The dark side of Abraham Hicks
Esther Hicks turned mean months before her husband and partner Jerry Hicks shocked the Abraham-Hicks universe. He was undergoing chemotherapy, he said. But first, Esther showed a different version of Abraham, mean, disparaging and angry. Was there a connection?
Analysis by David Stone
Special to The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Following is an excerpt from An Abraham Hicks Digest: Skeptic’s Notebook
Intro: An Angry Esther Hicks Smacks Down Paying Customers
Would an all-knowing, all-loving Source, acting through Esther Hicks, abuse audience members? Kicking them out of Abraham-Hicks workshops without letting them finish a sentence?
Or course not, and yet, that’s what happened.
Each paid at least $195 to watch Esther do her thing, allegedly channeling Abraham.
Claiming to be in a trance, as Abraham, she shouted, “Get out!”
Since, her grip on followers has loosened, her audience shrinking.
Decline accelerated with poor public handling of Jerry Hicks’ illness and death from leukemia.
Promotional blurbs turned lifeless as if failure had already set in. A contemporary email blast, in full:
Dear Friends,
We’ll be in San Francisco (Millbrae), CA this coming Saturday for the continuation of our expanding conversation with friends and Abraham.
With love and thanks,
Esther
(and Abraham and Jerry)
(Note: Esther Hicks now claims to channel, not just Abraham, but also her dead husband. He chimes in with quips.)
The remainder of the message was boilerplate contact information for attending the workshop online or in person. Following email blasts became even more lifeless.
Rehabilitated by Hay House and Wayne Dyer
But, with the help of Hay House, worried about a drop in book sales, Esther has shaped up communications recently. And her publisher has even arranged to get her a Wayne Dyer blessing at an event.
Jerry Hicks, the master marketer who took Abraham-Hicks to some fame, never allowed Esther to share the stage with anyone. But with the business in trouble, things are different.
Dyer, an otherwise admirable guy, shows up as a shill for any crackpot Hay House throws his way, including Gary Renard.
Renard claimed that Jesus’s disciples appeared at his house when he took naps.
What first made Esther’s aggressively bad behavior even weirder was that she’d always claimed, acting out as Abraham, that she knew every question audience members would ask before singling them out, meaning she picked these unlucky victims, knowing she’d attack and humiliate them in public.
Now, followers on the Abe Forum were debating her new “tough love” approach…
Jerry and Esther nurtured a warm, sometimes witty image for twenty-five years. Now, followers on the Abe Forum were debating her new “tough love” approach.
Antagonistic behavior, uncharacteristic of this normally gentle channel proved that the entity called “Abraham Hicks” had more to do with the performers who presented them than with the supposed “nonphysical teachers” Esther claims were controlling her.
What caused the Esther Hicks’ act to implode?
Maybe it was worry about having to explain statements about illness like this one, made publicly before Jerry began wasting away with leukemia:
“But it does take the determination that you’re going to put your thoughts upon something that does feel good. And so, here we’re going to make a very bold statement: any disease could be healed in a matter of days, any disease, if distraction from it could occur and a different vibration dominate — and the healing time is about how much mix-up there is in all of that.”
Esther made this fantastic claim in 2002. Before her elderly soul mate Jerry’s cancer diagnosis. Instead of following the crazy “Teachings of Abraham” that made them rich, sought conventional medical therapies.
Jerry Hicks died, but even before that, Esther tried winging the workshops solo. The results were less polished, sometimes mean and routinely not as bright as they were under Jerry’s control.
Esther Hicks and her handlers seem worried about keeping the scam alive in this new context, especially with Jerry, the real wizard behind Abraham Hicks, no longer around.
So far, she has done her best to make followers think she can, in part, resurrect him. But workshop crowds are dwindling and her promotional emails deflated and dull.
What Does An Objective Review Tell Us About Abraham-Hicks?
The Esther Hicks’ Scam Crumbling: The Context
Whatever the beliefs of Jerry and Esther Hicks’s followers, it’s not likely many can be convinced that eternal, “nonphysical” entities with direct connections to God, or “Source” in Abraham Hicks lingo, or eternal wisdom as they claim, would publicly humiliate workshop attendees coming forward for help.
For as long as Esther Hicks trotted out, barefoot, doing Abraham, her claims depended crucially on her gentle personality and playful sense of humor.
