Prairie Chicken puts on quite a show. He struts, jumps, pumps up his colorful air sac, lets out a booming call and pounds his feet up to twenty-one times per second, to win a mate. For us, he models how to regain our personal power.
Indigenous Shamans (healers) believe that illness is caused by giving one’s personal power away, so I had a conversation with Prairie Chicken about this kind of soul loss.
“You are not monogamous, nor do you take on any fatherly responsibilities. How do I play that out in my life? If appearances are necessary to woo a mate or land a job, where will it end? How will I keep up charade?”
Prairie Chicken cackled back.
“I am who I am when I am dancing. That said, at times, a persona is necessary. The problem is confusing the mask with your essence.
If, however, you want to live from personal power (wholeness), you must listen to mind, body and spirit. Then, you can distinguish between persona (mask) and essence (soul). When the line between the two blurs, you are faced with a choice of stripping your false identities or living a counterfeit life.”
In the several days that followed, I added a little strut to my walking. When my mind began looping, Prairie Chicken whooped in my ear.
“Express yourself. Jump, shout, dance on the sacred spiral.”
He went on to say,
“Perhaps you’ve skewed the definition of power. Manipulation or wielding control, in order to dominate, camouflages false identities, like fear, insecurity, need for approval, etc. If you fail to deal with what you are covering up, eventually you will forget who you are.”
My conclusion of the time I spent with Prairie Chicken: The soul speaks not only through imagination, dreams, symbols and synchronicities, but also our bodies. When we close our spiritual ears to anything but words, our bodies suffer. It’s counterintuitive, but we can better hear messages from the spirit world when we are in touch with our skin. Personal power requires wholeness – inner alignment of mind, body and spirit.
Making Spirit Flesh*
Notice how much of the time that you allot to body and spirit is actually dominated by your mind.