Mount Shasta - Connecting with the Spirit

An Indian Mystic has said "Really, one doesn't need to go to India. Everything I have needed to know about connecting to the spirit I learned meditating on a rock on the side of Mount Shasta. Its a place where the veils between the ethers are thinner than elsewhere, and where the Masters can communicate with you more easily. You should go there"

The Sanskrit word Shasta means one who lives according to divine law. Although, some say that Mount Shasta was actually named by French fur trappers who called it chaste, meaning "pure." Or, it could have received its name from the Tshastel Indians who lived in the area.

There is something uncanny about Mount Shasta. A buddymentioned how strange it was to see Mount Shasta rising above into the sky as he drove by on I-5....a sinister feeling to it. The mountain exerts a strange force. John Muir wrote that the first time he saw Shasta, "all my blood turned to wine and I have not been weary since." Peculiar and unexplained things have been happening around the mountain at least since 1883, when a young man in nearby Yreka named Frederick Spencer Oliver claimed his hand was seized by strange forces that made him write uncontrollably. The result was "Dweller on Two Planets," an occult classic that told the story of the Lemurians, an ancient race who abandoned their Atlantis-like continent when it sank beneath the Pacific Ocean and formed a mystical brotherhood inside Mount Shasta. (Many years later, Shirley MacLaine was browsing in a bookstore in Hong Kong and reported that this very book fell mysteriously off a shelf and landed in her hands.)

We spent a short weekend trying to experience Shasta country...and it was one wonderful weekend.

Here are some things to do in and around Shasta

We had camped out at http://www.yelp.com/biz/castle-crags-state-park-castella.
It is a fantastic location if you ignore the I-5 freeway noise that becomes a tad annoying more so in the middle of the night if you happen to wake up. It didn't bother me - sleep is not an issue. One of the amazing experiences of camping out here was to see the galaxy of stars, the milky way streaming up in the sky in a straight line. This was the only time I have seen it.


We took a short trail at Panthers Meadow and also a trail @ Castle Crags
We bought some crystals in the town - interesting experience (though a ripoff in retrospect)
We also drove upto Mount Shasta as far as we could and did a short hike.
I am sure I am missing a couple things.


Everitt Vista Point
Drive up Mount Shasta on the Everitt Memorial Highway (just follow Lake Street up out of the center of Mt. Shasta City past the high school). After you drive approximately 8 miles, you will see the sign for the popular Everitt Vista Point 1/2 mile before the destination. The view west over the valley from your car is breathtaking, but if you walk through the parking lot and take the trail starting next to the restroom facility, you will soon come to a stone lookout which affords a panoramic view to the south. On a clear day you will see Mount Lassen and Castle Crags in the south, with the sweep of the Eddy Mountains and distant Marble Mountain Wilderness Area to the west.

The Everitt Vista Point lookout is the location of frequent "star parties" during the summer, where local astronomers bring their telescopes and binoculars for the celestial show. Check the local newspaper the Mt. Shasta Herald, to see if a star gazing party is planned during your stay.

Panther Meadows is one of the most beautiful locations on Mount Shasta, with the purest spring you will ever find, and the most pristine energy in which to meditate, sleep, camp, etc. This area and its campground are reached from Everitt Memorial Highway, and is a short distance from Bunny Flat. The campsite is located in Lower Panther Meadows and is maintained by the Forest Service, so their regulations apply to all camping here. There are ten campsites, no drinking water, and vault toilets. The campground is open in mid-June through Labor Day, depending on weather conditions. anther Meadows, Shasta-Trinity National Forest: A two-minute walk on the south flank of Mount Shasta, 7,400 feet, takes you to this camp along a pristine meadow, with nearby hikes available to Gray Butte for eye-popping, long-distance views. Directions
To reach Panther Meadows, take the Central Mount Shasta exit off California's Interstate 5, head east on Lake Street through town, curve left onto Everitt Memorial Highway, and drive 13 miles up the mountain. There are plenty of campsites and vault toilets, but no drinking water except for the spring itself. The campground is open from mid-June through Labor Day, depending on weather conditions.


Here are extracts from a writeup in San Francisco Chronicle by John Flinn
I am following Beverly Ann Wilson through room after room of her sprawling crystal emporium, and Beverly is following a pair of twitching metal rods.
I'd come in to shop for a souvenir. But in Mount Shasta's Middle Earth Crystal Room, she informs me, customers don't choose their crystals. Crystals choose their customers.
Beverly is using the metal divining rods -- the same tools dowsers employ to find hidden water -- to tune into the vibrations emitting from "my" crystal.

Still trying to get a handle on the town's status as a "world renowned spiritual energy vortex," as a brochure I picked up in the visitor's center put it, I called the Circle of Life Wellness Center for Conscious Living and made an appointment to have my body's energy systems checked out by something called the Aurastar 2000.

In a little office above a Papa Murphy pizza restaurant, a woman named Carol Ito had me place my left hand on a device with 50 metal sensors and count backward from 100. Ito booted up her IBM ThinkPad laptop, and in a few seconds an image appeared on its screen -- Leonardo da Vinci's famous sketch of the male body superimposed on what looked uncannily like the swirling colors of a tie-dyed T-shirt.

Those colors, Ito explained, represented my energy fields. "It's the same as your aura, but we don't like to use that word," she said. "It's too charged. "

Examining the readout, Ito told me that my heart, solar plexus, spleen and root chakras were doing just fine, but that my neck and throat chakra wasn't doing so well -- probably stress -- and that my brain and third eye were working overtime.

"People use this feedback to make decisions in their life," she said.

Frankly, I wasn't much taken with the Aurastar 2000 -- until Ito noticed the band of gray around my midsection in the readout. "You've had an injury to your waist, haven't you?" she said. As a matter of fact, I had. I'd had a kidney removed three years earlier, the only serious trauma to my body in many years. I left her office a bit less skeptical than I arrived. On my last day in town I drove 15 miles up the Everett Memorial Highway to its end on Shasta's southwest flank, at about 7,900 feet. I set off walking up a rocky trail, past the last, stunted trees. Much of Shasta's paranormal activity has been reported in this area -- probably, the skeptic in me thought, because it has easy highway access.

Elephant Seal Walk - Guided Tour

Fifty-five miles south of San Francisco and the Golden Gate, a low, rocky, windswept point juts out into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish maritime explorer Sebastian Vizcaino sailed by the point on January 3, 1603. His diarist and chaplain of the expedition, Father Antonio de la Ascension, named it Punta de Año Nuevo (New Year's Point) for the day on which they sighted it in 1603.

Today, the point remains much as Vizcaino saw it from his passing ship. Lonely, undeveloped, wild. Elephant seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals come ashore to rest, mate, and give birth in the sand dunes or on the beaches and offshore islands. It is a unique and unforgettable natural spectacle that hundreds of thousands of people come to witness each year.

Año Nuevo State Reserve is the site of the largest mainland breeding colony in the world for the northern elephant seal, and the interpretive program has attracted increasing interest every winter for the past 19 years. People who hope to see the seals during the winter breeding season are urged to get their reservations early. The males battle for mates on the beaches and the females give birth to their pups on the dunes.

During the breeding season, December through March, daily access to the reserve is available via guided walks only. Most of the adult seals are gone by early March, leaving behind the weaned pups who remain through April. The elephant seals return to Año Nuevo's beaches during the spring and summer months to molt and can be observed during this time through a permit system.