IDK about y’all, but the hibernation feels are REAL. Which means soup, snuggling & getting back into the swing of settling down with a good book.
This week’s being High Magick by the one & only Damien Echols.
I actually started this one a few months back after we returned home from a dreamy desert weekend learning about meditation from the incredible dude himself. But as you know, we all get distracted – so the only thing that matters is eventually getting back on track. So here we are!
Now, a lot of this book primarily covers the core art & exercises surrounding what’s known as (spoiler alert) “high magick”. These are the very practices that Damien credits with manifesting his freedom from wrongfully spending almost 20 years on death row — so think less velvet capes & pulling rabbits out of hats, & more channelling/harnessing energy to cast back into the world charged with your own intent.
Naturally there’s a lot of breath work, visualization & protection practices that go along with it too, but at its core all we’re really talking about is doing things to “shape reality & create better environments for ourselves”. Which also got me thinking about the true power of mindset.
Especially when it comes to our everyday lives. You know, as pats of butter on this giant piece of toast we call Earth.
I think we can agree that none of us are perfect. So of COURSE we all know those moments of debilitating stress, anxiety & nights where you need to just come home for a good cry (& bottle of rosé).
Venting is good. We’re all about it. But the difference to keep in mind between blowing off steam with a good vent & heading down a potentially more detrimental path is your mindset.
Hear me out!
We are humans – not vials of arsenic or cyanide that are best kept bottled up. So because of that, it’s important to know how to process & get things off our chests. You doing you to let it all out? Great! But just make sure to alongside that, not lose sight of the bigger mental picture at hand.
As in, getting the negativity OUT in order to make room for the ~overall~ positive mindset you aim to uphold the rest of the time.
Because if you don’t, that low energy WILL consume you.
Seriously – the mind is a crazy powerful thing. And while we are human & can’t practice stoicism around the clock like a regular Marcus Aurelius, striving to maintain a positive-forward mentality truly makes a real-deal difference. Think about it, would you want to sit around & stew in a hot tub full of gunk? NO. Gross. Of course not.
So that’s the same thing as choosing to stay in a low-vibe mental state! It doesn’t do any good – & for some, can be the very thing that breaks them.
Everyone has bad days. Especially when it involves making a trip to Trader Joe’s only to find they’re only out of the four exact ingredients you need for what feels like the tenth time in a row (!!!). But if in the big scheme of things you’re keeping your energy in check, recognizing the power of attention & making efforts to lead an overall positive-inspired existence, then you’ll know that everything – in the long run – is going to be just fine.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go charge all of our water.
((& seriously, if you need a good book to cozy up with over the holidays, High Magick is IT!!))
xxAA
(((source of feature image background: @damienechols)))
MSFT Living 