Jerry Hicks

One day after school, young Sara takes her favorite route home through a wooded area. She spots a very large owl and nearly leaps from her skin when it speaks to her. She names her new friend Solomon, and he becomes her teacher and adviser in her attempts to learn how to use the Law of Attraction (the same thing as the Power of Positive Thinking upgraded to a natural law). Sara learns how to think differently about mischievous brothers, school bullies, and other challenges that keep her from show more seeing her life more positively. This story-telling approach, intended for children, is a very good vehicle for understanding the concept that you draw to yourself what you think about. This device is equally effective for adults. I found its straightforward, simple illustrations contained a depth of understanding that the more cerebral adult texts had not achieved. I recommend the Hicks's Sara series to adults for their own reading, not in place of the adult texts but in addition to them. Each satisfies a different level of understanding. The Hickses have written many books, all aimed at reinforcing the lessons of the Law of Attraction. It's not a difficult concept to understand, but it is difficult to integrate this new way of thinking. Read them all, as you progressively become more accustomed to thinking in positive terms. show less

Esther Hicks writes for a "nonphysical intelligence" known as Abraham in this former New York Times Best Seller, Ask and It is Given. What I found most interesting in Ask were the deviations from Esther and Jerry (her husband) Hicks' 1989 book A New Beginning I, which predicted various "earth changes" that were on the brink of occurring in 1989, including simultaneous volcanic eruptions that would cover the earth's air with ash. In Ask, these revelations of turbulence are not even touched show more upon. There are also various inconsistencies within Ask regarding Jerry and Esther's initial encounters with Abraham, including an altered-or cleverly tailored version-of Abraham's first words.

As for the "biographical sketch" provided in Ask about Jerry and Esther's life pre-Abraham, it is incredibly vague. It tells us that Jerry was very successful before Abraham, but does not mention that Jerry Hicks was a Crown level distributor at Amway, who was giving seminars about positive thinking and motivation. Only instead of using the Abraham works, he was using those of Napoleon Hill. Dateline did a wonderful expose on Amway, revealing a major business within Amway that was not in selling various appliances/supplies, but in selling motivational courses and materials within the company. It is clear that Jerry was involved in this sort of motivational selling with Think and Grow Rich before his Abraham work. While the effect of Think and Grow Rich on Jerry's life is mentioned in Ask, the Amway link is never made, though it is touched on in various interviews with the Hickses. Of course, this seems to be irrelevant to most readers of the Abraham materials. To me, this was an important fact that made Jerry and Esther appear less like sincere messengers of positive thinking and more like pious frauds for Napoleon Hill.

The chapters in Ask offer an emotional guidance scale to let you know where you are and some 22 processes to help you reach a better feeling place to help you align with those things that you are wanting. The 22 processes include an interesting combination of cognitive therapy, visualization, and New Age woo. Though some of them seem very helpful, there does seem to be some undermining as the processes and rhetoric ask you to set aside critical thinking and replace it with emotional guidance. Also, for the entities that have claimed to not wish to alter our beliefs, these processes suggest otherwise, as they are designed to assist us in altering our beliefs. Various emotional appeals, combined with validation for whatever you want to believe in, make this book very appealing to anyone who wants approval or to believe that they can be, do, or have anything they want. This book operates under the claim that it will help you manifest your desires. But buyers beware, the authors take no responsibility for anything you are unable to manifest using their processes and there are no objective means for testing how well you are doing. And based on the logic presented within the book, even if you are unable to manifest something: All is well. I do not recommend this book to someone trying to manifest something, but rather to someone who wants to become a devotee of one of the most popular channels of our time. When you find yourself needing to listen to their CDs and watch their youtube videos more than anything else, that's when you know you've found a friend. show less

(note: this was among my to-be-reviewed books that ended up in the hands of the wrong people when moving 4/1/18 - see https://btripp-books.livejournal.com/206862.html for details - I did brief reviews of these lost books on recall)
(finished 12/31/17)
A friend of mine is deeply into the whole “Law of Attraction” thing, and highly recommended this title to me. While my cynical mind has a hard time with the genre in general, I found that reading this was not the battle that it often is with show more this sort of book. Frankly, I found a lot of concepts/tools in this appearing quite useful, and am quite miffed not to have it and my notes on it anymore. Because of the nature of this (sort of a self-development workbook), it has a reasonably good chance of being something that I might buy a replacement copy of – which is high praise indeed, coming from me. show less

This was one of the early books by Esther and Jerry Hicks (1988). The nonphysical intelligence Abraham writes this through Esther (some people use channeling to describe what Esther is doing). New Beginning I includes predictions about disasters that will occur in San Diego, San Fransisco, Mexico, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, around the Great Lakes, and on the east coast in a series of simultaneous "earth changes". It also discusses how the earth will be covered in volcanic ash due to show more simultaneous volcanic eruptions. The book alleges that these great earth changes were in the process of occurring. A shame that it hasn't happened yet, considering the book told us that face masks and goggles would be of tremendous value. Hope you didn't purchase the other items suggested in the book (ie rice, beans for storage).

If you are an avid reader of the Abraham materials, however, you will enjoy the differences between this book and their newer works. For instance, you learn in this book that Abraham's first words have been altered, or tailored, since the creation of this book. If you are lucky, you can get a copy of the original text before the 1994 revision, which basically gives excuses for why these changes were not occurring as they said they would. I recommend listening to the Joyous Survival CD near your reading of this book. They compliment each other very well. Abraham will amuse you as they discuss the voodoo of our "earth shifting upon it's axis." This was a popular topic among channelers during the 80s. They all spoke about a similar axis shift or great earth changes. For those who are actually interested in the Abraham materials, this is not the work they want you to start with. In fact, Jerry and Esther have made it clear that they have moved away from that material, so much so that some of the personal accounts of their initial encounters with Abraham have been altered since this book.

I gave it 5 stars for being incredibly entertaining! show less