When she abruptly turned miserable, mistreating members of her paying audience, critics and skeptics increased and grew louder.
Many demanded to know how the laws of attraction brought her and the victims of her bad temper together.
At workshops costing $195 a head and up, Esther kicked audience members out. They uttered as little as a few words or a couple of sentences that irritated Esther.
They were individuals in trouble seeking spiritual guidance…
Never mind that she personally called each of them to the stage before humiliating them and has always claimed to understand what they’d ask before they spoke.
True believers online are referring to this as “tough love” and enjoying it like catty sorority sisters. But the people stepping forward for guidance were not drug addicts or gang members.
They were individuals in trouble seeking spiritual guidance.
It’s easy to see how bullying has led skeptics to claim that what Esther Hicks does is an act. A God-connected source wouldn’t do that.
The performance took unexpected turns. Did erratic behavior reveal that her husband and head of Abraham Hicks Publications, was a victim of cancer?
So embarrassing was his illness, they mislead followers into thinking he was receiving “heavy chemotherapy” for (I’m not kidding) “a spider bite.”
His illness and immediate resort to conventional medicine is impossible to square with early claims that Abraham could cure anyone of any disease in an afternoon and other fantastic statements that probably now had Esther Hicks feeling like the one on the hot seat.
Compassion Vacuum: Esther Hicks’s New Meanness
As Abraham-Hicks 2.0 was born and went through growing pains, Esther’s intermittent bursts of intolerance toward paying audience members took a different and more chilling turn.
Always a narcissist, her inclination toward bending every monetary gravity field in her direction became more exploitive. Cruelly in her husband’s case, and not being the sharpest tool in the shed, she tried seizing control by overreaching.
Her initial bouts of public meanness began when concerns about Jerry’s health became serious. Although the pair claimed that a spider bite led to Jerry’s cancer, admitting the loss of at least fifteen pounds from his smallish, trim frame made it clear that he’d been ill longer.
Most cold and calculating was Esther and Jerry’s strange denial of leukemia. But he bragged about “massive chemotherapy” with none of the side effects normally associated with treatment.
Abraham-Hicks apologists argue that the information was private, but it was Esther and Jerry, or subordinates posing as them, that wrote email blasts about his illness. It was just their weird refusal to acknowledge that he was battling cancer that puzzled the rest of us.
After traditional medicine failed…
Then, their evasions, their unwillingness to come clean began to seem like something else.
While they were eager, even exuberant, about using Jerry Hicks’ illness for marketing, they turned back the obvious questions. Why weren’t the “teachings of Abraham,” which made them rich, helping him and, possibly, not even tried?
After traditional medicine failed and Esther escorted Jerry from one alternative therapy to another, the hypocrisy of their approach was not something to wrestle with.
The marketing of his illness, cold and unethical as it may have seemed, was even more astonishing in light of their unwillingness to explain the contradictions.
In Esther’s name, email blasts posing as updates on Jerry Hicks’ illness ended with a marketing pitch every time. Want the true intent of anyone’s letter? Go the last paragraph. Everything else is a prologue. This turned out to be true.
An emailed letter to her fans announced that Jerry was watching their live webcasts from home — and you should join him, adding links for buying a subscription.
In probably the meanest act of marketing ever developed, just weeks before his death, Esther Hicks and company took Jerry out on a fun-filled family outing. He waved weakly at the camera while Esther posed front and center, not even next to her critically ill husband.
And, yes, you probably guessed. They spun it. The balloon ride was crowded, but Esther’s next workshop would not be. Following were links for signing up.
Astonishing though this was, another event that happened earlier came to light, and that had to do with the death of a member of the Abraham-Hicks forum by suicide and the speedy scramble to erase as much evidence as possible from the site.
Some Quick Background on Esther Hicks, Abraham & The Hot Seat
The hot seat, as it has been called, is an integral part of every Abraham-Hicks Workshop and instrumental in sustaining a convincing scam.
After an initial guru-like review of something involving the basic teachings launches a session, Esther Hicks, posing as Abraham, quickly selects a number of audience members to, one by one, step up near the stage where she is standing barefoot and initiate a discussion.
She has previously explained that “they,” meaning Abraham, know the thoughts of everyone in the room and have selected the most appropriate questioners to benefit the entire group.
