Abraham Hicks (Esther Hicks): Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices
By DailyDestiny Editorial Team
If a friend sent you the 22-step emotional guidance scale, here is what Abraham Hicks teaches and how to use it gently. Who Esther Hicks is, the Vortex, the best books, a practice for this week, and the criticism.
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Who is Esther Hicks, and what does the name Abraham Hicks actually refer to?
Imagine you have had a heavy week. Money is tight, or someone you love said something that stung, and the feeling sits on your chest like a stone. A friend sends you a chart of 22 emotions: find where you are, then reach for the next one up. Who made this, and can it actually help?
The short answer: the chart is the emotional guidance scale from Abraham Hicks, the teachings of American speaker Esther Hicks, who says she translates a non-physical group consciousness she calls Abraham. You do not have to believe that to use the scale. Its kindest idea is simple: you only have to feel a little better, not great.
Esther Hicks was born Esther Weaver on March 5, 1948, in Coalville, Utah. Abraham Hicks is not one person. It is the label for Esther plus the source she claims to speak for, and the brand on the books and workshops.
She met Jerry Hicks in 1976 and married him four years later. Jerry had been a performer and a successful Amway distributor, shaped by Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. The couple experimented with a Ouija board and read Jane Roberts's Seth material. Esther says contact began in the mid-1980s as involuntary head movements spelling out letters, then developed into speech. Abraham-Hicks Publications, based in San Antonio, Texas, has published the material for decades. Jerry Hicks died on November 18, 2011.
Forget the trance medium. Esther Hicks says she stays awake and aware, is not displaced by anything, and receives blocks of knowing rather than dictated sentences, which she renders into English. It is closer to simultaneous interpretation than a seance, which is why the delivery is conversational, funny and responsive.
None of this proves the source exists; no one else can verify or disprove her experience. We report what she says without endorsing it, the only honest position when the central claim is unobservable in principle.
Is Abraham Hicks a real person?
No. Esther Hicks is the real, living person who speaks; Abraham is her name for what she describes as a collective non-physical intelligence. The compound name became the label for the teachings, recordings and publishing, so covers use it like a single author.
What was Jerry Hicks's role in the Abraham Hicks teachings?
Esther's husband and the questioner behind much of the material. He brought commercial drive from direct sales and pressed the questions that shaped the books, which carry both names. After he died in November 2011, Esther continued the workshops; his interview structure survives in earlier recordings.
What are the core Abraham Hicks teachings?
Ever been told to try harder and felt only more tired? This teaching takes the opposite view: everything works by vibrational matching, emotion tells you what you are matching, and your only job is allowing. Creation comes in three steps:
1. You ask. Said to happen automatically as you bump into things you do not want.
2. It is given. Said to be handled entirely by Source, without you.
3. You allow. You get into a position to receive it, what Abraham Hicks calls the Art of Allowing.
The law of attraction here is not a moral system or a reward for effort but is described as a neutral principle: like draws like at the level of vibration, so what you consistently feel shapes your experience.
Unwanted experience is called contrast and treated as useful, not shameful, because bumping into what you do not want clarifies what you do want.
Deliberate creation means doing on purpose what the teaching says everyone does by default. Most people, it claims, keep reproducing their circumstances just by observing them. The fix is to choose a thought for how it feels, not how accurate it is.
Unlike ordinary problem solving, you are told to reach for the relieving thought even when a truer one exists, because relief moves your vibration while accuracy only reinforces it. Critics call this self-deception; the teaching calls it the whole method. Resistance, not lack of effort, is said to block results, so trying harder is counterproductive.
What are the three steps of creation in Abraham Hicks teachings?
Asking, answering and allowing. Asking is said to be automatic and largely unconscious, produced by daily friction. Answering is said to be Source's job, already complete. Allowing is the only human task: getting your feeling state where the answer can land. Almost every Abraham Hicks process targets this step.
What does vibration mean in Abraham Hicks teachings?
The felt tone of your habitual attention, not anything physics measures. A mood, a rehearsed belief and an expectation are names for the same signal. Defined by feeling rather than an instrument, the term is unfalsifiable, a standing objection.
What is the emotional guidance scale in Abraham Hicks teachings?
