With barely enough light to discern our presence, she led our small group in a traditional sunrise ceremony. Like many indigenous people, the Navajo believe the sun will not rise if it isn’t daily prayed into rising. Thus, she thanked the sun for gifting us with its presence and gratefully acknowledged the four cardinal directions, the Earth and sky, the revered spirits of the land, and the ancestors — without whom none of us would be here today. She prayed for the health and well-being of all people and for the planet’s pressing needs. Finally, she humbly asked blessings for her family, her loved ones, and lastly, herself.

      I drew my jacket tight against the early morning chill of the metallic desert air.  So vast, so silent here. A coyote’s distant wail skipped across the miles to our ears as if powered by some mysterious vibrational force that could amplify sound without electricity. I savored the morning coolness. Soon, the air would crackle with frying-pan heat, the sandy ground underfoot struggling to absorb the full force of the incendiary onslaught of the midday sun. Meanwhile, towering sandstone mesas, looking like old guardian ancestors, stood by in silence. Their job, it seemed, was just to watch.

      I glanced up from the small rocky perch that overlooked the widescreen landscape before me. Pecked into the stone above, ancient petroglyphs, likely crafted by long-gone Anasazi hunters, depicted several splayed human stick figures and assorted animals — a few antelope, deer and birds. In the growing light, I could also discern two spirals and a zigzag snake.

      The ledge to which we had ascended in the pre-dawn light afforded our group a hawks-eye view of the spectacular construction known as SunSpirit Village. How stunned those Anasazi artists of ten centuries ago would be to gaze upon what now lay beyond these cliffs. They would recognize the pueblo-like buildings and cornfields but little else. How would they mentally classify the two hundred acres of reflective panels and troughs that track the sun’s wide arc across the sky transforming solar heat and light into household energy to run lamps, computers and refrigerators, items completely unknown in their world. And those strange towers with rotating wings? And the translucent domes bulging with green plants and tanks full of water and fish? And the herds of square reflective objects gliding silently and rapidly along dark trails, transporting men, women and materials from one kind of odd-shaped structure to another? Would they likely report they’d beheld a vision from another world, another dimension? This was the stuff of myths.

      "This is what the future can look like," our Navajo guide said proudly, "when the collective imagination and will of different cultures is harnessed freely, respectfully and creatively. There are many problems in our world, but by working together to heal our hearts and minds, we can also heal our Mother Earth. We believe that which is tried and true can be married successfully to that which is newly conceived. Our cultures possess a shared destiny. To live in peace with each other, we must design our future collaboratively. At SunSpirit Village we have applied ancient and modern architecture and technology to desert living. Year-round, people can live here in harmony with nature in a highly self-sufficient way. This is how it can be done.”

      The articulate, middle-aged woman informed us that SunSpirit Village resulted from a partnership developed by two major Southwestern Indian tribes interested in providing forward-thinking economic and educational opportunities for their people. They approached a well-known, non-Indian, socially-conscious investment fund with their concept. The result was the Southwest Intercultural Collaborative. 

      The tribes and the investors jointly designed a complete village and support system. The facilities include solar and wind power generation and a hydrogen production facility that not only powers the village, but sells clean, renewable electricity out to distant cities. SunSpirit Village provides a world-class, Native-American administered University with state-of-the-art telecommunications and historical archives, a fully-equipped hospital with a broad range of Eastern, Western and traditional practitioners, a traditional and permaculture-based agriculture component with greenhouses for year-round organic food production, and a biological waste treatment complex and recycling center and highly energy-efficient housing complexes. Not only is energy, water use and solid waste reduced by 80%–90% as compared to a typical community of this size, but the infrastructure and organizational design has benefited from the knowledge, talent and wisdom of its Indian and non-Indian partners. 

     I learned that the founders of the Southwest Intercultural Collaborative recognized the philosophic and spiritual value of non-western worldviews to a increasingly materialistic global society, and thus had seen fit to fund an educational center whose centerpiece would be a special-purpose University. The institution is staffed almost entirely by men and women drawn from Native cultures around the world. It features a comprehensive curriculum that includes preservation of indigenous languages and oral histories, arts and crafts, herbal medicine, environmental sciences, communication arts, and traditional and contemporary spiritual teachings. A large museum and audiovisual department contains recordings of endangered and extinct languages and important traditions, information vital to the preservation of indigenous knowledge, customs and ceremonies. To insure that all reservation residents receive access to these resources, regular transportation is provided between the local villages and the University. Distance learning resources have also been introduced and are made available to reservation members at community centers.

     This is indeed a magic place. I've been here at dawn — perched high on yellow sandstone block rooftops in ancient Hopi villages — to witness the phalanx of 50 masked kachina dancers enter the ceremonial plaza. I've felt the rush of excitement as primal emotions well up within me, and I shift my attention to those otherworldly beings suddenly appearing in my field of view. The drums commence and the low-frequency chanting of the men charges the dry, desert air while the rattles cry in unison. I am catapulted into realms beyond words. In contrast, the finest renderings of virtual reality would pass into simplistic oblivion.

      In these old villages of stone, I can easily drop into cellular memory. My body becomes a living sensor, connecting me to the totality of the past. The Tibetan monk-like drone of the dancer's voice-rattle drives us all forward, then backward into time, assuredly and precisely, these dancing kachinas never dropping the count, never missing a critical pause no matter how asymmetrically inserted. Then, we journey together into the rhythmic straight-a-way, into the crack between worlds, and on and on and on until the unexpected and breathtaking climax. All the while, the miracle and mystery of existence is invoked, the divine explicitly summoned. As the fabric of the universe parts, man and woman are made whole and unquestionably connected to god and goddess, Earth and infinite cosmos. And in this ephemeral union of form and spirit, I remember to remember.

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Next, pay a visit to a remote wilderness area in New Mexico, where mind, body and soul are reconfigured to enable a deep sensitivity to the earth and all its creatures. The place is called the PsyEarth Institute. Here you will join an intrepid team of men and women as they step back into their primal, human natures as they reboot their consciousnesses as preparation to become candidates for a new kind of global leader.