Esther Hicks

This is my third Abraham book. [Edit: I wasn’t counting the ‘Solomon’ book, and I’ve since bought Abraham cards, so.] I like them, even though I struggle with them. And I struggle with them, even though I could benefit from being more like them.

Abraham is def a Seven on the Enneagram, lots of stuff on sober joy—happiness and bliss, optimism. The only thing about that is that Seven can go to One—perfectionism. We are going to have fun; we are going to have a good time; things are going to be good, bad things will /not/ happen: //so help me Source//, right. But really, the things that bring me joy and happiness and the things that bring me pain and stress are the same things, and they often can’t be separated; you don’t selectively numb or cancel things out, right. [Edit: Abraham actually calls this “contrast”, and says that it’s Totally Fine, but I was—I mean, I didn’t know the whole thing yet, and also I was just struck by, I don’t know, what an immature person would do with it, you know. Sometimes even relatively straightforward things—it would be easy to laugh and call the whole thing simplistic, actually!—have their ~ subtle~ points, you know.]

But I’m a Six, I’m a pessimist—so close to Seven, and drawing upon its energy so frequently, and yet often I’m fundamentally so far away, separating myself from its benefits. Each number has its benefits, but optimism Is better than pessimism, at least as such, you know—and although I’ve irresponsibly used Seven energy in the past, going hard into Five (one of my other strategies), and becoming a distanced, isolated Knower isn’t always the right thing, either. I want to be happy. I can be happy! I can even generate happiness within myself, persistently enough to bring about conditions that make me even happier! And Abraham can coach me on how to do it!….

And I’ll just hide my cartoon villain jokes from them, you know. 😉

…. And, of course, Abraham does seem like the kind of evolved being(s) who has/have the energy, very often, to make good their Enneagram Number deficits. You have to learn to pay attention to—not to be bored by—what makes you happy. It’s not boredom; it’s happiness. And everything else, that’s “contrast”.

…. Abraham does say that you can notice something you don’t like and then choose something else, so you don’t attach to it, although subtly it’s not the same as not noticing that you don’t like it—although of course normally what happens is you feel attacked by what you don’t want, and you feel flooded by negative emotion, and then…. 🫣🥶🥵😱

Sometimes you just have to look at it as a process, and know that Life //is// teaching you to do it better, and giving you all the experiences that you need to have…. I mean, I don’t have the naive view of God’s Will that the standard time travel story does—like in Doctor Who, Rose’s father doesn’t die because she intervenes, so dragons show up and torch the village, right. (Meanwhile, blatantly time-altering things can happen as an insult and it’s ok, right, in that and other episodes.) I mean, maybe if Rose’s father doesn’t die in a car accident he ekes out a defeated life and it’s worse for him, you know, but there’s like this sci-fi superstition that Time Can Only Be One Way, or you know, Eating Poop Is God’s Will, (is going on the Telly and winning money God’s will too?), and it’s like…. Unbalanced, you know.

I forget the point I was trying to make, but the thing is, I don’t think that Time is ever over, certainly not if you still need it, you know—if Life gives you an experience and you piss it away, something else will happen and it’ll be Life over again, you know. Eventually, you can learn to notice what you don’t like and choose something else, even if it’s not like, for most people, One & Done, you know. One & Done would actually be stepping outside of time, transcendence, and that works for some people, but I think Time //can// be a Teacher in most people’s lives, and I think sometimes transcendent people underestimate that…. So I choose something else. Of course, the main lesson isn’t so much //that//, as learning not to flood yourself with toxic emotions, you know. You just gotta…. not do that.

…. This is actually from one of those short YouTube clips she does, but Abraham said that Allowing us really the only thing that’s really ever lacking: it’s not asking, because we inevitably ask. I always thought that there was something I wasn’t asking for….

Anyway, it’s a good book: I tend to be in the middle category, with occasional visits to happiness and frequent slips into misery, but overall mostly neutral, which is actually something I can allow to be better….

Sevens (Joy) can actually go to One (Perfectionism), when not going positive, in a bad way, so it’s good that Abraham says she’s not trying to guide us towards to away from any particular path or viewpoint; it’s for us to decide if we want to go to the Ritz Hotel, or Mysterious Galaxy bookstore—she just wants us to go towards joy…. So that we can patiently allow what we desire, and to gently release what is unnecessary for us.

…. You don’t have to hammer home the same affirmation you started the day with, if you’re not in a neutral-or-better place anymore; but you can always brainstorm things about the situation that are good.

…. It is a process, but I won’t stop until I get to bliss, you know.

And hey, these things happen, you know. Little Persephone is out there with her mother, and she’s all crying, like, He’p! He’p me mommy! I don’t like it! It’s not safe! Somebody gotta he’p me…. ~ 😸

I mean, that’s how I feel, and I’m grown, and my mother’s a dry alcoholic who worries more than I do, you know.