This is the chart your friend sent. The emotional guidance scale is a 22-step ladder published by Esther and Jerry Hicks in Ask and It Is Given, from what the material calls least resistant to most resistant:
1 joy, knowledge, empowerment, freedom, love, appreciation; 2 passion; 3 enthusiasm, eagerness, happiness; 4 positive expectation, belief; 5 optimism; 6 hopefulness; 7 contentment; 8 boredom; 9 pessimism; 10 frustration, irritation, impatience; 11 overwhelment; 12 disappointment; 13 doubt; 14 worry; 15 blame; 16 discouragement; 17 anger; 18 revenge; 19 hatred and rage; 20 jealousy; 21 insecurity, guilt, unworthiness; 22 fear, grief, depression, despair, powerlessness.
The bottom rungs are the nights you feel too small to change anything. The middle is the ordinary ache of a bad week: worry about a bill, doubt about a relationship. The top is the morning you wake up and feel like yourself again.
Emotion here is a gauge, not a problem. Think of a car's fuel gauge: not good or bad, just information. A feeling, it claims, measures the distance between your current thought and your broader self's view of the same subject. Despair signals a wide gap; appreciation, almost none. The scale is ordinal: it shows which direction to move, not how well you are doing.
The part most summaries get wrong: you are not told to jump from 22 to 1. That leap is too far to believe, an unbelievable thought brings no relief, and no relief means no movement. Aim for the next rung, two at most. It is a ladder, not a lift.
So anger at 17 counts as an improvement on powerlessness at 22, because each step up restores a little agency, though the material calls it a transit lounge, not a destination. The test is relief, not positivity. A thought that makes you physically looser is a step up, however modest. One you are performing has not moved you.
Is anger really higher than depression on the Abraham Hicks emotional guidance scale?
Yes. Anger sits at 17 and depression at 22, so anger counts as an improvement: despair carries no agency, anger some. It is a rung to pass through, not a place to settle, since staying angry becomes a new limit.
Does the emotional guidance scale mean you should never feel bad?
No. The scale expects you to spend time on lower steps and treats a bad feeling as information about the gap between a thought and a broader view. It discourages only settling low and calling it realism. Locate where you are and reach for the next rung.
How do you find your position on the emotional guidance scale?
Name the subject first and the feeling second, since you can sit on different steps for money, health and family the same afternoon. The scale is subject-specific, not a general mood reading. Subject at the top of a page, plainest feeling-word underneath: that is your rung.
What is the Vortex in Abraham Hicks teachings?
If everything you want feels just out of reach, the Vortex is Abraham Hicks's image for that gap: a holding place where every desire you have ever launched is said to already exist in completed form. Your Inner Being is said to stand inside it, already holding everything you asked for. So the gap is between your current mood and the mood of the you who already has it.
Getting in means matching a frequency, not acquiring anything. Appreciation, eagerness, relief or ease signal the match; resistance signals it has not happened.
Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks gave the idea a whole book in 2009, The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships. It argues that discomfort in a relationship comes from what you focus on, not the other person's behavior. Guided meditations on the same image followed.
With an ordinary goal you chase an outcome and stare at what is missing. Here you aim at a feeling you can have today, and the outcome is a byproduct said to be already handled. That eases a real pressure: the daily verdict of failure.
The weakness is just as clear. Because the Vortex is defined by feeling and assembled invisibly, no result can count against it. Feel good and get what you wanted, and the model is confirmed. Feel good and get nothing, and the alignment was incomplete. It is unfalsifiable by construction.
How do you get into the Vortex according to Abraham Hicks?
Reach for any thought that brings genuine relief and stay with it until the feeling settles, which the material says takes seconds, not hours. Appreciating something already present is the favorite way in, because it needs no belief about the future.
What is the difference between the Vortex and the law of attraction in Abraham Hicks teachings?
The law of attraction is the claimed mechanism (like drawing like at the level of vibration); the Vortex is the claimed storehouse where desires wait while your vibration catches up. The Vortex language arrived later and became the dominant metaphor in the workshops after 2009.
Which Abraham Hicks books and recordings should you start with?
To try this yourself, not through a friend's screenshot, start with Ask and It Is Given (2004, Hay House). It is the most structured book in the catalog and contains the emotional guidance scale and 22 processes for moving up it.
Their names recur everywhere: the Rampage of Appreciation, Pivoting, Segment Intending, the Focus Wheel, Scripting, the Magical Creation Box, the Prosperity Game and the Place Mat Process.
From there, The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham gives the compressed philosophy. Money and the Law of Attraction (2008) applies it to finances and physical wellbeing, and The Vortex (2009) covers relationships. Esther and Jerry Hicks also wrote the Sara novels for younger readers.
