By Tom Butler-Bowdon
In The City Wire
Most people have heard of the ‘Law of Attraction’ through the film and book The Secret, but by the time of its release in 2006 Esther and Jerry Hicks had already spent 20 years travelling America teaching the concept. It is easy to see the influence of their writings on The Secret and other books of this ilk.
Why, then, are they not the bestselling writers in the field? Part of the reason must lie in their claim to be simply ‘channelling’ information from the spiritual realm. This puts off many potential readers. Unsurprisingly, at the beginning of Ask and It Is Given they try to explain how they arrived at their unusual vocations.
The story begins in 1985, when Esther and Jerry visited a healer in Arizona. The healer was supposedly receiving spiritual communications from a spirit guide named Theo. Theo told Esther she too had a spiritual guide that wanted to make itself known. The couple were told to meditate. After some months Esther began ‘receiving’ information from this guide, who identified itself as Abraham.
Then in her 30s, Esther had never meditated and was happy with her life. But this ‘absence of opinions or angst’ apparently made her a good receiver of otherworldly information. The guides had made contact in order to remind people of ‘the laws of the universe that govern all things’, including the transmission of desires into reality through the law of attraction.
The question must be asked, are the Hicks perpetrating a great hoax, or is Esther really the voice of eternal truths from the spirit world? In his foreword to Ask and It Is Given, spiritual self-development author Wayne Dyer describes the book as containing powerful universal truths. You can decide for yourself, but it is certainly the Hicks’ most comprehensive work, containing all the basic ‘Abraham’ teachings and 22 ‘processes’ or exercises to put them into practice.
Understand the law
Simply stated, the universal law of attraction is that whatever you put your attention to through thought or desire becomes reality. Whenever you are focused on what you don’t have, that situation of not-having will also be your reality. You attract to yourself things or people that are the equivalent of your state of being, or ‘vibration’.
Abraham notes that deciding to elevate your mood or feeling in each moment is vital for increasing your vibration, which in turn attracts things, people and feelings of a like vibration. Pretending you are feeling good when you are not will not change your vibration. The idea is to choose an emotion higher than the one you are experiencing now. The more positive you think and feel in each moment, the more open is your connection to the ‘source’, or provider of all things and all love. The worse you feel, the more closed this connection will be.
Trust your emotions
If you are feeling depressed, getting angry is actually a ‘higher’ feeling, since it will take you out of your depressed state. Once you have chosen anger as a relief from depression, you are then empowered to choose another thought or emotion higher up the scale. Once you know how to raise your emotional state deliberately, you are no longer powerless before your emotions.
Because your emotions indicate your vibrational frequency, they are an infallible indicator as to whether you are aligned with the source. If you are aligned with your source, you are on track to receive whatever you want.
Behind every desire is the desire to feel joy. The objects of desire, Abraham says, are less important than the fact that you are allowing life energy to flow. When you appreciate things and people and you love yourself, you are operating at a higher vibration. This changes when you begin to criticise or find fault. The better you feel about yourself, the more you have to give others. This is not selfishness. It is only people unconnected with their true selves who are jealous or insecure.
You are born to desire and fulfil
The most common question people ask of Hicks/Abraham is: ‘Why is it taking me so long to get what I want?’ The answer is that it is not because you don’t want something enough, because you are not worthy or because ‘fate is against you’. Rather, you are not in a vibrational state matching that of your desire. What has prevented you from getting what you want is you. Whenever you ask for something it is always given, but you must mentally allow it to come.
People feel guilty about having desires, but Abraham states that desires are the very essence of being human because they make you feel who you really are. If you are deliberate about your thoughts and desires you can be more specific about the world you want to create for yourself. Life is a process of asking and receiving, and you are the creator of your own reality, whether consciously or not. You must be eager and optimistic about what is coming, while having no impatience or doubt about its coming. If you are feeling good about something you want and allowing it to come, it will.
Often, what a person thinks is a desire is not – it is a ‘resisted desire’. The key to manifesting your desires is to assume it is already being experienced, that you already have it and are enjoying it. In this way, you set up a level of vibration that can only attract its material equivalent.
Abraham observes that when people discover the law of attraction, at first they become uncomfortable with their own thoughts and what they may be attracting. But the spirits note that thoughts are not a loaded gun waiting to wreak havoc; there is always plenty of time to understand how the laws work and to begin to change your thinking, one small step at a time. There is always a buffer between having a thought and its expression in reality. Don’t be afraid of uncontrolled thoughts; instead, realise that every attempt to change your thinking toward more positive, less resistant forms brings real benefits.
