«-Heyókȟa-»
¡A post specifically for Mother's Day!
Heyókȟas have been usually thought of as being backwards-forwards, upside-down or just contrary in nature beings. It was manifested by doing things backwards or unconventionally. As riding a horse backwards, wearing clothes inside-out or speaking in a backwards language. By instance, if food were scarce, a heyókȟa would sit around and complain about how full he was. During a baking hot heat wave a heyókȟa would shiver with cold and put on gloves and cover himself with a thick blanket.
They actually don’t give a damn about your cultural conditioning, your religious indoctrination or your political brainwashing. They could give two blue shits about what you think is appropriate or politically correct.
They will call themselves whatever they feel like calling themselves. A thunder shaman, a disaster shaman, a holy idiot, a trick doctor, a self-inflicted philosopher. A death mocker, life shocker, booger eater... ¡Whatever! Heyoka is just a word representing an energy. Your whiny, woe-is-me and cries of cultural appropriation are crushed pebbles beneath their fleet-footed boot.
They are here to flip your script and scribble all over what you think you know. They are here to turn your tables into a feast where you just can’t kill the beast. They are here to stretch your comfort zone into a self-overcoming, courage-based, expanding horizon rather than a self-limiting, fear-based, suffocating boundary.
"When you need shelter, a Heyoka will be the rain. When you need a parachute, a Heyoka will be the fall. When your glass house needs a mirror, a Heyoka will be the stone"
"Heyokas are in the sacred throes of clowning their asses off waiting for you to courageously join them but also prepared to ruthlessly mock you if you do not"
The words of the Heyoka are like a lightning bolt which can pierce the heart. For the Heyoka’s words can have a “sharp edge.” However, if one looks beyond the initial sting, one may realize that the words which make a person the angriest, usually have truth to them. Sometimes, “the truth hurts.” But one never really knows the true intention of the Heyoka if we listen to the literal meaning of the words.
The Heyoka never tell you something straight out. Because they make you use your own mental power to learn the meaning behind the words. They use a lack of logic to mock the conventions of our world and challenge the minds of their disciples.
Something which is said today by a Heyoka may actually pertain to an event yet to come in the future. Or a Heyoka may not reveal all he knows for his existence is in faith. If a person is told everything, this person may give up. A Heyoka has a higher calling and must be strong enough to go against human instinct in order to hold out hope for the people to keep them going during times of difficulty.
The exceptionality of a Heyoka lies especially in its break with what the adult world of all cultures considers normal. That parameter accepted and agreed upon by the majority. A sometimes inflexible parameter which defines the "should be" and marks an irreducible border between the acceptable and the repudiable. Or a flexible parameter that, not without fear, admits the existence of "the other" different and mysterious as part of the daily reality where, paradoxically, the one who by breaking taboos and norms with rudeness and offenses serves to highlight the limits of moral, principles and ethical values.
It's not like if an ordinary person wake up one day and suddenly “choose” to become a Heyoka. One cannot take classes to learn to become a Heyoka or “train” themselves to become a Heyoka. There is no way to become “certified” or “apprentice” to become a Heyoka. One cannot go up on the hill on a vision quest and merely dream it up and one certainly cannot make it up either.
One Heyoka always knows another Heyoka when he meets one. And in today’s plastic world, there are many fakes who are driven by greed or desire to become notorious. But there are always ways to tell the real Heyoka from a fake one.
¿Can this person handle fire or pick up hot stones with his bare hands without being burned? Can they prophesy? Can they anticipate the reactions of others in advance?
There are spiritual consequences for those who lie about such things. For the Thunder Beings fiercely protect their own and their helpers. Long ago, each tribe had their own Heyoka or sacred clowns who were their protectors and defenders. Now, just as the eagle and the buffalo are disappearing, so are the Heyoka.
«-'Abstract Aural Bit'-»