Abraham-Hicks

An icebreaker

In 1985, a woman began to feel a presence in meditation. She and her husband called it Abraham and built a teaching, the law of attraction, into a lasting business; critics say its promise that thought controls fate can turn suffering into someone's own fault.

Ask one of these · tap to take it

Where's the line between hope and self-blame in a belief?
Would a claimed source change how you judge a teaching?
Does a popular idea deserve less scrutiny than a fringe one?
What draws people to believe thought alone shapes fate?

copy the questions

Worth knowing · 1 of 5

How did this begin?

In 1985, after reading a channeler's books, the woman began to feel a presence during meditation. She and her husband named it Abraham, describing it as a group of consciousnesses speaking through her as one voice.

Worth knowing · 2 of 5

What is the law of attraction, as they teach it?

As they present it, focused thought and feeling draw matching circumstances into a person's life, so deliberately choosing better-feeling thoughts is held to shift what actually happens. It became the couple's central, repeated teaching.

Worth knowing · 3 of 5

What was their connection to a famous film?

The original 2006 cut of a popular film on the law of attraction featured her as one of its teachers. A dispute with the filmmakers later removed her from subsequent editions of the same film.

Worth knowing · 4 of 5

What's the strongest criticism of this teaching?

A well-known cultural critic argued that teachings like this carry a harsh implication: if thought creates circumstances, illness, poverty, and misfortune can be read as something the sufferer brought on themselves. She called that message actively dangerous.

Worth knowing · 5 of 5

Is there any way to check what's channelled?

No outside method can confirm or deny the claimed source of the material; it rests entirely on her own report. What's checkable is only the public record: the sessions, the books, and the business built from them.

Words to know

ChannellingClaiming to speak or write on behalf of another consciousness while in an altered or receptive state.

Law of attractionThe claim that a person's dominant thoughts and feelings draw matching circumstances into their life.

VibrationIn this teaching, an inner emotional state said to match, and so attract, outer circumstances of the same kind.

More words

Positive-thinking ideologyA critic's term for treating optimism as a near-total explanation for health, wealth, and misfortune.

A voice · 1 of 3

Esther Hicks · Teacher who channels Abraham

Speaking as Abraham since 1985, she has taught that deliberately choosing better-feeling thoughts changes what a person attracts into their life, building decades of books and public workshops around that claim.

A voice · 2 of 3

Jerry Hicks · Her husband and teaching partner

For over three decades before his death in 2011, he ran the couple's public sessions and business alongside her, presenting himself as an ordinary, skeptical questioner testing the material for other listeners.

A voice · 3 of 3

Barbara Ehrenreich · Author who critiqued the ideology

Writing from her own experience with cancer, she argued that positive-thinking teachings like this one carry a harsh, unstated message: that the poor, sick, or unemployed brought their circumstances on themselves through wrong thinking.

A line to leave them with

A private feeling turned into a public teaching, and then a business.