A little more about my background
For those who are interested, I share in a little more detail, some questions about my shamanic journey:
🌋 🌊 why the Hawaiian tradition ?
🔭 🪶 why a dialogue between scientific and shamanic approaches ?
These three questions have strongly influenced my journey. I think they are very specific to me and I really do not seek to impose my own answers on the persons who consult me. Everyone has their own path and, today more than ever, it is possible to free oneself from dogmatic and fixed theories, to discover one's own relationship to the world and to a spiritual dimension. The only purpose of these reflections is to give a little more detail to those who wish to know a little more about my journey.
On the path that led me to shamanism, several encounters were unexpected (in fact I could say that they were all unexpected). And this required me to let go of the preconceived ideas and plans that I thought I would follow. These encounters came to shake me up a little, a lot and offer me something. One of these encounters was the one with the bees.
🐝 Why the bees ? Because their buzz is a door to other realities
I don't think I know the answer completely. They came like that, by chance, through an encounter, and I said yes. And since then, they have never left me, it's been more than 17 years now. Our relationship retains a great deal of mystery, and this mystery plays its part in the shamanic relationship that we have. Mystery is what drives us to explore.
But at the beginning, for me it was mainly about beekeeping, let's say classic. Out of curiosity, I began to study a universe that was unknown to me and that turned out to be fascinating. Taking care of bee populations is really special. Because a strange relationship has been established between them and us, humans, for several millennia now. And this relationship is really different from the one we can have with other animals that have gradually become closer to us by leaving their wild state. As insects, bees have a relationship with the world that is radically different from ours.
In short, after a little over 10 years of beekeeping, something happened in the apiary. Very special stings that healed me, some sort of voices (not easy to admit) that gave me indications about my beekeeping practice. Some events that suggested that another relationship is possible with them. And that's what put me on the trail of shamanism. My practice as a beekeeper is still there, seeking to offer them the best possible framework for their well-being, and another dimension was added. And my beekeeping practice has improved significantly since I accepted that they have more answers than me about what they need.
A shamanic relationship gradually crept in during my visits to the apiary. To try to glimpse these more discreet or subtle dimensions, we can already consider that bees have developed a relationship with the world very different from ours, which I can summarize as follows: they are highly vibratory and sensitive beings. They perceive what remains hidden from our 5 senses. Lights invisible to our eyes, magnetic fields, the polarization of light, very subtle perfumes, very fine sensations of touch. They are hyper sensitive beings, who communicate with each other with vibrations that become dances, infrasounds, contacts in total darkness. The world of odors is a marvelous universe in which they navigate, to establish relationships between themselves and plants, of extraordinary richness. Among these odors, pheromones also have a primordial place in their communication within the colony, in particular with their mother (queen).
I will not develop here what can be found in many books. But the abilities they are endowed with have allowed them, over the course of nearly 100 million years of evolution, to establish a relationship with the world of a richness that we barely glimpse. And through this, to open certain doors to this world that we are no longer able to open alone. We apprehend this side of (ordinary) reality through our senses and are quickly convinced that the world is what we perceive of it. It has become very difficult for us to conceive and feel the world outside of our senses. Very difficult to let go of our anthropocentrism. The spiritual path leads us to accept that reality is elusive in its very essence, but also that certain paths allow access to an expanded consciousness. And we have allies, who can help us open these new doors. Bees were the first to do so for me.
Bees are confronted with death on a daily basis. Their existence, both social for half of their life, then very solitary in the second part, places them at the crossroads. In a way, we can say that they have legs and wings between two worlds, and pass from one to the other permanently. Hence this dimension of psychopomp that several traditions lend them, Egyptian, Greek, Babylonian and certain traditions of North America...
They opened a first door for me, and they continue to fly always not very far during my shamanic journeys. Since then, other spirits have also come to help me on my path.
🌋 🌊 Why the Hawaiian tradition ? Because the sound of the ocean is the whisper of the Universe
It's a bit like with the bees. Something happened with this land lost in the middle of the ocean, more than 30 years ago, and its music has never left me.
The relationship keeps a significant part of mystery. If I try to explain, I can say for example that the place is so far from the rest of the world, that we have the feeling that we could, should, have on Earth, compared to our isolation in the vast Universe. This feeling of living something exceptional, the miracle of Life that brought us here.
Hawaii, and more particularly the Big Island of Hawaii, is a place where the relationship with the elements, the relationship with Nature, place the world of ideas and sophisticated problems of our modern societies, in the background. We quickly forget them. On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the ocean, which makes its voice heard day and night, constantly changing, the volcano, which very often manifests itself in majestic eruptions and lights that bring us the song of the depths of the Earth. Life, aquatic and island, the tropical jungle and the language of plants, form an environment that reminds us of where we come from.
The Hawaiian shamanic tradition is very particular and, even if we find many points in common with other traditions, it offers something unique that I have not found elsewhere. It leads us to reconcile the ordinary reality of every day, with the world of spirits. More than complicated rituals, it is transmitted by language and songs. The secret of Hawaiian shamanism, (Huna, which means secret), is written in the language. This focuses not on abstract concepts or ideas, but on relationships. Everything in the language expresses our relationship to the world. What connects us to it or challenges us. Each syllable contains a whole family of meanings that connect to each other to create something both concrete and subtle, of the spiritual order. Thus, a few words are enough to evoke our relationship to the world in a very precise way and, above all, push us to feel this connection and all its ramifications. In doing so, we begin to listen to it, to feel how it lives in us, and to become aware of the place we have come to occupy there. This place that develops like a song, which began before our birth and will continue after our departure. This is pure shamanism in everyday life.
