the shade.
The coyote is sitting in front of me and looking at me insistently. He’s waiting for something. From the corner of my eye, I think I see a piece of meat in my right hand. I approach my face and observe that it is my hand that is bloody, the flesh is raw. I feel no pain and extend it to the animal. It doesn't take it and continues to scrutinize me. My left hand is now in the same state as the right, and when I look at my body, I see that it is leaving in tatters. There is a lot of blood, but it doesn't spread on the ground. No feeling. No pain or fear. My fingers grab my tongue, break most of it, and give it to the coyote, which takes it delicately between its teeth and then runs away. Surprised, I don't make any movement. The temperature of the air is burning, the sun hits hard, the dust still flies. My body dries up and gradually becomes a mummy lying on the ground. The shape of my body suggests that the agony was long and painful and I still feel nothing.
I jump when I feel a presence close to me. I open my eyes. I am well in my room. I closed them, determined to continue my journey, but the sensation of the presence made me reopen them. I then see a vague, clear form, as if it were a cloud. I sniff and smell no smoke. The shape becomes clearer and I see very clearly an elderly man. In my room, at the foot of my bed. The man has red skin, baked by the sun, his black hair streaked with gray are cut squared and a blue band encircles his forehead. He smiles at me and I'm immediately thrown with him into the desert.
I then watch him pick up my mummified body. He binds it in a sitting fetal position and then takes it away. I follow and we join other people, a tribe waiting for us. I attend a ceremony around this body and then it is placed in a niche dug in the rock, in height. The mummy's face is turned towards the sky and it is at this moment that the coyote returns, the piece of my tongue still intact between its teeth. He places it at the foot of the old Indian who picks it up and places it between the mummy's lips. It is strange to see this racorni body with this bright red tongue that makes like a spot on its face.
I wait, but nothing happens. I thank and come back.

I go to the lower world to meet the Salmon spirit: what message does it teach me today?

I feel a return to the source, to the origin, and I see a newborn. It has a dry, racornie appearance, and its skin is all dark, as if burned by the sun. This vision engenders sadness in me and I feel some tears rising in my eyes. I then see the infant swell and open its eyes. The dark, racornie skin bursts out as if it had only been an armour and had now become useless. The baby’s belly still swells at the same time as the child is lying on my own belly until it blends in. I feel that I am pregnant. Feeling another presence, I look up and see another Me standing, looking at me. The drum is accelerating.
The other Me holds one of its hands in my direction. This hand is blue. I extend my own hand to the one that is presented to me, they come closer to each other until they touch each other. I hear myself saying: "You so really exist!" I weep profusely and the drum is extremely fast, I command absolutely nothing and because nothing is under my control, I feel calm and peace in me.
The other Me envelops my body with a blue energy, like its hand. I am aware that the Self exists, that I exist, that the inner child exists, that I am/we are a multidimensional being.
I thank and come back.