Hot seat conversations with Esther/Abraham have been everything from playful to mildly contentious to emotionally engaging. Esther guided many hot seaters into “a better feeling place.”
A number of people, for some reason a large majority of which are women, regularly participate and go on cruises to popular locations like Alaska and the Caribbean.
They attend workshop after workshop, as the teachings of Abraham have evolved from the simplest law of attraction presentations to such exotic concepts as a vibrational escrow (where the things you’ve asked for are just waiting for you to be ready for them) to the current “vortex,” which is a revised version of vibrational escrow in which the goodies aren’t released to you but where you must go to get them.
An unfortunate loss in the shuffle and redirection…
I’ll spare you any additional details on these concepts that keep the Abraham Hicks Scam afloat, but followers have learned to accept them and to continue ponying up for tickets to hear all about the new ideas.
An unfortunate loss in the shuffle and redirection, in my opinion, was an empathy-inspired part of their teachings, known as allowing or “the art of allowing,” a key component in what Esther Hicks explains, interpreting Abraham, as the mechanics of the law of attraction.
As recently as 2005, Esther’s Abraham said this: “When we say to you, make peace with where you are, we want you to make peace with where everyone is… We want it to be all right with you where anybody is.”
Allowing was when you got in the right emotional place to let your own desired objects flow to you, known as alignment with your desires.
A significant factor in allowing, that now seems to be set aside, is allowing others to manifest whatever it is that they want. Tolerance and non-judgment were gentle aspects of a live and let live doctrine that recognized individuals and their different approaches to issues.
That tolerance is now gone or, at a minimum, reduced in some instances to a public, mocking intolerance, and for the first time, the Abraham Hicks presentation is in danger of collapsing.
Is Esther Hicks, posing as Abraham, providing a useful public service to her followers?
The New and Mean Esther Hicks Scam
“Get out! I’m not kidding!”
No speculating on Esther’s new personality traits here, but I hope some readers will volunteer their own conclusions.
Esther Hicks, who had always made some of Abraham’s odder, confusing or simply contradictory statements palatable with her sweetness and humor, has recently adopted an aggressively nasty approach as a tactic.
While most became really aware of it in a recent contentious session in San Francisco, she’s made trial runs at it as long as a year and a half ago.
While the old Esther would once in a while exclaim, “We’re done with you!” or “Get out!” to people in the hot seat, it was playful.
The audience laughed because their attitude was so unlike Esther, they knew she was joking. Not anymore.
She is really kicking them out now, and it seems to be only the most vulnerable who get an unexpected public rejection.
When reading about the outburst from people who were there and post on the Abraham-Hicks Forum, you have to remember that the forum is designed to fit the marketing messages of Abraham-Hicks.
Only true believers are allowed, and controversial or contrary voices have been quickly deleted by moderators since the forum’s founding.
Only true believers are allowed…
Even so, some express genuine concern before being corrected by others who are almost rapturous about watching the “booting” of people from the hot seat.
Examples of people who paid to be there and were individually selected by Esther before being kicked out after as little as few words are a woman troubled by divorce, another with a question about death and a man who was ejected finally after pleading to have the question he was called up to ask heard.
Esther Hicks’s point of view is that talking about problems enhances them, an argument made decades ago as an objection to talk therapy in psychoanalysis.
At this point, however, this seems to include even the smallest sorting out to clarify mentally, something she once gently helped hot seat questioners to do.
She orders them to forget about history, a convenient gimmick, for a speaker with one full of contradictions.
Interestingly, Esther once told her audiences they were “on the leading edge of thought.” But she now tells them to stop thinking and to “feel your way into the Vortex.”
She even excoriates and kicks out questioners who say they’ve come to an “intellectual” understanding of the teachings. Doubters will certainly have conclusions about why she prefers followers who have no interest in critical thinking or objective analysis.
But what about Esther Hicks’s followers? Read the threads. Many of these folks, at least 80% women, spend hours reinforcing each others’ convictions. They also subscribe to seminar DVDs and CDs and attend workshops. They join up on cruises, all of which are pricey.
In the world of Abraham-Hicks, it doesn’t take two to tango.
Don’t they have “problems” too?
Apparently not. The tone of the forums is one of self-congratulation on their special status and mutual petting.
