I have questions, but I don't feel they can be explored with a goal to really figure out what is going on, when there is underlying animosity towards some of the characters. Sometimes I just want to say, "Hmm this data looks kinda weird, what does that mean?" without having to deal with any preconceived ideas.

So I'm not sure what the motive really was in posting the original link and even if I would like ot have a thoughtful conversation full of questions, to try to get a better perspective, I'm not sure that is possible.

Volu

Yes in this thread perhaps 'animosity' is a bit strong, but over time I do not think it is incorrect. But for discussion's sake I will happily go with "distrust." It is as good a place to start a discussion. And I will take your point because I like the warp and woof of your quote. Not sure what you mean by "material spin"  :)   or by law of allowance. Is law of allowance like "do unto others"?

BTW, why does this topic interest you?

The thoughts presented so far come up often enough for me to think that they are of continual importance to people. Yet I see so many thoughts and points presented so far as to feel that the balls of yarn have become unwound and so totally tangled that I will never get them all straightened out. Certainly not in just a few posts.

I wish I were able to look at all the ideas and reduce things to a few basic premises and then derive everything from that. It doesn't work, I don't know why not. That doesn't stop me from trying.

I think I recall that recoverer does not like gurus and also defnes gurus rather loosely. So I think the video was posted as a place to start a put-down of some of these movements. I can't figure out how to have a discussion about underlying principles if I am to worry if the Hicks are putting one over on people, though that may be a valid question.

So as part of a disclaimer, I will admit up front that Seth really has had a major impact on me. It is because it was in a book and it introduced me to ideas I had never paid attention to before. Reincarnation? out of body? mediumship? on and on. You have to put that in context. I grew up in a small town going to (protestant ) church and sort of following the straight and narrow (partly because my parents were alcoholics ..but then now I think half the town was!..and I was trying to fix things by 'being good'). Analytical and intellectual enough to live in my ideas, yeah college shook things up! but by grad school I was in a rut again. The only thing mystical I could ever connect to was William Blake; not into drugs. I was feeling that life had no purpose. And then the first Seth book fell into my lap. Whole new worlds opened up. I was more open to reading Monroe's first book because I had read Seth first. After a long while I realized it didn't fix alot of things, but my whole perspective was changed by then. It's complex. But I think of Seth as an old friend. It pains me when someone mocks that whole thing. Jane and Robert Butts did not appear to get rich off that. There are things about that that still intrigue me. I am still interested in discussing the validity of the concepts. Maybe that just means I like discussing metaphysics. Wish I knew what Bob Monroe thought of his visit with Jane/Seth. Is the material still archived at Yale?

I don't think selling books makes someone a guru. If it did, J.K. Rowling would be at the top of the list. After all, what kind of nutty people take their children to a bookstore at midnight for a book release? :)

Volu points to the line most of are always figuring out how to walk, that is, how to express what we have experienced or believe or think in a way that is persuasive, or at least provocative, but not doctrinaire and oppressive.  In other words, how to start and keep a discussion going and avoid lapsing into a diatribe and, essentially, yelling at our forum-mates as if they were idiots for not seeing things as we do.

Lucy I, too, stumbled upon Seth way back when at a time when I needed just that to open my mind to new ways of thinking about things.  And I share your sadness about the mocking of Seth, though I don't have the time or energy to revisit those works to either defend Seth or change my perhaps nostalgic view.  Seth seems sort of like the raggedy teddy bear that I loved so dearly when a teddy bear was what I needed, even though I no longer know just what a teddy bear is all about. 

I like Seth as a comforting teddy bear too.

I don't know what the phenomenon of mediumship represents. But we have such a rudimentary intellectual grasp of what conciousness is anyway; how can we say what mediumship is?

A healer was the first person who suggested looking at the Abraham-Hicks stuff. She said it was sort of like Seth. This was in the early days of the web and I recall looking it up. But I had other things ot occupy my time then so I let it go. I came back to it later, even got a book. I went to their site and found they would be in town on a particular date. I had a little extra cash and more amazingly some free time so I signed up for one of the days. I was really curious.

Wow. What a production. I was amazed to go into the lobby of the hotel and see how many people were checking attendees in, and how much stuff there was for sale! Yeah that looked a little strange to me. So I found a seat and waited. Finally they started. To a packed audience I might add. Jerry started and warmed the audience up. Then Esther came. She really didn't talk or anything. She just did the trance thing. "Hi-goodbye" I think she said. "Abraham" talked for a good while. More of the same as is in the books. Then we broke for lunch. That was part of the package. The people at my table were alll interesting and had different levels of interest and knowledge and whatever. At least here was a group of people who wanted to talk openly about this sort of phenomena. Then after lunch I think we had two shorter sessions of "Abraham." There was a question and answer period. That sort of bothered me as when I heard the questions I began to wonder if at least one was a plant. The guy missed the morning and shows up in the PM and has a question and gets chosen to ask it? I don't recall the question but it seemed odd. Then finally it was over (I don't like to sit for long periods so I was glad). at breaks and afterwards there was lots of merchandising. That disappointed me but I did note that people were buying of their own free will, nobody forced them.

