High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row - Damien Echols 2018

As Above, So Below: The Power of Attention
Preliminaries

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

The Power of Attention

As above, so below; as within, so without. Practitioners of magick have been repeating this axiom for hundreds (and maybe thousands) of years. But what does it really mean? Basically, it says that everything we do on one plane of reality has an effect on other planes. It’s a profound saying that describes how magick works. For example, when we learn to change and direct our energy, we can alter our relationship to the physical world in addition to how it appears and reacts to us.

As above, so below is not a teaching you’ll understand all at once. But as you contemplate this phrase and practice the core rituals of magick, you’ll set in motion a series of epiphanies and realizations that will deepen your understanding of magick and reality itself.

Thoughts and emotions alter our physical bodies and surroundings.

Most people think that reality is merely what they can see and touch in front of them: their bodies, clothes, cars, televisions, and other possessions. But practicing magick requires understanding that all of this physical stuff is just one sliver on the spectrum of reality. There’s so much more going on than meets the eye. Take thoughts, for example. You can’t see them, show them to your friends, weigh them on a scale, or measure them with a ruler, yet we all know they exist. If someone told you that you don’t have thoughts, you’d say they were crazy. Thoughts aren’t tangible like things on the material plane are, but they still exist — albeit on a more subtle, ethereal level of reality.

But thoughts do have a profound effect on the material plane. In a measurable way, thoughts and emotions alter our physical bodies and surroundings. Countless studies have been done measuring how stress (or, more importantly, how people think about their stress) relates to physical health. This is just one example of how one layer of reality affects the others. In this particular example, the influential relationship can also move in the opposite direction: physical exercise changes your mood and has a direct impact on your perceptions and thoughts.

The week I walked off of death row was the most stressful in my life. I lived with a constant fear that it wasn’t going to happen. The prosecutor’s office and my attorneys were in heated talks about my deal. The prosecutor was doing everything he could to prevent being sued for sending an innocent man to death row, and my attorneys were doing their damnedest to help me survive the political maneuvering of the state. If the deal hit a snag of any sort, I knew I was going to die in my cell.

For several days, the stress was so crushing that I developed flu-like symptoms and broke out in painful sores on the inside of my mouth. Medical science has engaged in lots of research linking stress and its effects on the immune system. Another way of viewing this phenomenon is to understand that our thinking changes our energy field, and our energy field shapes our experience of our physical body. A large number of techniques practiced in magick are devoted to strengthening our energy field and understanding our energetic anatomy. Among other things, the stronger our aura, the more powerful our magick.

In magick, there’s one level of reality that we pay particular attention to, and it goes by many names around the world. The Chinese call it chi or qi, the Japanese say ki. In the ancient Jewish Kabbalah, it’s called ruach, and the Hindus refer to it as prana. In the fictional Star Wars universe, we know it as The Force. I just call it energy, because the word comes with less baggage and cultural nuance for me. Plus, there’s no particular religious significance to the word. Even scientists (especially physicists) talk about energy.

We are constantly interacting with other forms of energy — the energy of other people, places, and things. We absorb energy that is left behind after certain events have occurred. We are always bombarded by energy even if we don’t realize it, and it has definite effects on us. In some cases, it can pollute our energetic field and clutter it with harmful debris that eventually turns into blockages. We take in energy through all kinds of different methods — from the food we eat, the water we drink, and the people we spend time with. Someone once said that we become a combination of the energies of the four people we spend the most time with. That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with people who teach you and make your life better. Also keep in mind that success and failure are both energies. If you surround yourself with people who are happy and successful, you can absorb and benefit from their positive energy.

Like I mentioned above, each level of reality affects the others. Thoughts stir up emotions, and emotions determine how much energy you direct toward whatever it is you’re thinking about. And the physical plane is where we can see the culmination of the process as energy manifests in various ways. This is where the power of attention comes in.