That’s all fine. Who cares if girlfriends help build each others’ self-esteem? However, when it comes to “booting” of people from the hot seat for the slightest infraction, little empathy exists.
The forum members come off as confident that people bringing their troubles to the stage deserve to be kicked out. They are “OOV,” or out of Vortex in the vernacular of the true believers.
They come off like a group of snotty sorority sisters asserting tenuous self-assurance and narcissism. They remind themselves that the poor losers deserved public rejection. They’d shown themselves unable to rise above their problems as they themselves had.
This all is consistent with Esther and Jerry’s longstanding policy of rejecting charities and of blaming the victim.
In an interview, they blamed Jewish culture for the Holocaust. And babies were responsible for being abused by adults.
In the world of Abraham-Hicks, it doesn’t take two to tango. We always tango alone, no matter what we think.
Is it liberating to recognize no responsibility toward our community, nation or even the world community?
If you’re not thriving or remain stuck with your problems, the answer is simple. You’re not letting it in. Who’s fault is that? Certainly not that of Esther Hicks, Abraham or their congregation of self-satisfied followers.
Nothing here proves a scam, but much does make ond seem more easily understood.
Thank You!
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A lot of people have been talking about Esther Hicks and the Law of Attraction lately. But what is the real story? Is she a fraud, or is she onto something? Let’s take a closer
I just found out about this blog but wowww it really worth my time of researching. You see, my mom is a big abe hicks’ fan and she wont stop telling me how wonderful their teaching is.
At first I was like ‘okay, it sounds positive, nothing dangerous, i think’ but when the topic shifted from superficial thing like money to something more serious like rape or murder, I began to think that something might be wrong with this couple. How can they always blame the victims?
I remember one time the attender asked about ‘ghost’ and abs got mad and said that they are ‘spirit’, he (she?) suddenly went mad just because of the word ghost while going full saintly when asked about murderers or rapists. And now esther is not welcoming either, that much of a so-called spiritual guru, huh.
Anyway, thanks for the infos, Im really happy to know that there are people out there who are as skeptic as much as I am.
Thanks, Sally, and good luck dealing with your family issues. A-H is a soft sell, but once you pull back the covers, there isn’t much there that isn’t risky and contradicted elsewhere. Like with Trump and some other politicians and the media, it’s all about show.
There are good spiritual alternatives. Maybe your Mom will find one of them.
You’re article is useless blather, nothing that remotely resembles fact. I’ve listened to Esther/Abraham Hicks and never spent a dime on anything…no soft sell or hard sell. I’m not a hardcore follower just a person who investigates different spiritual dogmas. I’ve never spent hours on blogs or had a need to reinforce anyone’s beliefs or opinions. You are entitled to your opinion which is all you’ve got here. Obviously someone’s opinion with an agenda. I’m very curious as to your opinion on what “good spiritual alternatives” are and what your actual motivation is besides the obvious sales of your Skeptics Notebook. I started reading your article with genuine curiosity but fairly quickly realized that it was baseless claims as to what Esther/Abraham’s teachings are even about. Since you couldn’t even get those right I had to wonder about your claim of Esther turning mean in the first place.Good luck on your petty crusade.
Awfully angry — to the point of near incoherence — for someone who’s “not a hardcore follower,” Kellee. You lost me in the first sentence when you cried that quotes don’t remotely resemble fact. What do you suppose they are then?
In answer to your question about “good spiritual alternatives,” may I first suggest the core teachings of the New Thought Movement, from which Jerry and Esther “borrowed” their LOA schtick. Also Sheila Gillette and Jane Roberts’s Seth books, both of which served as building blocks for the invention of “Abraham.”
Thanks for asking and for you best wishes.Your anger shows that you’ve started thinking and are resisting it. If you’re serious about spiritual growth, you can easily break this link and find more reliable and consistent avenues for your search. Best of luck to you in that effort.
Clearly, you have never been in the vortex. 🙂 You have so much to learn. We cannot wait for you to join us. How many lifetimes do you think it will take?
oh… crap… I just checked with hatha… youve got a lot of self work to do. Good Luck!!!
My, my, a whole new generation of cliche-peddling cultists…
Kellee I agree with you. Not really concerned why he’s written such nonsense, but it’s kind of interesting as to why he’s so angry.