Final comments
Ask and It Is Given is really a work of philosophy as it attempts to explain the link between thought and reality, and the extent to which we create or control our worlds. It says there is no such thing as ‘fate’ directing your life according to some predetermined pattern. You are a co-creator with the source (God or universal law) and can shape your life as you wish.
is really a work of philosophy as it attempts to explain the link between thought and reality, and the extent to which we create or control our worlds. It says there is no such thing as ‘fate’ directing your life according to some predetermined pattern. You are a co-creator with the source (God or universal law) and can shape your life as you wish.
Some readers will find the idea of channelled messages beyond the pale, but if you can get beyond this, it could be argued that the law of attraction is really common sense. Everyone knows, for instance, that if you think about something for a long time the likelihood of it having a real effect in your life is many times greater than if you think about it briefly. It is also common sense that desires morph into beliefs, and beliefs make us who we are. When you choose your desires and beliefs, it is logical that you can begin to master your reality.
The material on the emotions is fascinating, and in a practical sense is worth the weight of stacks of psychology books. There are intriguing chapter titles such as ‘Trying to hinder another’s freedom always costs you your freedom’ and ‘You are only 17 seconds away from 68 seconds to fulfilment’.
Read The Secret after Ask and It Is Given and it becomes clear how much Rhonda Byrne drew from the Abraham teachings. Esther Hicks was a central figure in the original film of The Secret, providing a massive boost to awareness of the Abraham teachings. However, she later asked to be edited out because she felt Byrne’s organisation was operating at a ‘different vibration’. She and Jerry subsequently released their own film, The Secret Behind the Secret, which was strongly promoted by Oprah Winfrey.
Think on: Esther and Jerry Hicks believe people can learn to guide their thought patterns in a more positive view.
Esther and Jerry Hicks
Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks met in Fresno, California in 1976 and married in 1981. Jerry had made money through Amway, a marketing and distrubution network, and attributes his success to reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Each has two children from previous marriages. Their other books include The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent: Living the Art of Allowing and The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham. The Abraham-Hicks organisation is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.
In A Similar Vein
Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
Charles Fillmore - Prosperity
John Randolph Price - The Abundance Book
In The City Wire
Most people have heard of the ‘Law of Attraction’ through the film and book The Secret, but by the time of its release in 2006 Esther and Jerry Hicks had already spent 20 years travelling America teaching the concept. It is easy to see the influence of their writings on The Secret and other books of this ilk.Why, then, are they not the bestselling writers in the field? Part of the reason must lie in their claim to be simply ‘channelling’ information from the spiritual realm. This puts off many potential readers. Unsurprisingly, at the beginning of Ask and It Is Given they try to explain how they arrived at their unusual vocations.
The story begins in 1985, when Esther and Jerry visited a healer in Arizona. The healer was supposedly receiving spiritual communications from a spirit guide named Theo. Theo told Esther she too had a spiritual guide that wanted to make itself known. The couple were told to meditate. After some months Esther began ‘receiving’ information from this guide, who identified itself as Abraham.
Then in her 30s, Esther had never meditated and was happy with her life. But this ‘absence of opinions or angst’ apparently made her a good receiver of otherworldly information. The guides had made contact in order to remind people of ‘the laws of the universe that govern all things’, including the transmission of desires into reality through the law of attraction.
The question must be asked, are the Hicks perpetrating a great hoax, or is Esther really the voice of eternal truths from the spirit world? In his foreword to Ask and It Is Given, spiritual self-development author Wayne Dyer describes the book as containing powerful universal truths. You can decide for yourself, but it is certainly the Hicks’ most comprehensive work, containing all the basic ‘Abraham’ teachings and 22 ‘processes’ or exercises to put them into practice.
Understand the law
Simply stated, the universal law of attraction is that whatever you put your attention to through thought or desire becomes reality. Whenever you are focused on what you don’t have, that situation of not-having will also be your reality. You attract to yourself things or people that are the equivalent of your state of being, or ‘vibration’.
Abraham notes that deciding to elevate your mood or feeling in each moment is vital for increasing your vibration, which in turn attracts things, people and feelings of a like vibration. Pretending you are feeling good when you are not will not change your vibration. The idea is to choose an emotion higher than the one you are experiencing now. The more positive you think and feel in each moment, the more open is your connection to the ‘source’, or provider of all things and all love. The worse you feel, the more closed this connection will be.