Most people actually meet Abraham Hicks through the huge body of workshop audio and video.
Workshops are unscripted question and answer sessions where audience members take a chair at the front and put a personal problem to Esther Hicks. Answers are long, wandering, often funny and highly repetitive. Nothing is cited, because the material presents itself as coming from a non-physical source, not research.
Want checkable claims? This will exhaust you. Respond to tone? The repetition is the point, since vibration is said to shift through soak time, not understanding. A skeptic's route: Ask and It Is Given for the mechanics, a few hours of audio, and skip the rest, which restates the same framework.
What is the best Abraham Hicks book to start with?
Ask and It Is Given, which is instructional, setting out the scale and 22 processes to work through. Most other titles are edited workshop transcripts that assume the vocabulary. For money or relationships, go straight to Money and the Law of Attraction or The Vortex.
What happens at an Abraham Hicks workshop?
Esther Hicks sits on stage, briefly closes her eyes, then speaks as Abraham while audience members take a front chair to ask about their lives. Sessions run for hours, unscripted, and are recorded and later sold. Abraham-Hicks Publications has run these events in US cities and on cruises, with paid admission.
What Abraham Hicks practice can you actually try this week?
If that stone is still on your chest, here is something small to do, about ten minutes a day: a seven-day version of the scale ladder, the most testable practice in the material.
Day one. Write one subject that genuinely bothers you at the top of a page. Underneath, write the plainest name for how you feel and find it on the scale. Do not skip to a nicer word.
Then climb one rung. Write three sentences about the subject that sit one or two rungs higher and that you can actually believe. If you are at powerlessness, aim for irritation, not optimism.
Check your body. A genuine step up brings a small loosening in the chest or jaw. A sentence you are performing brings nothing.
Days two to six. Repeat with the same subject, starting from wherever you actually are that morning.
Day seven. Read the page back. Check not whether the situation changed but whether your default starting rung moved, the only claim this practice can honestly be tested against in a week.
On a stuck morning, try a two-minute Rampage of Appreciation: list things you appreciate that are already true and physically present, starting tiny, until it builds its own momentum. Appreciating what exists meets no inner argument, unlike a statement about the future.
At transition points, use Segment Intending. Before a meeting, a commute or a hard conversation, take fifteen seconds to state how you intend that segment to feel. The teaching holds that a brief intention set at a boundary outweighs a general resolution set at dawn.
The common failure is reaching too high. An affirmation far above your rung triggers an inner rebuttal, which the material calls increased resistance.
What is a Rampage of Appreciation in Abraham Hicks teachings?
A process from Ask and It Is Given: list things you appreciate, aloud or on paper, until it builds momentum and stops feeling effortful. Start with things present and undeniable, not hopes, because the present provokes no inner counterargument and relief comes faster.
What is Segment Intending in Abraham Hicks teachings?
Divide the day into segments and set a brief intention at the start of each, such as before a meeting or a drive. A specific intention at a boundary is taught to work better than a broad daily resolution, because it sits close to the situation it shapes.
How long does Abraham Hicks say you should hold a thought?
The material describes a threshold of roughly seventeen seconds of pure focus before a thought is said to gather momentum, compounding over further intervals up to about sixty-eight seconds. Those multipliers are assertions from the material, not measured findings, so read them as a memorable rule of thumb.
Where did Abraham Hicks teachings come from, and how do they differ from Neville Goddard?
Reading Neville Goddard too, and wondering which approach fits you? First, the roots.
Abraham Hicks sits in the American New Thought lineage, from influences the Hickses describe openly. Jerry's Napoleon Hill reading and direct sales career gave it a practical, commercial flavor. Jane Roberts's Seth material supplied the channeling format and much of the metaphysical structure, including a larger non-physical self and a reality shaped by belief.
Neville Goddard placed everything in imagination: assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, hold it until it feels natural, and revise the day's events afterward, all in Biblical language, with God identified as human imagination.
Abraham Hicks makes emotion the working tool, swaps the decisive act for steady, small management of how you feel, drops scripture, and adds a cosmology of a non-physical collective.
Neville Goddard asks for one convincing act. Abraham Hicks asks for a gradual climb.