How is it that cult followers lacking any ability to comment objectively try so hard to mount a rationale for their disordered thinking?
While watching Netflix series “Explained”, they make a point to say that Abraham Hicks is a cult! I was a follower but I was getting more and more concerned about the lack of any compassion on Esther’s part about ANYTHING. I found I couldn’t listen to her because she interrupts the person in the hot seat constantly. The interrupting is to totally control the course of each dialog in the hot seat with her rhetoric. I have been to a seminar and it was the same in person. Could God be a JERK? So after the cult accusation, I started investigating her and Jerry’s background. Amway! Holy crap. Thanks for your blog posts and your confirmation of what I have suspected for some time.
Thanks, Susan. As a one-time follower, too, I can relate. Something makes you think twice, you dig a little deeper, and the more you dig, the worse it gets We have our “Holy crap” moment.
I’m glad you’re out and confident you’ll find alternative teachers who will help.
Thanks, again.
In this article you state “ But the people stepping forward for guidance were not drug addicts or gang members.
They were individuals in trouble seeking spiritual guidance.”
So you believe Esther would have the right to treat drug addicts and gang members any differently than “individuals in trouble seeking spiritual guidance”?
No, nice try though. They’d just be, for many, better candidates for success with a tough love approach.
Anyone who has a closed mind and is full of resistance to change is deserving of a tough love approach. I have to say that I too thought it was weird that you made that statement. Your article does read like it’s full of hate, maybe jealousy or maybe even revenge. I was seriously researching for something more concrete but all you have is that an elderly man died of cancer and his wife turned mean at a workshop after his death? I’m a very spiritual person and after my father who was a pastor and very spiritual was killed by a drunk driver (who told me the night before he was about to die, but I didn’t believe him) was angry at God, the Universe and I was mean to anyone who came over to our house that night. So unless you have something more concrete, this does just sound like a skeptic with no hard facts.
People sometimes see only what they want to see or what they can handle. Sorry about your dad. That sounds horible.
Hey Be That Woman … The difference between your anger and Esther’s – you weren’t claiming to be channeling spirits including Jesus at the time. Unless you left that part out of your story.
Charging money to channel the spirit of Jesus who said, “I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” has got to be one of the most ironic acts ever. Think about it. A billionaire could live a good comfortable life and still save thousands, if not millions of lives, and they almost uniformly choose not to just so they can win capitalism, which is almost the same as killing those people from an ethical perspective.
Ether Hicks, however, has publicly excoriated a woman for wanting to use her lottery winnings to benefit charity in addition to herself. I have been abused as a child and watched some of the people I love most in the world die, and I still have never lashed out others the way Esther Hicks does to her paying customers, because I actually care about people. If love is the highest vibration and blame is a low vibration, why does she blame the victims of the holocaust? Why does she recommend ignoring those who are suffering instead of loving them? A person would only want to ignore suffering from a vibration of fear. If a person were in a vibration of love, they would feel compelled to help and provide solace. Marianne Williamson has said that children in Africa are not starving because of their lack of love but because of ours. 1/7th of the defense budget in the United States could wipe out extreme poverty in 10 years.
Esther Hicks is a false prophet whose teachings lack the most basic elements of love and spiritual courage.
Thank you, Melody. I agree with you… and Marianne Williamson.
How would the author of this article or you explain the fact that what Esther-Hicks teaches works?
Do you actually have a comment or are you simply expressing your commitment to the cult?
So GRATIFIED to see you call out that charlatan Gary Renard. When I was leading workshops on A Course in Miracles it used to drive me crazy that people followed him and his idiotic book. I always felt, too, that with Wayne Dyer’s work, while maybe not a conscious scam, “the emperor had no clothes”. Abraham-Hicks I had not figured out, so thanks very much! I had just walked away from the teachings when I couldn’t make them work and found reading them increasingly prone to inducing brain fog. What scammers! It seems sinister now to see Jerry sitting at the side table, looking like the faithful scribe but in fact the Machiavelli pulling the strings of their act. How did Esther manage to ramble on for 30 minutes at a stretch and field questions from strangers? Did she take amphetamines? What an actress.Thanks again.
Thank you. And, yes, I though Gary Renard was the worst and would never have touched his book had Wayne Dyer not recommended it. But I am grateful in that it started me along a road toward a more skeptical point of view. The worst threat with some of the hucksters is how they steer seekers away from legitimate sources and guidance.
