So who are these Hicks people? And what the hell is Abraham?

My friend Janet recommended Jerry and Esther Hicks's work to me. I had been interested in the concept of creating my own reality for years, and when Janet learned of my interested she recommended Ask and it is Given, which I immediately went out and bought.

It turns out that Esther Hicks channels a host of entities who refer to themselves as Abraham. Her husband Jerry pelts this group with questions about everything and they always have answers.

My immediate thoughts upon finding this out:

1. They're full of crap.

2. Abraham is a demon, or a group of demons, a la the Legion incident in Mark 5:1-26. It's the one where Jesus exorcises the demons and they go into a herd of pigs, who subsequently throw themselves off a cliff.

These ideas were probably influenced by my conservative Christian upbringing. Another thing that my conservative Christian upbringing gave me, though, is the ability to glean good stuff from most writing while leaving the crazy stuff for the people who are actually interested in it. This stems from the fact that there really aren't that many great writers among the Churches of Christ, my former affiliation, so if we wanted to read any religious literature we'd have to turn to less reliable sources, like Catholics and Baptists. By the time I left the church my reading interests had expanded to Buddhists, Taoists and Native Americans, which I could still filter for compatible-with-Christian values. We called this process "Eating the meat and spitting out the bones," which is to be recommended over its alternative, "Throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

So while I wasn't impressed with the alleged source of the information, I thought the information itself, for the most part, was pretty good.

My current stance is that I don't really care who or what Abraham is, as long as I can get useful information from him/them/it/whatever. It's similar to my stance on reincarnation--it's fun to think about, but it doesn't really affect my being in this exact moment, so I'm not too worried about it. I have, in fact, been to a channeling (not the Hicks-Abraham people), and hope to go to more. I found it wildly entertaining, and the people there were really nice. The entity told me that I was a subversive writer in a past life, and that's fun to think about.

The Hicks books aren't the only sources I use. I've read Joe Vitale, and I find him kind of annoying. A little used-car-salesman-ish. I've read a number of books by Neville Goddard, whom I rather like. His work is more about the process of visualizing what you want, and feeling the feeling of having already attained what you're aiming for, which is a little more complicated than the Hicks' idea of just aligning yourself vibrationally (as indicated by your emotions). The end result should be the same--when you're aligned vibrationally, you feel relief and happiness, which is what I imagine I'll feel when my dreams come to fruition. I'm also a long-time fan of hypnosis, meditation, and guided visualization.

I'll be putting the books and other resources I find helpful on my resources page. Stay tuned.