Transforming "Spiritual Warfare": Day 15 (Nevada)

Great Basin Night Sky. One of the darkest in the world. Photo by NPS Night Sky Team

It is funny, how the pieces of everything come together day after day. I think this must be particularly acute as this process of spiritual attunement & unintentional self-discovery progresses. 

I did not understand what I was getting into when I made my commitment to a 51 day effort, using the spiritual/magickal means within my ability, to work for what I believe to be the greater good -- for freedom & liberty. I am finding this taking a greater toll than I anticipated. I have found myself emotionally & spiritually spent & unable to form a cohesive thought (there are several people who can attest to that). I have found myself unable to sleep, or have a conversation. I have developed doubts, asking, if by making myself a mess with this, am I creating a loss? I have also found myself seriously considering quitting.

But gifts of a divine nature often come in bewildering but timely packages. Just when I wanted to give up, feeling spent & overwhelmed, the dreams began. Three nights now, dreams of fungi, each night different, each dream offering strange & mysterious symbolism, each one vivid & intense. There are other signs & messages appearing throughout the day; unsolicited comments, random memories, fragments appearing during (unrelated) trancework. It makes for a clearer head, lighter heart & an abundance of curiosity.

Photo credit: NPS.

Yesterday followed a set of dreams surrounding the beautiful, strangely delicate & coveted polypore known as Ganoderma applanatum, the Artist's Conk (aka Flacher Lackporling, Artist Bracket) which has an affinity for tree stumps & rotting logs. I awoke thinking about Nevada, which is something of a second home to us (well, third home, in our case) & trying to reconcile what I know of the two since I spend all my time (these days) in the Las Vegas area. How did they work together?

Later, I attended a trancework session, part of an ongoing process offered by one of the members of our community. There I had an experience in which I taken back to a memory of time spent as a child at Lehman Caves in the Great Basin National Park. This sacred place is what Nevada meant to me all throughout childhood:
  

In the shadow of 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak, 5,000 year old bristlecone pine trees grow on rocky glacial moraines. Come to Great Basin National Park to experience the solitude of the desert, the smell of sagebrush after a thunderstorm, the darkest of night skies, and the beauty of Lehman Caves. Far from a wasteland, the Great Basin is a diverse region that awaits your discovery.   -NPS

Photo by Loren Reinhold @ NPS

Ah, yes. How could I forget? Towering peaks topped with ancient trees. Home of the Trees sculpted by Air. Overlooking a land of sublime artistry, are great, gnarled Trees -- trees so venerable that all traces of vanity evaporate in their presence. I knew then that it made perfect sense.

ancients of art,
palette of the winds & water.
dust: of desert sand, 
of cinnamon spores.
aging, aging.
parallels upon parallels. 
beauty bless us.

Ganoderma applanatum