Esther Hicks Scam's Mean Streak

Whatever followers of Jerry and Esther Hicks believe to be true, only a minority are likely to be convinced that eternal, "nonphysical" entities with direct connections to God, or "Source" in Abraham Hicks lingo, would embarrass and humiliate workshop attendees coming forward for help and guidance.

For as long as Esther Hicks has been trotted out, barefoot, to do Abraham, acceptance of Esther Hicks' claims has depended crucially on her gentle personality and playful sense of humor. When she abruptly turned mean, mistreating members of her paying audience, critics and skeptics grew louder, demanding to know how the laws of attraction took her or the targets of her bad temper there.

At workshops that cost $195 a head, audience members have watched in various states of distress or indifference as questioners in the hot seat were kicked out after uttering as little as a few words or a couple of sentences that Esther Hicks (posing as Abraham) deemed unacceptable. 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 calling them.

True believers online are referring to this as "tough love" and and enjoying it like catty sorority sisters. But the people stepping forward for guidance were not drug addicts or slackers. They were hurting individuals seeking spiritual comfort.

It's easy to see how this change to bullying has led skeptics to claim that what Esther Hicks does is now undeniably a scam.

As the scam took unexpected turns, a potential factor in Esther Hicks erratic behavior may have been exposed when it was revealed that Jerry Hicks, her husband and head of Abraham Hicks Publications, has cancer, although they desperately tried to help followers believe 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 have Esther Hicks feeling like she is the one on the hot seat.

The silence is broken. Check out: Jerry Hicks Cancer Update 10/31/2011)

As Abraham-Hicks 2.0 was born and went through growing pains, Esther Hicks 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, especially cruelly in her husband's case, and then, not being the sharpest tool in the shed, she started trying to seize control by overreaching her capabilities.

Her initial bouts of public meanness began when concerns about Jerry Hicks health became serious. Although the pair claimed that what they took to be a spider bite in the spring of 2011 led to Jerry's diagnosis of cancer, his admission that he'd already lost at least fifteen pounds from his smallish, trim frame made it clear that he'd been ill much longer.

What seemed most cold and calculating was Esther and Jerry Hicks' strange refusal to acknowledge that he was being treated for leukemia, even though he openly bragged that he was undergoing "massive chemotherapy." 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.

Then, their evasion, 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 did not want to answer the obvious questions about why the "teachings of Abraham," which had made them rich, weren't helping him and, very likely, were not even attempted.

After traditional medicine failed and Esther escorted Jerry from one alternative therapy to another, the hypocrisy of their approach, opposing what they had always taught, 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 their contradictions. In Esther's name, email blasts posing as updates on Jerry Hicks' illness ended with a marketing pitch every time. Something I was told as a young man was, to get as what anyone's letter to you was really about, go the last paragraph. Everything else was 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 invented, just weeks before his death, Esther Hicks and company took him out to pose on a fun-filled family outing, a balloon ride in which he was stuck back in a corner, apparently unable to stand, waving weakly at the camera while Esther posed front and center, not even beside her critically ill husband.

And, yes, you probably guessed. They spun it. The balloon ride was crowded, the note explained, but Esther's next workshop would not be. This was followed by links for signing up.

Astonishing though this was (Even skeptics were startled.), 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. For more information on this, see: Did Abraham Hicks Kill Ari?

I once had another Abraham-Hicks satirical t-shirt here, but Esther's copyright hounds objected to my using "Abraham-Hicks" for commercial purposes. Unlike AHP, I'm not much for pushing against; so, Iet it go. Now, the one below must fly solo until I come up with another idea.


I Survived Esther Hicks and Abraham by David Stone

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.

Tree Of Peace
Josephine Wall
24 in. x 36 in.

AllPoster.com

Hot seat conversations with Esther/Abraham have been everything from playful to mildly contentious to emotionally engaging. Esther has guided many hot seaters into what is called "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 conceptions 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.

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 Hicks'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 you to make peace with the world events; we want you to make peace with where your friend is in relationship with where your friend wants to be. We want it to be all right with you where anybody is.

Lightning Striking Tree
24 in. x 36 in.

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, been reduced in some instance to a public, mocking intolerance, and for the first time, the Abraham Hicks Scam is in danger of collapsing.

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 audiences laughed because the 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. Here's an example on a forum thread.