Have you ever known someone who wallows in negative thinking to live a positive life? Our lives are largely determined by where we place our attention — in other words, our lives depend on how we direct our thoughts and the energy we invest in those thoughts. If you spend your time focusing on negative results, your life is probably not going to be very happy. And if you direct your energy into positive endeavors, chances are your life will be more positive than not. Of course, magick involves a lot more than The Power of Positive Thinking, but it’s important to understand just how powerful our thoughts are. If we worry too much about catching the flu — visualizing how miserable we’d be lying in bed, aching, fevered, and just feeling awful — we’re putting a lot of energy in one particular direction, and we probably shouldn’t be surprised if we end up getting sick. As Bob Proctor, an expert on the law of attraction, says, “Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand.” If you want a simple way to start doing magick, just change the focus of your thoughts and see what happens.

At some point, my wife and I began a particular practice to get me off death row. We each repeated a version of the following affirmation at least once every day. Here’s mine:

May I be home, free from prison, living happily with my Lorri.

May it come about in a way that brings harm to none and is for the good of all,

and in no way let this reverse or bring upon me or my loved ones any curse.

We concentrated on this outcome every single day, without fail. And within one year of starting this practice, I walked off of death row.

One thing I learned was to pay careful attention to what you ask for. Know exactly what you want and phrase it accordingly, because most of the time magick is going to give you exactly what you ask for. And what you ask for might not be the same thing as what you had in mind.

Afterward, Lorri and I realized that we didn’t say, “Let me be found innocent” or “May Damien have a new trial” or “Let the authorities catch the person who actually committed the murders.” All we said is some version of what I wrote above, and that’s exactly what happened.

It’s also important to point out here that the deeper parts of our psyche don’t understand words. That’s not how they communicate. Fundamentally, those aspects of our consciousness use images, and if you keep reinforcing a particular image — say, lying sick in bed — that’s what it sees, not the story behind the image. That part of you isn’t so good at detecting preferences; it just sees the picture. In one way of speaking, it starts running a program based on the mental image, which makes it more likely that the image will manifest in the material plane. And before you know it, you’re lying sick in bed, exactly the way you didn’t want to be.

I have a piece of artwork above my bed to constantly remind me of how powerful attention is. It’s a print of the painting Daniel in the Lion’s Den, from the biblical story in which Daniel was thrown into a dungeon full of lions. The lions stand around him, eyeing him hungrily, but Daniel doesn’t even look at them. Instead, he stares up into a shaft of light coming down from somewhere above with an expression of profound peace; it’s as if he doesn’t even know that he’s surrounded by lions. The image means a lot to me. It reminds me not to allow negative circumstances to pull me down and to never wallow in misfortune, even though the world might say it’s okay to do so. I want to emulate Daniel and stay focused on the light, no matter my situation — even when I’m surrounded by lions. All that matters is that light — the very light we shape and direct when we practice magick.

PRACTICE ” DIRECTING YOUR ATTENTION

This is the first of several exercises in the book. Each one either builds off the exercises that came before it or sets the stage for more advanced work, so try to spend adequate time on each.

This one is fairly simple. It’s about recognizing negatively framed thoughts and revising them in such a way that your consciousness aligns with positively framed versions of the same thoughts. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Some of these examples might not apply to you at all, but maybe they’ll give you an idea of what I’m talking about. This exercise actually has two parts to it:

1.ReframingNotice the negative thought, and create a positive spin on the same issue.

2.VisualizingOnce you come up with a positive version of the thought, see what pictures you can add in your mind. For example, if you tell yourself, “I’m glad I’m healthy,” visualize yourself smiling, full of health, and feeling good in your body. And if you say something like, “I can face these obstacles and succeed, just as I have before,” remember a couple of things you’ve done before that came out well, despite how challenging they were. See yourself moving through the problem, recall how you made it through, and see yourself smiling when you got to the other side of the challenge. (It doesn’t matter if you actually smiled when it happened — it’s just a visual marker to remind yourself of your strength and resourcefulness).

Try this reframing and visualization for a week or so. You don’t have to scrutinize every little thought that comes into your head, and this exercise isn’t about banishing all types of negative thinking, which probably isn’t likely for most of us anyway. Here and there, a couple of times a day, just notice a negatively framed thought and think about what the flipped version of that might be. Add some mental pictures that go along with the statement, and notice if this exercise or this way of reprogramming your mind to focus on attaining positive results has any noticeable effects on your daily life.