Against Seth, the difference is tone more than structure. Both present a non-physical intelligence speaking through a woman to an interviewing partner, both hold that belief shapes experience, and both describe a larger self outside physical focus. Seth is denser, more philosophical and less outcome-focused; Abraham Hicks is simpler, warmer and built around getting people what they want. Critics who know both call Abraham Hicks an easier, more commercial Seth.
Rhonda Byrne's The Secret compressed the law of attraction into a promise about getting things, while Abraham Hicks dwells on emotional process and discourages chasing outcomes. The scale has spread beyond its source; teachers including Gabrielle Bernstein have written about using it as a standalone tool.
How is Abraham Hicks different from Neville Goddard?
In tool and tempo. Neville taught one decisive act of imagination, assuming the wish fulfilled and revising memory, in Biblical language. Abraham Hicks teaches a gradual emotional climb on the scale, with no scripture and a claimed non-physical source. If decisive imaginative acts suit you, you may prefer Neville; if you need a step ladder, Abraham Hicks.
What is the connection between Abraham Hicks and the Seth material?
Documented and acknowledged: Esther and Jerry Hicks read the Seth books before the Abraham communication began. The formats match, a woman speaking for a claimed non-physical intelligence with a partner asking questions. Critics argue Abraham Hicks is a simplified restatement of Seth, which is an objection about originality, not honesty.
What criticism do Abraham Hicks and Esther Hicks face?
Before you lean on any teaching while hurting, you deserve to see its weak spots. Abraham Hicks faces four substantial criticisms.
1. The channeling claim cannot be tested, and skeptics regard it as Esther Hicks speaking in a performed persona.
2. The science. The law of attraction as taught here has no empirical support, its central term vibration has no measurable definition, and writers on pseudoscience have classified the framework accordingly.
3. Originality. It closely resembles Jane Roberts's Seth material, which the Hickses read beforehand, backed by a century of New Thought.
4. The moral problem. If nothing enters your experience without a vibrational invitation, then illness, poverty and abuse become things the sufferer helped attract. Critics argue this amounts to victim blaming however gently it is delivered.
Alongside these sits the commercial scale of the operation.
Two episodes come up often. Jerry Hicks was diagnosed with cancer, disclosed that he was receiving chemotherapy, and died on November 18, 2011. Critics called this a hard case for a teaching that makes strong claims about wellbeing following from alignment, and noted that conventional treatment was used. Supporters answer that physical death was always described as a transition, not a failure, with no promised exemption. Both positions are on the record.
Separately, Esther Hicks was removed from later versions of The Secret in 2007 after a disagreement over contract terms covering distribution, and the Hickses chose not to sue. A commercial dispute, not misconduct, though often misreported.
What can be said flatly: Abraham Hicks teachings make claims about health and money that no reader should act on in place of medical or financial advice, and the framework is built so no outcome can disconfirm it.
How do critics use Jerry Hicks's death against Abraham Hicks teachings?
Jerry Hicks died of cancer on November 18, 2011, having disclosed months earlier that he was hospitalized and receiving chemotherapy. Critics say this sits awkwardly with teachings that present wellbeing as a result of alignment, and that conventional treatment undercut the message. Defenders reply that death has always been described as a transition, not a failure of alignment.
Is the law of attraction as taught by Abraham Hicks scientifically supported?
No. It has no empirical support, and its key terms, especially vibration and alignment, are defined by feeling, not anything measurable. Commentators on pseudoscience classify it as such. Some component habits, like attention management and gratitude practice, have been studied separately, but that research does not validate the metaphysical claims.
Do Abraham Hicks teachings blame people for their own suffering?
The teachings hold that nothing enters your experience without a vibrational match, and critics argue this implies people help attract illness, poverty and abuse. The material avoids the word blame and frames contrast as useful, not deserved, but the implication remains. It is the most common reason readers with trauma histories leave the framework. If that is you, your pain is not your fault.
Who do Abraham Hicks teachings not suit, and what do they not do?
If you are struggling right now, this section is written for you.
Abraham Hicks teachings do not suit anyone in clinical depression, acute grief, or trauma recovery, and they are not designed to. The scale puts depression and despair at its lowest rung and offers a thought-based route upward, which is not what a depressive episode responds to. A person told that their mood is generating their circumstances can end up with guilt stacked on top of illness.
Nor does it suit people in genuine material emergency, where the right move is practical and immediate; anyone needing outside accountability, since it turns action questions into feeling questions; or readers wanting checkable claims, since nothing is cited or falsifiable.