When reading examples from the Abraham-Hicks Forum, as in the link above and others to follow, remember that this 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. 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.

Balanced
Bella Dos Santos
11.8 in. x 11.8 in.

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 a divorce, another with a question about dying 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 now to forget about history, a convenient gimmick, of course, for a speaker with a highly questionable one full of contradictions and allegations of fraud and exploitation.

Interestingly, where she once (posing as Abraham, as I feel compelled to remind believers and non-believers alike) told her audiences that they were "on the leading edge of thought," 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.

Centered
Bella Dos Santos
11.8 in. x 11.8 in.

But what about Esther Hicks's followers? If you read the threads, you'll see that many of these folks, again at least 80% women, not only spend many hours on the forum reinforcing each others' convictions, they also subscribe to seminar DVDs and CDs as well as attending many workshops in person as well as cruises, all of which are rather pricey. 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 a discussion of the "booting" of people from the hot seat for the slightest infraction, little sympathy or empathy exists.

The forum members come off as having a conviction that the people who had the nerve to bring their troubles to the stage for discussion deserved to be kicked out because they were "OOV," or out of Vortex in the vernacular of the true believers. They come off like a group of snotty sorority sisters who assert their tenuous self-assurance and narcissism by reminding themselves that the poor losers deserved a public rejection because they'd showed themselves as unable to rise about their problems as they themselves had.

This all is consistent with Esther and Jerry Hicks longstanding policy of rejecting charities and of blaming the victim. In an interview I read recently, they even unhesitatingly blamed Jewish culture for the Holocaust and argued that babies were responsible, as a result of their thinking, for their being abused by adults. In the world of Abraham-Hicks, it does not take two to tango. In fact, we always tango alone, no matter what we think.

Isn't 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 Esther Hicks 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 an Esther Hicks scam, but much does make it seem more easily understood.

Yin-Yang Harmony
Rick Faist
8 in. x 10 in.
/a>

Free Spirit
Christian Lassen...
36 in. x 24 in.

Something new: Defending Esther Hicks With What My Uncle Leslie Shoveled From His Barn

I wasn't sure I wanted to add this piece, but after some thought and considering how consistent it was with the Esther Hicks mean streak considered in this lens, I thought I should. I recently wrote a A New Abraham-Hicks Scam LIVE article on SEEKyt. I took a bit of a playful, teasing position, and I posted it on several Abraham Hicks Fan Pages on Facebook. A bit naively, I thought it might stir some discussion or debate. Well, maybe more than a bit naively.

The initial response I got was from an individual who argued that Esther Hicks was becoming so popular she was a "threat to the power-elite." Actually, he wrote "treat to the power-elite," which I thought was amusingly Freudian, but I'm sure he meant to include an h. I should add that no one commented on the article page itself, just on Facebook, which leads me to suspect they never read the article at all, but maybe.

The other commenter, a Vince Furfaro, was extremely hostile, and I am going to quote him verbatim here, no editing:

"First, Why is this post on the Abraham Hicks Fan club? This is so not interesting, to hear people who are frustrated with their lifes, and have to blame others for it not working. David Stone sounds like a middle-aged white-bigot who distrusts just about everything he can't get his tiny brain around. Please go somewhere else. I've been following Abraham for 17 years, and they are not a scam, but I'm sure that doesn't mean anything to someone with your base mentality. You're pathetic Mr. Stone. Go back to the school yards and play with young children."

He then added:

"PLEASE REMOVE THIS POST! WHY IS SOMEONE LIKE THIS PATHETIC CHARACTER: DAVID STONE ON THIS FAN CLUB?", virtually screaming into the Internet in all caps.

I got over the bad grammar and the unhinged attack, but I got to wondering why anyone who'd followed "la di da" "happy, happy, happy" Abraham Hicks for seventeen (!) years had such anger management issues. Then, something interesting happened.

Vince (or an administrator) deleted his comments, and nobody else noted my link in any way. I was being shunned. They went Mormon on me.

The still straggling along followers are the ones who could never debate or discuss, only accept and rationalize the increasingly cult-like "teachings of Abraham."

A picture of myself is included here, just to prove I'm not middle-aged. God only knows what the relevance is of the "white-bigot" flame, but beauty isn't the only thing restricted to the eye of the beholder, after all.