Recreating Reality aka Visualization

I was inspired by a video titled ‘An innocent on death row’. The stuff that interested me most was the concept of visualization and practical applications mentioned in the video.

Damien Echols was sentenced to prison for 18 years for a crime he did not do. He was locked in a dark room with no possibility of seeing light. While most people in such a situation will end up complaining and bitching the rest of their life in prison and finally become mad and die, he accepted his horrific situation and found his dharma or passion in prison.

In prison, he would be severely beaten up by the prison guards. He was forced to find a way to deal with the physical pain he had to bear in the prison. He started practicing a skill, a kind of visualization, an art of shaping reality with intention and will, he called it ‘MAGICK’. He even continued practicing the ‘MAGICK’ in his mind for even 8 hours a day, that he even did not care that he was in prison. He would be so focused on his visualization to such an extent that beatings from prison guards did not affect his practice.

One of the practices he did was to visualize the whole darkroom in mind and visualized a small window at the top of the wall; he imagined himself doing a pull-up by physically feeling the strain of doing it and lifting him up to the window upon which the white light rushed in. This practice helped him to deal with depression and other difficult feelings. He was not just imagining but physically feeling into it. He encourages people to try it out for themselves.

He says this is based on a simple law that wherever our attention goes, energy flows there. If we are focused on things that inspire and uplifts us, then our reality will be a happier one, but if we are focused on hate news or other stuff that does not inspire us then we will have a miserable reality.

Prison experience forced him to find his passion and commit to it 100%. We will stop with Damien Echol’s life story here and look more into visualization.

Another person who had experienced the magic of visualization is the martial artist and consciousness teacher Peter Ralston. In 1978, he became the first non-Asian to win a world martial arts tournament held in the Republic of China. He is the author of 6 books and currently teaches Cheng Hsin martial arts and facilitates contemplation worldwide.

In his teenage, he started training in the martial art judo. He began his training just like everyone else by imitating the movements of the master. He was not satisfied with his progress in judo. He wanted to know how some people become great masters in their art while others just remain mediocre. He did not get enough time to train with a partner in the judo class. He was frustrated. So what he did was, during his spare time while he was alone, he tried to just imagine successful movements in mind, and yet he could not do well in actual training in martial arts class. So instead of just imagining some movements, he mentally recreated the whole scene in his mind, he visualized it as if training with a partner, he actually tried to physically feel while visualizing, he could feel into the weight of partner, his feet, even his sweat.

When he went to actual judo training in class with a partner after his visualization practice, he found that his skills improved tremendously. He was able to visualize the movements of his partner in advance and adjust his movements accordingly and effortlessly.

And during one day, while he was visualizing the ‘throw’ in judo, he discovered the essence of judo. He grasped what the founder of judo had in mind while he created it. It is like actually grasping the concept of gravity just like Newton grasped it, not just learning or imitating Newton, but actually grasping it as Newton discovered. Similarly, during this visualization practice, Peter Ralston discovered the essence of judo.

Actual Experimentation Conducted on Visualization:

Let us look into the real experimentation conducted in the past. The experiment was to check for improvement in the physical strength of participants and the participants were divided into 3 groups.

The first group relied on actual physical training for some days. Whereas the second group did nothing. And the third group was asked to actually visualize doing physical strength exercises.

Now, the results of experimentation.

The participants in the first group showed the highest improvement in physical strength, but the surprise factor was that the participants in group 3 showed an improvement of 35% in physical strength just by visualization.

It should be noted that visualization is not just imagining something, but really recreating the situation in your mind.

There was another experiment conducted. This was for testing the efficiency of throwing basketball on the nets/hoop. The participants were divided into 3 groups. Participants in the first group practiced at the basketball-court for one hour every day for a week. The second group practiced a one-hour session at the basketball court for just one day and they engaged in one-hour visualization for the rest of 6 days. While the third group just did only one-hour visualization every 7 days.

The third group, who did nothing but only visualization did not show much improvement in skill. The first group who actually practiced in the basketball-court every day did just fine. But it was the second group that showed maximum improvement in skill, they visualized for 6 days, and combined it with actual practice in court for 1 day.

Please note that you are not just imagining something, but also physically feeling into it and going through it as if real while visualizing. I believe that we can also use visualization for our own unique challenges, just like how Damien Echol’s practiced visualizing doing pull-ups in the prison and Peter Ralston mentally recreating judo practice and leading to completely grasp the essence of judo.

I think such visualization can also be applied in re-creating past painful experiences and but this time choosing to consciously go through such unfinished experiences fully by letting the resistance and fear dissolve — creating the opportunity to heal the past and thus be inspired to take up new challenges in the present real life too.

I hope this inspires you.

Thanks for reading.