But Abraham puts it in perspective. You go halfway towards the bottom of the list, maybe not quite half, and you kinda piddle there for an hour or so—it could be a lot worse.

But you don’t have to stop making it better.

…. It’s not exactly complicated, but sometimes it’s subtle, how it’s different from how you might assume it to be, you know.

One thing that strikes me is that, if I’m an eternal being in an eternal universe, I don’t have to worry about running out of time, and being stuck forever, you know. Nobody sends you to heaven against your will, but the only way to be “stuck” is to refuse to change—you can’t ~ really ~ be Stuck, you know.

And it’s not about being perfect or being shit, you know. (“But that’s what mercy means, boy!”) I am not obligated to be infinite/perfect/nothing-everything, you know. I came into this life to be finite, and I can continue to experience a uniquely finite experience of growing and expanding. Growth isn’t one-and-done, but experience is never lost, so I can be okay with making mistakes or experiencing limitation sometimes, and know that that doesn’t mean that I’m “stuck” as I once chose to be.

I’m simply learning more about the journey of life.… (lisätietoja)

There are a lot of great ideas in this “book”, but I just want to comment on the aspect of how there’s really no competition in the world. I mean, there appears to be: if you want to, you can play soccer or tennis, for example, however, even sports are kinda like a dance, you have to agree to play the game, and to agree on the rules, and you both participate in the market for your sport’s niche, etc, so there’s really a strong element of cooperation even in individual sports like golf and tennis, and between the rival groups in team sports. And, yes, some performances are more excellent than others, and I guess unless it’s boxing it’s always clear which is which 😸 (the scoring in boxing is usually kinda arbitrary, if you’ve never watched the sport), but the more excellent performances there are, the more the sport as a whole and all the athletes in it go forward, really, so it’s a cooperation.

But I wanted to talk about money. I already was aware from having lived it, that being poor-and-wallowing-in-misery (I don’t make a whole lot more yet because I’ve only been marginally interested in the financial end of it, but I’ve already made a lot of progress on the emotional wellness aspect, and I’m feeling good, and I feel like the two are linked)—well nobody walks up to you when you’re like that and claps you on the back, like, Thank you for supporting me by being poor and miserable and wallowing on shame. Because of your success in doing those things…. ~ You know, that’s just nuts. But it also works with success. Before I met my new mentor in person for the first time today, I was—I’m weird—I was him in my mind, and (I was working on not being intimidated, I guess, lol—but, I don’t know) I was bragging to somebody that my former charge (me!) now made more money than he did, because I was a millionaire, and owned cars & castles, or whatever. And then I thought about it and I was like, No don’t make it a competition. And then I listened to him talk today and I see on a deeper level, (although it’s great not to be intimidated, to believe in success, etc.), that there is NO competition between two different people about money, just a relationship that either works or doesn’t work (or is very active or very inactive, etc). Because of I guess his past life conditioning—I was very passive in my past lives; he must have been very engaged—he was already learning about selling at eighteen, you know. He didn’t say, you know, 🏰 💣, etc etc., you know, but you have to give a sense of where you’ve been—and I see now that nobody can ever take that from you. If in five or ten years I close a house or sell five sports cars or something in one day, and I call Peter and he, I don’t know, he was busy last week so now he’s just catching up on reading emails or something, or even if he’s just doing some piddling little thing like we all do—like sometimes I spend a long time scratching my head, but maybe eventually I’ll drop that pattern, lol, you know, there is Some piddling in life—it doesn’t mean that I passed him, or even that he lifted me up, or whatever, but now…. No, it’s really not like that. We just have different experiences. Whatever I accomplish or do, he’s experienced some other things that weren’t in my life, and some of them were great things, and no one can take that from him—and no one can take anything from me, either.

…. Oh, and I almost forgot. This deck really opened up something for me in cartomancy. Because looking at a phrase means you have some truth to consider each time you look at it—I mean, and there are fun little pictures, too—but it’s not like say the classic Rider Tarot deck, where in my experience, if you look at say the Three of Pentacles, I mean, you can both read about it and intuit things about what it means from little details—and I don’t want to dismiss it, you know, at all—but arguably it’s just this little picture and no words and you’re not going to learn, maybe, something about work the way you might if there’s a little gnomic saying about work, and then suddenly you understand that little gnomic saying, right. I mean, it is kinda like bibliomancy (either with the Bible or a random book), but books aren’t like oracle decks in that they’re not sixty equal statements—or however many, right—so sometimes it’s not really…. I mean, it CAN be helpful…. But it’s not Optimal, right; it’s not, optimized…. And just generally, bibliomancy and kinda religious-inspired Tarots/oracles, like Druid or Wiccan or folk Christian decks are—I mean, they can be great, don’t get me wrong—but sometimes you assume that that’s ALL that’s out there, or else, you do that a little, and then you see Esther Hicks cards or Louise Hay cards, and you think, “I know that”…. And it’s like, Maybe I never knew, until today! (Longbourn bop, I know); and it’s like, as nice as it is to be diverse like, well, the Wiccans aren’t diverse either, but sometimes non-individualist groups have diversity, and I know sometimes the real men think that individualist white girls are the un-people to men of color, right, which would be sad…. But for the religious-inspired stuff, sometimes there is that note of pessimism prevalent in most of the early, ancient teachings, and very often a clannish note, too….

