Myth is an important way of perceiving Ultimate Reality.

"I don't think humans write and rewrite myth, it's an interactive process. Perhaps humans are being rewritten by myth. The dynamic relationship is everywhere."

Joy Harjo
Muscogee Nation

Yellowstone is an absolutely magical, mythical landscape, and when I hiked and camped there this past Labor Day Weekend, I could not help but contemplate the importance a Native American worldview has had on my spiritual journey. One of the things I appreciate about living in the wide-open spaces of the American West is the fact that this landscape STILL contains the magic of the myths and stories of the people who lived - and still live - here before Euro-Americans arrived. For me here in Northern Colorado, it is primarily the Arapaho and Ute peoples whose influence I feel on my psyche in innumerable ways.
Indigenous peoples understand that the paradoxical, poetic language of story contained in myth is the best way to get at the Ultimate Reality in which we are all so intimately embedded. And this myth, they realize, both arises from the landscape - the place from which their languages also have arisen - AND remains in the landscape long after the original storytellers have passed on. It is this respect for the power of myth which prevents me from adopting wholesale the position of some mystical traditions that view language as bankrupt in describing the Ultimate. For I understand that word, image and language - when used poetically, mythically and paradoxically - serve as a sort of "microscope" or "telescope," enabling us to see through to the Ultimate Mystery present both beyond and within them. Even though I may not know most of the Arapaho or Ute stories that were told about the place where I live, I can daily sense - and am profoundly affected by - the indigenous mythical milieu in which I live, breathe and have my being.

Photos: Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5-7, 2015

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I was born with eyes that never close.

"I was born with eyes that never close."

Joy Harjo
Muscogee

Photos: Archaic Barrier Canyon Pictographs, painted as early as 5,000 B.C.E. Great Gallery and Sego Canyon, UT

I know I walk in and out of several worlds each day.

"I know I walk in and out of several worlds each day."

Joy Harjo
Muskogee 

 
Photos: Pictographs painted in red hematite by the Archaic Barrier Canyon People as early as 5,000 B.C.E. The Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, UT

 

Imagination is in fact one of the traits that makes us most human. Whenever I hike up to Arthur's Rock - just a few miles from my home - I love seeing the face of "Arthur" gazing intently up at the western sky. This face encourages me to be spacious in my awareness, and to maintain the sense of optimism I've felt ever since I was a kid whenever I look toward the west. Similarly, when I photographed golden Willow trees the other day next to the Big Thompson River, I imagined the water as Mother Earth's hair flowing down ceaselessly from the mountains.

And when I hiked up to Emerald Lake later that afternoon, the contorted Limber Pines appeared to me as wise elders who've weathered the storms of life, encouraging me to do likewise.

Imagination is actually a form of perception, as indigenous peoples have always known. Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that "The feat of imagination is in showing the convertability of every thing into every other thing." Thus, imagination is a a major way of actualizing the innate oneness of all things. However, imagining is not simply an activity that WE engage in. Rather, it is a living presence who visits us. As Joy Harjo - a poet and musician from the Muskogee Nation - reminds us: "The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories are evidence of this praise." Our Euro-American culture views this awareness of both the imagination and of Nature as personal as a naive "anthropomorphizing," as though human beings are the only creature that is innately personal. However, Thomas Moore reminds us that "When a psychologist says that we are projecting personality in the world when we talk to it, that psychologist is speaking NARCISSISTICALLY, as though personality and soul belong only to the human subject."

In our era, people in our society have given up their own imaginative capacities, relying instead on the imaginings of the so-called "professionals"; that is, of movie and TV producers, to do the imagining FOR them. This shirking of one's human responsibility to creatively re-imagine the world is one of the reasons for the massive epidemic of depression that afflicts our culture. For indigenous peoples, our imagining gives us a participation in the life and action of the Creator. In the absence of this kind of imagining, people in our current society have begun to feel passive and disconnected from the life around them. It is no wonder, then, that depression is so prevalent!

May all of us discover the unique ways in which WE are called to participate in the Creator's work by exercising OUR OWN imaginative capacities!

Photos: (Top) The "face" of Arthur's Rock gazes up at the western sky, Lory State Park, CO, November 15, 2014; (Middle) The Big Thompson River is Mother's Earth's hair flowing down from the mountains between golden Willow trees, west of Loveland, CO, November 14, 2014; (Bottom) A gnarly Limber Pine is a wise elder encouraging us to weather the storms of life, Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, November 14, 2014.  The Thomas Moore quote is from Care of the Soul, p. 61.

We see our own inner beauty in the mirror of the landscape.

 

"I have lost my way many times in this world, only to return to these rounded, shimmering hills and see myself recreated more beautiful than I could ever believe."

Joy Harjo,
Muskogee poet

Photo: Colorful Chugwater Formation badlands, near Dubois, WY; July 4, 2014

The imagination needs praise, as does any living thing.

 

 
"The imagination needs praise, as does any living thing. Stories are evidence of this praise."

Joy Harjo

The official name of this rock formation is "The Three Gossips," but I think of it as "The Three Muses" because of the intense inspiration I experience in the redrock desert. My wife calls it "The Three Goddesses." All three names involve imagination, which is especially active and alive in the desert. I have to admit, there have been many times on a searingly hot day in the desert when I mistake the sound of a fly buzzing for a human voice. The desert has a habit of messing with your mind, causing both human and non-human forms - like rock formations - to shapeshift into one another when you're not looking. Here, rock really can speak!

Photo: Slickrock Paintbrush, with The Three Gossips and Sheep Rock; Arches National Park, UT; May 5, 2014

I have lost my way many times in this world, only to return to these rounded, shimmering hills to see myself recreated more beautiful than I could ever believe.

"If you look with the mind of the swirling earth . . . you become the land, beautiful . . . I have lost my way many times in this world, only to return to these rounded, shimmering hills and see myself recreated more beautiful than I could ever believe."

Joy Harjo,
Muskogee tribe
"Secrets from the Center of the World"

Photo: Vista in the Yellow Mounds section of Badlands National Park, SD; May 18, 2013.  Harjo was writing about the landscapes of the Four Corners region, but I find her words equally true of the Badlands country, which have similar coloring.