What it does offer is a detailed vocabulary for emotions, a habit of noticing where you are before moving, and permission to aim for small relief instead of forced positivity. That is a real corrective to the harsher strands of positive thinking.
Use it partially: take the scale as a mood-tracking tool and the one-rung rule as a limit on how much change to attempt at once, and leave the cosmology. It then works like a self-monitoring log: name the subject, name the state, aim for the next one, note what brought relief. None of that requires believing in a non-physical collective, and it sits alongside therapy, medication and ordinary problem solving rather than replacing them.
The risky point is health. The material asserts that physical wellbeing follows from alignment, and a reader with a diagnosis who treats that as guidance takes a real risk the material does not acknowledge. Read the emotional content, use the practice if it helps, and take medical and financial decisions on medical and financial grounds. Esther Hicks is a speaker and author, not a clinician.
Can Abraham Hicks teachings replace therapy?
No. Abraham Hicks teachings are not therapy and Esther Hicks is not a clinician. The emotional guidance scale can work alongside treatment as a self-monitoring habit, but depression, anxiety disorders, and trauma need clinical care, and a framework that attributes circumstances to a person's own vibration can add guilt for someone already struggling. Anyone unwell should treat Abraham Hicks material as optional reading, not as a treatment plan.
If you are finding it hard to get through the day, please talk to a doctor or therapist. You do not have to climb this alone.
What do Abraham Hicks teachings not do?
They do not provide evidence, accountability or a plan of action. The material is unfalsifiable by construction, turns action questions into feeling questions, and cannot tell a real result from coincidence. There is nothing to measure, by design, not by oversight.
Questions people ask
Who or what is Abraham in Abraham Hicks?
Abraham is Esther Hicks's name for what she describes as a non-physical group consciousness, not a single entity, hence the plural voice. She says she does not go into trance or lose awareness, and calls her role translating a wordless stream into English. The claim cannot be tested from outside; skeptics treat Abraham as Esther Hicks speaking in a performed voice.
What are the 22 emotions on the Abraham Hicks emotional guidance scale?
The scale runs: 1 joy, knowledge, empowerment, freedom, love, appreciation; 2 passion; 3 enthusiasm, eagerness, happiness; 4 positive expectation, belief; 5 optimism; 6 hopefulness; 7 contentment; 8 boredom; 9 pessimism; 10 frustration, irritation, impatience; 11 overwhelment; 12 disappointment; 13 doubt; 14 worry; 15 blame; 16 discouragement; 17 anger; 18 revenge; 19 hatred, rage; 20 jealousy; 21 insecurity, guilt, unworthiness; 22 fear, grief, depression, despair, powerlessness. Wordings vary slightly between printings and reproductions.
Which Abraham Hicks book contains the emotional guidance scale?
Ask and It Is Given, published by Esther and Jerry Hicks in 2004 through Hay House. It also sets out 22 processes for moving up the scale, including the Rampage of Appreciation, Pivoting, Segment Intending, the Focus Wheel and Scripting. It is the usual starting point because it is more instructional than the workshop transcripts that fill most of the catalog.
What does the Vortex mean in Abraham Hicks teachings?
A metaphor for a holding place where every desire you have launched is said to already exist in finished form, with your Inner Being inside it. Getting in means matching that frequency through relief, appreciation or eagerness, and good feeling is treated as evidence of the match. Esther and Jerry Hicks applied it to relationships in the 2009 book The Vortex.
Do you have to believe in channeling to use the emotional guidance scale?
No. It works as an ordinary mood ladder: name where you are, reach for a thought that brings genuine relief rather than one that sounds correct, and accept one small step instead of demanding cheerfulness. Many readers use it this way. You lose the cosmology that makes it meaningful to committed followers, not the practical mechanics.
Is Abraham Hicks connected to the film The Secret?
Yes. Esther Hicks appeared substantially in the original 2006 release of The Secret but was removed from later versions in 2007 after a disagreement over contract terms covering distribution. The Hickses did not sue, framing that choice through their teachings on resistance. It was a commercial dispute, not misconduct, and explains why she may be missing from the version you watch.
Is Esther Hicks still teaching?
Yes. She has kept leading workshops and publishing through Abraham-Hicks Publications since Jerry Hicks died in November 2011. The organization has run live events in US cities and on cruises, plus recordings, books and a subscription library of workshop audio. Check the official Abraham-Hicks site for current dates and prices rather than secondhand listings.
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