Best of luck on your journey!
I almost got lost in “the Vortex.” But some time ago, climbed out upon a ladder of common sense, personal experience, and the scientific method. Thanks for the articles. Am sure “Abraham” is telling you to “Get out!”
Absolutely.
You don’t seem to know why a large number of AH audience members are women. ‘For some reason’, you said. It’s not hard. Women are more likely to be interested in mind-body-spirit, emotions, etc. I think six year olds realize this, but you missed it. Technical reason — hormone oxytocin, which facilitates New Age-type stuff, reduces cortisol in women– so pursuing this literally causes more ease, happiness, relaxation, a reduction of fear and stress. In men, testosterone does this, so achievement, dominance, and solving non-social, non-interpersonal tasks, like fixing a car or a computer, does it. Why do more men like cars, or are IT tech-heads? It’s hormones causing behavior.
With your deep, penetrating insight into the inner workings of humanity, it’s just amazing you haven’t already shown us the path to good government, world peace and freedom from hunger. It’s amazing you could break humanity down into two easy categories and explained everything about them. You are, for certain, a fucking genius. Wow!
Dude. You have issues. Your responses to anyone that doesn’t agree with you reveals one of them.
Dude, try disagreeing with the content, for a change, then a productive conversation might even begin. Who knows? We might even figure out why you’re so desperate to make the topic me instead of the article. Wouldn’t that be nice?
What she teaches works. So what if she’s rough with the guests.
You seem a little confused. Let me help. Esther doesn’t teach anything. That’s Abraham, and she simply channels unconsciously.
And to answer your question, publicly abusing people who pay to come for help is, at best, questionable behavior. How does public humiliation help anyone?
And finally, what exactly do you mean “works?” It didn’t “work” for Ari, among others. Ari invested many hours on the “teachings of Abraham” and ended up a suicide. It didn’t work for Jerry Hicks. Abraham said you could cure any illness in less than a day, but Jerry ended up going to traditional, then experimental treatments anyway. He announced his intention to get well soon after being diagnosed with leukemia, although they wouldn’t even say the “c” word, but he lost the battle in six months. So, whatta ya mean, “works?” I can give you other examples, but please explain exactly what you mean.
Thank you.
“But the people stepping forward for guidance were not drug addicts or gang members”… you talk A LOT about the cattiness and bullying, but a sentence like this is like a spotlight on your own. I agree with the sentiments below, you have a lot of hate and anger and confusion and you are just trying to find the golden Snake Oil salesman to blame it on. It’s clear you have a very narrow search range for where you believe human ills, sadness, manipulation etc come from, and this whole piece says way more about you than it does about any of its subjects. (That’s probably why, as you frustratingly pointed out below, people are focused on you and not the content). The content is nothing new or illuminating or even brave, it is a complete repetition of a thousand other sentiments by hyper left brained isolated humans who believe’s color doesn’t exist because they don’t have the physical apparatus to process them.
Hey, Sara, don’t worry. Reality will still be here when you return. But in the meantime, if this sort of blaming the messenger thing works for you, stick with it. You will get over it, in time.
Dear David, You have no idea how much I am enjoying your replies to people. Why? They make sense and you have a great wit! I am no longer friends with some people who are Hicks cult members. Obviously they have a higher vibration than I. Saying that thoughts become things makes me want to puke. I personally think Hicks is a con-artist.
Thanks, Leslie. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Oh my god. I just discovered your blog and this article thru a random google search and am thoroughly enjoying it! You seem to attract a lot of “well-intentioned” commenters who are “concerned” about how angry you seem, how you’re not being fair/mean/etc. I’ve enjoyed watching you meet such attempts at paternalistic shaming and gaslighting tactics with… more anger and irritation! Thank you for standing up to the negative emotion repression and attack squad. People need to stop a moment and realize they’re ineptly attempting to cast the same reality distortion spells their parents/church/etc. projected on them.
I always expected disagreement, but it really amazes me how few people object factually. It’s all slogans and blame the messenger stuff. No lively debates, but they’re all so defensive, you realize they clicked on the article because they had doubts. Otherwise, why bother. I hope it’s helped some people stay or get out. At least, it made them think.
