Salvation Mountain is a Spiritual Treasure & Socially-Distanced Day Trip from LA

Three hours from L.A., way out beyond Palm Springs and the Salton Sea, is Salvation Mountain, one man’s spiritual gift to the world. Proclaimed by Senator Barbara Boxer as a national treasure, this “mountain” is covered in multi-colored paint and proclaims the message that God is Love.

For 25 years Leonard Knight (1931–2014) poured his heart, soul, and over 100,000 gallons of paint onto the hill he built of adobe and straw. Salvation Mountain is covered with Biblical verses and Christian sayings and contains special rooms and alcoves filled with decorative art. If you wish to climb to the top, signs will point out the Yellow Brick Road to lead you up. The other visitors when I was there were assorted hipsters and Goth kids, apparently folk art aficionados.

During a spiritual awakening at age 36, Leonard realized that the answer to life was not complicated: just accept Jesus Christ, repent, and love everybody. He spent several years attempting to spread the word to organized religion which rejected his message as too simplistic. Leonard moved to Niland, California, in 1984 and began working full-time on his masterpiece, living in his truck even when temperatures hit the 100s.

Salvation Mountain was featured in the 2007 film Into the Wild. A photo of Coldplay atop the Mountain appeared on their A Head Full Of Dreams album.

Visiting Salvation Mountain

I’m not sure if the six-hour round trip would be worth your time. The videos on YouTube are so excellent that watching some of them might be enough. If I weren’t writing this book (Guide to Spiritual LA), they probably would have sufficed for me, the actual site being almost anticlimactic after the great filmmaking of the videos.

However, the drive out included unexpected delights. Highway 78 winds alongside the Salton Sea, an eerie, dead, inland body of water which looks as I imagine Loch Ness does and stinks to high heaven from the rotting fish. There are picturesque abandoned restaurants and compounds covered in graffiti from the days it was a real resort, with many intriguing photo ops.

The town of Niland is a rare treasure for an urbanite. You’ll witness a slice of life you’d never see in LA: people renting a space in an RV park for $400 a month, living amongst the deserted, defaced buildings, enduring the Salton Sea stench, bragging with their Trump stickers; the whole town looking like it’s been bombed out. It certainly opened my eyes to people whose lives I hadn’t known about.

And on the other hand, if you don’t go, you’ll miss experiencing Leonard Knight’s passion in person. There is something mesmerizing and humbling about a man with such single focus using his life to spread the message of Love. To be there personally at Salvation Mountain is to stand in awe of his frenzy of love.

Guide to Spiritual LA

This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True, available on Amazon or at your local bookstore.

Catherine Auman LMFT

Catherine Auman, LMFT is a licensed therapist with advanced training in both traditional and spiritual psychology with thirty years of successful professional experience helping thousands of clients. She has headed nationally-based psychiatric hospital programs as well as worked through alternative methodologies based on ancient traditions and wisdom teachings.

www.catherineauman.com

The post Salvation Mountain: A SoCal Spiritual Monument appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

A Few Hidden Spiritual Hotspots in Los Angeles

The Hollywood Vedanta Temple

L.A.’s spiritual hotspots are calling, and there’s no time like the present to take a tour – much less traffic and so few tourists. Hop in your car and visit these sacred sites to soak up shakti energy:

The Hollywood Vedanta Temple’s radiance is intense. A glamorous group of writers and mystics who gathered around Aldous and Laura Huxley hung out there, and guru Adi Da Samraj achieved enlightenment inside. As monk Jnana Chaitanya stated, “Some very holy people lived and taught here and contributed a great deal to the vibration.”

Vedanta is an ancient Hindu religion whose main teaching is the oneness of all, respect for all, including all religions, and that God dwells within all hearts. The main teachers were Swami Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi (“Holy Mother”) who were a married couple, and later, Swami Vivekenanda.
Built in 1938, the Hollywood Vedanta Temple is located in the midst of a quiet residential community right by the Hollywood freeway. Even though you can’t enter the temple right now, the powerful energy permeates the grounds.

Hollywood Vedanta Temple
1946 Vedanta Place, Hollywood, CA 90068

Bonne Brae House

The Pentecostal movement — the Christian sect including baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, charismatic preachers, healings — that must have started in the Deep South, right? Actually, it started right here in L.A. at the Bonnie Brae House.

William J. Seymour, a black, one-eyed preacher who was the son of slaves, had come out from the Midwest. In 1906 at this little house, a group of African-Americans had gathered to fast and pray. Suddenly they began speaking in tongues, and it was an ecstatic moment of outpouring of Divine energy. The intensity blossomed and swelled, filling up the house, pouring down the street, and entering the hearts and spirits of willing Angelenos.

It spread out so far that within three days the House and surrounding streets were jam-packed with crowds of all income levels and ethnicities — blacks, whites, and Latinos — speaking in tongues, singing, and shouting. The worshipping went on continually night and day until finally, the front porch of the house started shaking and collapsed from the rapturous celebration.

Seymour’s preaching must have been phenomenal, because the word is still spreading. You can imagine how high the energy must have been – utterly joyful, ecstatic, blissed out. A bit of that vortex power remains – can you feel it?

216 N Bonnie Brae St, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Krotona Apartments

Today it’s a bit tacky, run-down, run-of-the-mill apartment building in the Hollywood Hills, Beachwood Canyon to be exact. But in its heyday, the Krotona Apartments were a hotbed of occult activity hosting a temple, a metaphysical library, a vegetarian cafeteria, a theater, a “magnetically charged” meditation room, and a fascinating cast of characters such as Charlie Chaplin and Annie Besant. It was the headquarters of the Esoteric School, the Temple of the Rosy Cross, and the Order of the Eastern Star.

Begun by the Theosophical Society in 1912, the Krotona community consisted of eleven acres in Beachwood Canyon hosting homes for about 500 people. The 17-unit Krotona Apartments were its center. The complex was to be an institute of higher learning and research on the subtler aspects of science including psychology and psychic phenomena. After all, the Theosophical Society’s mission was to “explore the inexplicable.”

In 1926 the community relocated to Ojai citing the growing influence of urban Hollywood. The Krotona Apartments have continued to be populated by artists, hipsters, and spiritual explorers ever since. In the 60s and 70s there were reported LSD parties around the courtyard’s lotus pond, and guitar sessions with the likes of members of Jimi Hendrix’s band. It is rumored that Quentin Tarantino crashed on the couch of a screenwriter resident for seven months. Plus, the hundreds of intriguing characters whose names we will never know.

If you visit, you can still see the lotus pond resting quietly in the center court, keeping any previous occult or bohemian activity a secret. Upstairs you’ll find a building with a Moorish-style dome and a circular stained-glass window. That symbol is a Rosicrucian seal, and the door is to the former Grand Temple of the Holy Cross. Very little other information offers itself, and the mind wanders to fantasies of what may have gone on inside these walls. Or what’s going on inside them today, for that matter.

2130 Vista Del Mar Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90068

Find More Spiritual Hotspots

Don’t wait to visit these holy places and more – the lack of other spiritual tourists won’t last long!

Find out more in Catherine Auman’s book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True, available on Amazon and at your favorite retailer.

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Catherine Auman LMFT

Catherine Auman, LMFT is a licensed therapist with advanced training in both traditional and spiritual psychology with thirty years of successful professional experience helping thousands of clients. She has headed nationally-based psychiatric hospital programs as well as worked through alternative methodologies based on ancient traditions and wisdom teachings.

www.catherineauman.com

The post Tour L.A.’s Spiritual Hotspots While Safely Social Distancing appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.