I am old, I am old…. I have more past than future, which is interesting as I can review a lot of where I went wrong or right. I can review my life against such propositions as : ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.’ Matthew and/or Luke ~ Biblehub.com.

But Abraham says, ‘Don’t look back’.

I was researching a short text on new age subjects in the nineties when I came across ‘Ask and It Is Given‘ by Jerry and Esther Hicks. I did not read it. I decided that the title was either too Christian or too tuned to luring people into wanting things which I, as a sort of Buddhist, found a bit off-putting. I reviewed a few other channelled texts instead landing heavily on The Course in Miracles (which apparently was not too Christian for me at the time) and before that the Seth books. I was also in regular touch with a talented medium from the Spiritualist Church, John who was of the deep trance variety.

It was 10 years down the road that Jean the Magnificent brought forth Arthur. Arthur was so very kind to me… to Jean as well, but she was always in slight shock at the thought of what she was doing in the act of channelling, so his kindness seemed to me to not be a real thing for her. Or I might be mistaken. Arthur always sought to reassure us that help was always to hand. His message was not like that of Abraham, although I do not expect he would have denounced Abraham’s word. More likely Jean would not have liked it much, while she would have admired Esther’s talent a great deal. She was opposed to the idea of word-spreading in any form. And I am not sure what she would have made of all the eternal Laws. I think like me, she may have felt that the presumption that ‘one size fits all’ seemed to detract from essential individuality.

So I often find that I both love to listen to the Esther-Hicks material but that I am also at the same time off-put by it. I just wish Arthur would wade in and sort me out on the subject. I cannot allow for there to be one speaker for all mankind. However, Abraham addresses this just as Abraham addresses everything. Because Abraham is ‘infinite intelligence’. Arthur did not use that phrase but he did explain that by tuning in vibrationally to any consciousness in the universe he could find answers if they were to be given. Privacy was something that would come up sometimes; like Abraham he would say this ‘soul’ or whatever word he used, prefers not to share this information. I expect I often overstepped the bounds of proper questioning. Imagine having 5 years of one to one private conversation with non-physical, source, All That Is energy-consciousness…

Perhaps there is one concept that condenses a lot more talk on this subject: the concept of ‘desire’. It is a word that crops up time and again, indeed it forms perhaps the central premise of the entire corpus of A-H. If people do not have desires they do not have questions. If there are no questions there can be no answers. The whole road-show depends on this one idea that is also central to eastern philosophies: Desire. A-H takes this and places a very positive spin on it. But when I discovered Buddhism in the 1980s it seemed to address this idea in a different way that felt very sensible to me: it was that I could learn to conquer my desires. I did not know then that as a sun in Scorpio person, desire was more or less the key word for my sign. (In those days I thought astrology was just a bit of fun.)

So it is interesting to see that Esther has the archetype of the wounded healer, Chiron on the sharp point of the T-square in her birth chart, in Scorpio. Using synastry, this makes my sun conjunct her Chiron and her Chiron conjunct my sun. So yes, I feel a little bit wounded and a little bit healed by her while, and if she knew, she might feel that her sensitive place was amplified by my energy. She is human while she is channelling. Her progressed sun is moving in to oppose this position in her chart.

I still love to have no desires because it affords me peace. Desiring anything has always caused me anxiety and often disappointment, never peace. I do not get a sense that Esther is a peaceful person which as a water sign she will want to be. She seems to be an accumulator. Overwhelment would not crop up as often as it does for her if she learned to appreciate enoughness, satiation, completion. Does this go against an eternal law of the universe? It is like the long breath out before the deep breath in. I noticed that one new interpretation of the Buddhist Four Noble Truths allows for skilful desire:

‘Whatever the desire, if the solution actually leads to happiness, the desire is skilful. If it doesn’t, it’s not. However, what seems to be a skilful desire may lead only to a false or transitory happiness not worth the effort entailed. So wisdom starts as a meta-desire: to learn how to recognize skilful and unskilful desires for what they actually are.’

(Pushing the Limits, Desire & Imagination in the Buddhist Path: Thanissaro Bhikkhu. 2006)