Trust your emotions
If you are feeling depressed, getting angry is actually a ‘higher’ feeling, since it will take you out of your depressed state. Once you have chosen anger as a relief from depression, you are then empowered to choose another thought or emotion higher up the scale. Once you know how to raise your emotional state deliberately, you are no longer powerless before your emotions.
Because your emotions indicate your vibrational frequency, they are an infallible indicator as to whether you are aligned with the source. If you are aligned with your source, you are on track to receive whatever you want.
Behind every desire is the desire to feel joy. The objects of desire, Abraham says, are less important than the fact that you are allowing life energy to flow. When you appreciate things and people and you love yourself, you are operating at a higher vibration. This changes when you begin to criticise or find fault. The better you feel about yourself, the more you have to give others. This is not selfishness. It is only people unconnected with their true selves who are jealous or insecure.
You are born to desire and fulfil
The most common question people ask of Hicks/Abraham is: ‘Why is it taking me so long to get what I want?’ The answer is that it is not because you don’t want something enough, because you are not worthy or because ‘fate is against you’. Rather, you are not in a vibrational state matching that of your desire. What has prevented you from getting what you want is you. Whenever you ask for something it is always given, but you must mentally allow it to come.
People feel guilty about having desires, but Abraham states that desires are the very essence of being human because they make you feel who you really are. If you are deliberate about your thoughts and desires you can be more specific about the world you want to create for yourself. Life is a process of asking and receiving, and you are the creator of your own reality, whether consciously or not. You must be eager and optimistic about what is coming, while having no impatience or doubt about its coming. If you are feeling good about something you want and allowing it to come, it will.
Often, what a person thinks is a desire is not – it is a ‘resisted desire’. The key to manifesting your desires is to assume it is already being experienced, that you already have it and are enjoying it. In this way, you set up a level of vibration that can only attract its material equivalent.
Abraham observes that when people discover the law of attraction, at first they become uncomfortable with their own thoughts and what they may be attracting. But the spirits note that thoughts are not a loaded gun waiting to wreak havoc; there is always plenty of time to understand how the laws work and to begin to change your thinking, one small step at a time. There is always a buffer between having a thought and its expression in reality. Don’t be afraid of uncontrolled thoughts; instead, realise that every attempt to change your thinking toward more positive, less resistant forms brings real benefits.
Final comments
Ask and It Is Given is really a work of philosophy as it attempts to explain the link between thought and reality, and the extent to which we create or control our worlds. It says there is no such thing as ‘fate’ directing your life according to some predetermined pattern. You are a co-creator with the source (God or universal law) and can shape your life as you wish.
is really a work of philosophy as it attempts to explain the link between thought and reality, and the extent to which we create or control our worlds. It says there is no such thing as ‘fate’ directing your life according to some predetermined pattern. You are a co-creator with the source (God or universal law) and can shape your life as you wish.
Some readers will find the idea of channelled messages beyond the pale, but if you can get beyond this, it could be argued that the law of attraction is really common sense. Everyone knows, for instance, that if you think about something for a long time the likelihood of it having a real effect in your life is many times greater than if you think about it briefly. It is also common sense that desires morph into beliefs, and beliefs make us who we are. When you choose your desires and beliefs, it is logical that you can begin to master your reality.
The material on the emotions is fascinating, and in a practical sense is worth the weight of stacks of psychology books. There are intriguing chapter titles such as ‘Trying to hinder another’s freedom always costs you your freedom’ and ‘You are only 17 seconds away from 68 seconds to fulfilment’.
Read The Secret after Ask and It Is Given and it becomes clear how much Rhonda Byrne drew from the Abraham teachings. Esther Hicks was a central figure in the original film of The Secret, providing a massive boost to awareness of the Abraham teachings. However, she later asked to be edited out because she felt Byrne’s organisation was operating at a ‘different vibration’. She and Jerry subsequently released their own film, The Secret Behind the Secret, which was strongly promoted by Oprah Winfrey.
Think on: Esther and Jerry Hicks believe people can learn to guide their thought patterns in a more positive view.
Esther and Jerry Hicks
Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks met in Fresno, California in 1976 and married in 1981. Jerry had made money through Amway, a marketing and distrubution network, and attributes his success to reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Each has two children from previous marriages. Their other books include The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent: Living the Art of Allowing and The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham. The Abraham-Hicks organisation is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.In A Similar Vein
Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
Charles Fillmore - Prosperity
John Randolph Price - The Abundance Book
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