—Can’t we all just, get along?
(academic) Peasant, he actually said, CAN we all just, get along. Quote, and quote right.
—Boy bye.

…. I believe that Abraham is a Seven on the Enneagram; their value is sober joy, and a Seven also often reaches for the strength of a One, which in a less evolved (if you like) person can be a little overweening, but I think with Abraham it is a steadying force, like almost steadying joy. You have a morning you didn’t expect, your routine gets a little upset, you ask tarot what’s going on, she might show you yes I know you can get through this obviously, but it’s like you’re navigating in between the nine and ten of wands or something, (and sometimes the ten of wands feels like the devil, you know, when it’s just bureaucracy and idiot computers, you know; and actually looking at the devil card and materiality can make you realize it’s not Just bad, you know—but still), but Abraham will have none of it, you know. It doesn’t validate your feeling that trouble is like a big fish that the universe is smacking your face with, you know. ~ Are you imagining your good? Are you reaching for the next right thing? Are you looking for the thought that feels better? ~ And then it’ll also pat your hand, like, Your joy is here for you, you know.

(thinks for a beat) I mean, I think it can be good to have an oracle that is more about principles than circumstances, even if you do always get the specific card you need at that moment, because although the oracles do usually (almost always) affirm and/or reassure me, I still have a diffident stance towards her, like, I don’t know—but I need to let go of asking for permission, you know. It’s nice to keep in touch, but my fear-attachment can be bad, like, I don’t know, Is it gonna be okay? What about circumstances? Etc etc….

Better to stick with general principles, sometimes.… (lisätietoja)

There’s often a dispute about how money works in with the rest of life. If you’re into philosophy and psychology, and especially if you can kinda sell it and put it into meaningful words, you’re like, Never feel miserable about anything—ever! (Even if you’re dirt poor.) And if you’re a business guy, and you’re in a famous movie, you’re like, Show me the money! The Abraham beings, as I understand them, connect the two. (Everything is connected.) How you feel matters—so feel good now, and then /that/ will make you prosperous. So you do have to master your emotions (although I think you have to go gingerly sometimes: if you always go back to the negative it’s because it’s not random; it’s your set-point…. You just have to change your set-point), but once you get good at playing the game of reality or whatever, you don’t always or even usually have to deal with “bad circumstances”, you know.

…. Say you experience fear. (You might be a Six.) Sometimes you might be like an early 20th-century psychologist, trying to discern if the situation warrants that you should feel that way. “Some anxiety is rational, and some is not.” If you’re like me you might even ask God whether there’s something to be afraid of. But what I’ve found is that God’s advice is never going to be to paralyze yourself with fear, curl up into the fetal position, and withdraw from reality. Fear is never /really/ rational; it’s guck. Abraham says, “Notice how you feel.” Then, do something to feel better. Practical, right? The rationalist according to a certain definition would almost find it unsettling. “But I KNOW there’s something wrong…. Maybe if I change this, it’ll be Wrong….”

…. They do mention that it takes time to change your set-point in most instances. You have all the time you need. Life’s not a rush.

About the specific processes, I won’t go through each one, but I guess the basic point is to take time to consciously think of good things and make you feel good. Don’t take a PhD in misery: really go back to kindergarten and learn how to feel good.

Also, some of the points seem familiar from non-prosperity manuals, like meditation, but are conceived of differently to some extent in Abraham’s system, ie as a prelude to prosperity. That is, meditation as allowing, and so you can let it be good now and later, more than a more metaphysical (or religious, I guess) motivation.

It’s also probably a book to refer to again, at the very least. I mean, I mentioned I essentially wasted a whole reading once! “Ok, another one about money; whatever….”! But we grow in stages: now, I read, Remember to consciously visualize good things again; later, when I have more experience, the subtly different ways of doing that that they discern, might start to make more sense and come into focus more.

…. Two related things: Feeling powerful is better than feeling powerless, victimized. So try to look at the shining side of even the worst things, the petty tyrants who blossom into becoming the ensemble leads of my favorite war movie of all time, “The Triumph of Fear”. Really see them just needing to feel powerful instead of rejected, and smile.