A small example to give a taste of this tradition. When two people meet, wherever they come from, tradition suggests that they introduce themselves by saying their name, but also by saying the name of the mountain that nourishes them, and that of the water of the place where they live. For example, I can say that my name is Gio, that the mountain and the water of my place are the Dent de Jaman and Lake Geneva. Or when I am in Hawaii, it is Mauna Loa and the Pacific Ocean. The other person does the same. Then we share our breath (the Ha, or vital energy). By doing this, we have made our two mountains and our two waters meet. Shamanically, we carry those spirits within us and make them meet. Two mountains meet, two waters unite.
Phantom Galaxy
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team. Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt
🔭 🪶 Why a dialogue between scientific and shamanic approaches ? Because we exist in both worlds
This is a more cerebral question. Ever since I looked up at the sky as a child, I have wondered what kind of world we are in? What is this place, where we are stuck to the ground and have stars above our heads. And how come we are born as babies, live this strange life and then, after a time that seems to pass, we die, more or less old. I wanted to understand and discover the meaning and essence of all this. What I call the secret of the Universe, and which has questioned me all these years. It seemed to me, when I was a teenager, that the best way to discover the secret was to study science. I followed a path that led me to study Physics.
But quite quickly, I realized that equations were mainly used to measure and predict, up to a certain point, but never to explain why the world is like this, what its origin is and why it exists. It even became apparent to me quite quickly that science defines its field of exploration by setting clear limits: the Big Bang, the Planck Wall, and especially death, the supreme limit, are all boundaries that it does not claim to exceed. This is part of its approach and it is very commendable. Science studies what we can perceive and tries to derive laws from it. These laws evolve with scientific revolutions (Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc.) by giving us increasingly precise tools to measure the world. But everything that is outside of possible exploration, such as death, is by definition excluded from its field of research. The same is true for the question of why things are like this. Why does matter exist? Why does it bend the geometry of space-time and make us stay on Earth? Why does time seem to flow?
Science is part of this world, it is stuck to it. And the question of why is meaningless to it because "why" cannot be measured with any device. To go beyond it, we must accept to leave something behind. Just as when we die, we must accept to leave behind almost everything that defines us (material possessions, body, mental thought, inner voice, personality, memory...), so to have a chance to explore the meaning of the world and its non-ordinary reality, we are asked to leave behind all apparently logical and structured thoughts that belong to this world.
It is a bit like accepting a hypothesis, that of the existence of a non-ordinary world (or spirit world, to name it) and that, as long as it does not contradict what we experience in our ordinary reality, we can explore and see what happens. There is an acceptance of a total detachment that is asked of the shaman. An acceptance of leaving behind the tools that belong to this world, to go into a world with different rules, unmeasurable, unpredictable. In a nutshell, the shaman has to leave his brain behind, because it's also a mortal part in us. From there, things can happen, things happen. For each shaman, I think it is a little different and a little the same at the same time (remember, each of us has a different window on the same non-ordinary world). What they receive from the spirit world is specific to each of them and the role they have come to do here as well. Shamanic care, spiritual guidance, awakening, personal development... We do not choose what comes. We make ourselves available and welcome what the spirits bring us. In my case, the first signs or messages came from the spirits of the bees: "do this", "I sting you here to heal this part of your body", "help us with such and such a thing", like so many messages that came to help me in my practice or came to heal me.
Then very quickly, spirits of deceased people came to ask me for help. For the most part, people I did not know and who died in difficult circumstances (suicide, violent death, etc.) and sometimes far away in time. I had not asked for it and remained a little undecided for a long time about the attitude to adopt. Now, I accept this role of psychopome. These meetings, which occur from time to time, also served as proof to me, at the beginning of my practice. There was zero chance that I had prior knowledge of such a murdered person, such a Japanese ancestor who left practically no trace, this anonymous Siberian woman who disappeared suddenly, or this sailor who drowned without me knowing anything about him. For most of them, I didn't know their names before. And yet, they came, gave me their names and many details on the circumstances of their death, which I was then able to find and which corresponded perfectly. Today, I no longer dwell on this value of proof. Because that is not the purpose of these encounters. Spirits' goals are not to prove us they exist, over and over. Now, they are like an evidence and I try to help these spirits who come to ask for help. On a happier note (although death no longer seems sad to me at all), there are also sometimes spirits who come to be born here, and who make contact before birth. It's very cool because with them, there is also the possibility of communicating in ordinary reality.
From my contacts with different shamanic traditions (I love encounters with all kinds of traditions, living or disappeared), I provide ceremonies that aim to help those who consult me to find their own path. During each consultation, the shamanic journey puts me in contact with the spirits who come to give answers to your questions. Our lives are as many chapters of the long path of our souls. On this path, there are all kinds of possibilities of awakening and awareness that are offered to our souls. These give meaning to our life and to what we experience there, joys, gifts but also trials, suffering and death. Helping you receive them to find your own light, your own truth, is probably the heart of my shamanic practice. These messages are also linked to the shamanic care that you sometimes seek. They are at the source of healing possibilities, even if these are not the ultimate goal.
Thus, shamanic approach and scientific approach are not opposed. They touch on different dimensions. I have not abandoned scientific reflection, which still fascinates me as much and tries little by little to also touch as closely as possible the mirror of reality. Trying to touch the mirror on both sides is for me the most beautiful of possible explorations.