Gesetalt and sharing audiobooks

So . . . my girlfriend asked to borrow an Abraham-Hicks audiobook so she can familiarize herself with them. Not to humor me--I've never pushed the stuff on her, but she sees how I approach different situations and is curious about this perspective I feel so much resonance with.

She did qualify the request by saying, "I'm not sure how I feel about listening to a woman who says she talks to other beings." I told her that Abraham is actually Esther's own higher self, which she has said. That got me thinking.

If I talked to my higher self, I'd probably call it "me." Probably not "Faith" or "Faithy", though. I see that as a label for my physical self.

When Esther started receiving messages from her higher self, she asked the collection of non-physical folks involved what she should call them. They gave her a block of thought which she translated as "Abraham," the same name as the father of 3 of our major religions today. It seemed appropriate because the parts that make sense of all religions come from the same place. Sometimes those parts are pretty well hidden, to be sure, but--there you have it.

So I considered her desire to call her higher self "Abraham", and it occurs to me that it's rather Gestalt. In Gestalt therapy, you (this is a simplified explanation) pretend that whoever it is you're having issues with is sitting in an empty chair with you and you talk it out with them, whether it's your dead father or your husband or your cat or your cirrhotic liver. You're not actually talking to them, of course--you're talking to an empty chair. But it makes it easier to connect to the part of yourself that resonates with them and resolve the conflict within yourself.

Ooh--and Abraham's teachings are all about having a better relationship with yourself, so that fits right in, doesn't it?

So, it's sort of like Esther having Gestalt therapy by herself without it necessarily being about her issues. In a way. I have no idea what she'd think of that explanation, but it seems an apt metaphor to me. Much understanding, I find, is based in metaphor until personal experience and true knowing comes.

Happy Friday, folks!