Thank you for this post. I recently submitted a question to the Abraham Hicks website and got a reply saying they couldn’t answer individual questions but they COULD offer me a free pass to her live Saturday webinar today. They invited me to submit my question on the webinar form for a possible answer from “Abraham.”
Throughout the webinar, I was disappointed. It didn’t seem like “Abraham” was really answering ANY of the specific questions, but merely circling back to a new theme of “trending,” which I guess is the current Abraham Hicks catchphrase. For example, one mother was distraught over her two autistic sons. “Abraham” told her she was “trending” in the wrong direction and making it worse by focusing on it. It essentially was the one-size-fits-all answer to ALL the questions: “You’re trending in the opposite direction.”
That aside, I was primarily distressed by the manner in which Esther/”Abraham” was barking the answers to every question. Very harsh. I felt like we were all being reprimanded. We didn’t even get the playful “We love you so much [and] …” that’s so prevalent in the animated YouTube videos.
My own question involved my job search. I’m a writer who’s in between jobs and I’ve been focusing and visualizing and using other mental exercises to stay positive during my job search. I’ve landed many interviews but still haven’t gotten an offer. I wanted “Abraham’s” take on what’s causing that obstacle, particularly if I’m following all the teachings.
My question got selected and WOOO! “Abraham” seemed irritated and answered rather harshly that I obviously wasn’t working hard enough to stay in a joyful vibration and was “trending” up and down too much and apparently not following the teachings correctly. Then I got reprimanded for “paying them lip service” by describing my job search as a joyful experience when I obviously wasn’t feeling joyful enough to get my desired results. Then Esther tossed aside my question card and snatched up the next one. By the end of the session, she was flat-out screeching at all of us. I was stunned!
I found this blog by Googling “Esther Hicks” and “mean.” 😅 I was thinking maybe she’s experiencing some intense life stressors like a lawsuit or something. I don’t know. The disconnect between the YouTube videos (where I first discovered her) and the real thing is extreme. Your post gave me a lot of clarity.
(For the record, I’ve always considered Esther to be nothing more than a very entrepreneurial and creative public speaker. I can’t really buy into the whole “Abraham” thing because I don’t believe that a benevolent, otherworldly spiritual teacher would advocate pricey cruises or webinars as vehicles for sharing world-changing lessons.)
I think you nailed it here, Emerald. And this is not the first time she took a turn like this, which pretty much cements the idea that there’s more Esther than Abraham in the figure we used to call “Estherham.” I strongly doubt she has any more thread into a more spiritually inflected realm than you or me, but she’s a better performer. Charismatic and convincing. A lot of salespeople are like that and eventually bet folks buying into form over substance.
Thanks for you comments and good luck with your job search. Very competitive market now, and maybe you should try a monetized blog of your own. Less dependent on the whims of general commerce.
I found this after an old friend encouraged me to look into the “Abraham” teachings and I bought their audio books. I was barely into the Law of Attraction when I realized that there was a big con going on. A few minutes into Chapter One I returned everything for a refund of the credits. I didn’t know any of the things I have learned here before, but my “intuition”, or intellect, or who knows what it was, told me this was a clever con to make money. Apparently, I was right. And I do have reason to believe in certain elements of the law of attraction, but this is way too much. Reading the info here regarding their “position” on blaming others for not being able to control what happens in their lives – must be their fault – and the whole kicking the cat issue as well as poor Ari and Esther’s angry tirades confirms my reaction. Thank you for keeping it real.
You were lucky, Allyson. It took me a year or two longer to figure it out, but our experiences are otherwise pretty similar.
While some of the “messages” are helpful, I have to wonder why people can’t take what is helpful and leave the rest. To blindly follow anyone is generally not a good thing. And, what is helpful, you can get for free. As Jerry was a big Amway producer, this kind of looks like more of the same.
Just a quick note. Although Jerry built a myth about being a big business exec, all he really did was marry into wife #4- Trish’s – family Amway business. He was not effective and left with nothing. At the time they claim Abraham arrived, he and Esther were living in a rental apartment with Ether’s daughter in Fresno.
And one other thing. Why should anyone have to wade through the nonsense just to find a few gems? And how does a vulnerable person figure out which is which? That’s like eating a mountain of chocolate just to get at the one nutritious nut in the middle/
Good reply dude. You nailed it