But one thing that has bothered me a lot was something that happened afterwards. The line to the facilities was very long and so I wandered off in another direction looking for more. That's not interesting except to point out that I wasn't looking for Esther. I thought Jerry had said she would be available for questions afterwards and that she was in the main event hall. So I walked across the lobby and down another hall. Suddenly Esther, with Jerry not far behind, came out of a door or entranceway. being a friendly sort I smiled and said hi. The part that shocked me was the look on Esther's face when she saw me. She looked positively alarmed for a second, then said hi, looked down and kept walking. Jerry came up and made some inane prattle which I interpeted as his keeping me from talking to her, and we kept moving forward, they to the elevator and me to the other line. I was shocked at the lack of interest in even being pleasant with me. It may sound silly, but that feeling of her pulling back has bothered me ever since.

I haven't read about mediumship in a long time. When it was popular before in the late 1800's/early 1900's? people did ask questions like, why is the voice so changed and who is this other entity? I've been tryong to recall where I read about it. I also tried to find someone else who experiences this and ask them how Esther could do this for so many hours a day and so often on the road. But I don't know anyone to ask.

It was hard to not notice how much many of the crowd were buoyed up by this day's experience. I heard one woman say she came for both sessions and was staying in the hotel. She was from CT and the Hicks go to CT so I don't know why someone would pay to come up to MA for another weekend of this. But it is her money and her experience. It is interesting how this thing satisfies a real need in many people. It is sort of amazing actually.

But it still didn't answer a question primary to me:

Does "Ask and it shall be given" really work?

Because I'm not getting what I think is a one-to-one correlation with that between what I think I am asking for and what manifests in my life.

Lucy said:
"But it still didn't answer a question primary to me: Does "Ask and it shall be given" really work?
Because I'm not getting what I think is a one-to-one correlation with that between what I think I am asking for and what manifests in my life. "

I think that the law of attraction at its basic essence is just this; that our deepest thought that is tied in our gut to belief with conviction, tends to alter probabilities in our lives and manifest what we ask for.  But what we is for is not the whimsical passing wishes of our conscious mind.  So if I try to use the law of attraction to get out of a financial rut, finding myself broke, I can't simply "wish to be rich."  That is not how it works, and why so many of us fail.  We have to use our subconscious mind to expect the situation to change.  For some, this is done by the use of imagery; we picture the desired end, the goal while meditating.  We actually see ourselves and our loved ones in our mind's eye rejoicing and"feel" the feelings of joy, before the outcome has been reached.  Spiritual healers talk about feeling this to heal others.  To "see it as already done."  This is a difficult concept, but very effective.  If you deeply doubt what you are doing as you invoke the law of attraction, you are bound to fail.  This is because your subconscious acts most strongly on your thoughts tied into true belief or conviction. 

How do you banish doubt then to manifest your goals in your life?  You don't have to banish doubt completely.  But when you are relaxed, when you meditate you must state intention without doubt, as if it were accomplished.  You should give thanks for the desired outcome before it has occurred and cultivate that feeling of knowing or fulfillment to impress on your subconscious. 

My understanding is that the subconscious mind is like a reactive template that is connected to God and the universe.  It doesn't make decisions, but acts upon thoughts bound to strong beliefs.  If you send it conflicting beliefs, you confuse the subconscious and lose your goal. 

Matthew

Quote:


I can't recall or find where I've seen discussions on this, but others have asked this question. I guess no one found a good answer.

One place I looked was in psychologist Lawrence LeShan's work The Medium the Mystic and the Physicist. Before he turned his attention to folks with cancer, he studied alternate realities and "psychic healing," and apparently worked a good bit with Eileen Garrett. I agree with the Wiki folks that this article is lacking, the Wiki article does give an overview of Garrett and I think it is interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_J._Garrett

She "developed" (?) a trance personality called Uvani, and LeShan included an appendix in the aforementioned book called "When is Uvani?" in which he explores the question of whether Uvani, who is clearly not a structural entity, might be some kind of functional entity. The book was written in 1966 so it seems a little archaic now, but I think LeShan was sincere and honest in his writings on Garrett/Uvani.

But whether or not LeShan would take Esther/Abraham as seriously as he did Eileen Garrett is another question. I don't know how what went on with Eileen Garrett compares to what went on with Jane Roberts or what goes on with Esther Hicks.

With Seth, I do not try to equate the message with the messenger and I think the ideas are interesting.

The ideas with Hicks are things I've heard before, occasionally presented from a new angle, but I wonder if sometimes folks confuse the messenger and the message there. But we live in a celebrity-based culture so I'm not surprised people go for celebrity status rather than for ..depth of content or whatever you want to call it. I don't think Jane Roberts was interested in celebrity status and she herself expressed surprise and questioning about some of the ideas Seth spoke about.