And: people “should” I guess, since it’s their life, want to heal and not go around hating themselves and their world, right. I mean, I think that’s good advice. But the Universe is a ladder, and ladders have rungs. People are allowed—I mean, people are allowed to do whatever they want; in a movie, it’s like “Stop or we’ll shoot”, right: the person still has a choice—but people can take the ladder one rung at a time, people are allowed to take their time. If it takes them another forty years, well…. Does God ever run out of time? Does he ever say, I’m getting tired of waiting, Eternity starts in five minutes, missy, my infinite patience is Over!! You know. People ask for hell but they don’t want it; don’t tell them it’s in store for them. I mean, people waste big gulps of their life, their energy, or they try to improve and they fail or improve partially, with setbacks…. What’s the rush? Is eternity going to end? What’s the rush? Who says you have to go from a blubbering accusing victim to a miracle magnet in sixty seconds or less? Are you late for the last train to New York or something? Hell, fuck New York. New Yorkers are rude. Spend time in New Jersey instead. Sure, we’re not Quite As Advanced—our watches run a little slower—but we get there. What’s the rush?… (lisätietoja)

Well, it’s a novel about the law of attraction, so I was sorta expecting to read a story about attracting fabulous wealth (untold riches!), but I guess I’m a little silly, since the girl is ten, so it’s not like she’s going to end up with a cosmetics empire worth a billion dollars, you know. It’s a girl’s adventure tale (or a new age adventure; it’s nice that it’s a girl—she even briefly meets another girl and has a Good Conversation—but it’s really about a lot more than just being a girl or boy, you know).

So children want different things from adults, but I think the angle of the Abraham beings that comes through here is that it matters what you want, and it matters how you feel. We tend to deny this, at least as adults. (British Schoolmaster In Random Pink Floyd Video: No, you can’t do that, missy! You have to be good! Good—and /miserable/! /laughs dementedly/). Of course, we usually care how we feel on some level, and denying this can often make us act like, you know, the antagonist in a Pink Floyd video. (Or that Beatles one: “sorry we hurt your field, Mister”.) (Of course, detachment can have a pain-reducing effect, but Abraham tends to advise simply not thinking about things you don’t like to avoid pain. Zombie Lenin: The Mensheviks!…. The Mensheviks, they wound me! Look at this, my skin is coming off! It’s because of the Mensheviks! Abraham: You’re thinking about what you do NOT want.)

And the other thing is that thinking about what you want, expecting to get it, and feeling good already, tends to first make you feel good, and then actually get the material circumstance, too. But usually, people just kinda write themselves off without so much as a preliminary hearing, you know.

Sometimes you gotta reach back to the little part of you, right, the part that still believes in something good.

…. And you know, don’t read me, read the book, because I’m still learning. You refrain from complaining, you’re content, although you’ll still be more an ‘observer’ than a happy duck, you know. (I’m more an observer, you know.) But you appreciate, you’re grateful, you’re happy. The forces of normality react with revulsion and ostracize you, but you’re still happy. You’re a bird! 🦆

Check back in a year, see if I can appreciate things, lol.

…. Even after the needless suffering of the earth, there is life.

…. It’s okay to look at people with problems, as long as you don’t see them as “people with problems”, you know.

—Look at Lucy! She’s helpless!
—Look at Lucy. I know that she has agency, despite her temporary predicament.

…. After-note: The law of attraction is occasionally accused of being callous—for not being suffering-centric—and probably rather more often seen as being soft-headed, ‘kind’, and unrealistic, for the same reason. But I have to say that what Esther does with Sara and the Crying Boy Is rather realistic, you know. People don’t want—consciously—what they don’t ask for, and that includes comfort or ‘happiness’ or whatever you want to call it. If you’re complaining about your life, explaining that it never has worked out and never will work out because life doesn’t does work out ~ because that’s the way it is!—And I try to “comfort” you, you attack me; you didn’t ask for it, and you experience it as an attack, as me trying to prove you wrong, so you attack back, and try to prove ME wrong.

So while we obviously shouldn’t actively agree that people can’t help themselves, practically every time that someone isn’t signaling that they want to be comforted, it’s because they’re not ready for that yet. If someone asks for help, we are free to give them whatever help is possible to give, you know, and despite the limitations of what one can do for another, that is one of the most rewarding aspects of life, really.

But mother doesn’t know best, really—such a chauvie phrase any way you try to adapt it, but I couldn’t think of a better one—and it is simply not our business to force gifts on others who do not want them, and to twist them into using our gifts the ‘correct’ way. And certainly it does not take all that much to be too suffering-centric in life. Monks, nuns, Buddhists, and Christians are often optimistic about suffering—you can accept, transcend, overcome, and as far as it goes, that is true. I wouldn’t take optimism from you, but if suffering is well, how much more well is health, prosperity, marriage, birthday cake, 90210, and best friends? Unless good fortune is the ONE kind of ill turn, out of which good CANNOT come! 😸… (lisätietoja)