Abraham:
The Three Laws of Manifestation

by Susan Barber


Of all of the channeled speakers on the subject of creating — other than Seth, with whom most of us are familiar — possibly the most influential has been Abraham. Abraham tells us, in specific ways that a child can grasp, exactly how to create what we want, and clearly explains why we must learn to create abundance for ourselves.

The message is simple because Abraham is telling us that we don't need to worry about our beliefs or emotional problems. We don't need to concern ourselves with how we got ''this way,'' what our ''issues'' are. We can skip the psychology.

All we have to do is realize that when we have negative emotion, this is a sign that our currents thoughts are creating a reality we do not want, creating it ''by default.'' With thoughts that feel negative, we push what we want away from us. The proper response to negative emotion, says Abraham, instead of wondering what's wrong with ourselves, is simply to try different thoughts until we find one that makes us feel good. When we do that, we will automatically be creating what we want.

If our negative emotions are so strong that no amount of corrective thought will erase them, Abraham simply suggests doing something — anything — to take our mind off of what we are dwelling on. Here is where breathing or meditation might be of use. Then, later, we can ask ourselves, ''What is it that I really want to create in this area?'' And begin, with positive emotion, to dwell on that.

When through personal experience we have learned that we can create whatever we want, Abraham says, then fear disappears. Because fear is caused by the false perception that someone else can bring negative events into our lives.

And when fear disappears, then all the psychological theories don't matter any more, because they are all based in fear. When we realize that no one else can create in our lives, when we have put this into daily practice and gained the results, then other people are no longer threatening, and we can look at them in Perfect Love.

So Abraham offers a very pleasant doorway into Christ Consciousness. Using this doorway, we don't need pain in order to learn. Abraham's approach is a highly practical method of learning with joy.

Belief Is Not Required
One of the wonderful aspects of Abraham's message is that we can use it without having to weed and sanitize all of our ''subconscious belief systems.'' Belief, says Abraham, is nice, but it's not necessary, and not even very powerful. Abraham likes to say that we all know of the mother who lifts the truck up off of her child. She does not do that by belief. The mother lifts the truck by pure wanting.

It is not belief, says Abraham, that causes thought to burst into the physical plane. Even if we believe that we cannot do something, pure wanting can make it happen. Anyway, belief can be very slow. Abraham likes to ask how long the mother would have to go to the gym before she could lift a truck by believing it.

Our wanting has been damped down by the idea that wanting can hurt us, Abraham points out, but the thing we need to realize is that it's not our wanting that has hurt us. It is our focusing on not-having that hurts.

Abraham and the Three Laws
Abraham designates a ''group of non-physical teachers'' who speak through the collaboration of Jerry and Esther Hicks. Esther is the channel, and Jerry asks the questions. The Abraham group claim that it was the Hickses' combined energies, and not only Esther's, that enabled the message to come through so clearly.

Abraham's message is so clear, so easy to put into practice — and their tapes and books are so entertaining and enlightening — that Abraham has literally taken the world by storm. Even those who have not formerly even wanted to understand the metaphysical worldview are drawn to the Abraham works.

Why? Because Abraham is telling us, perhaps more comprehensibly than any other source on record, exactly how we are getting what we are getting, and how we can use this power deliberately to get what we want.

The ground-of-being of Abraham's work is called the Three Laws of Manifestation. They are:

1. The Law of Attraction: ''That which is like unto itself is drawn.''[1]

We attract, Abraham says, through thought. Emotion ''speeds up'' the process, but thought is what launches it. It doesn't matter whether we think of wanting something or of not-wanting it, the ''something'' we are thinking about is drawn to us.

Abraham says that our concept of getting up on the wrong side of the bed demonstrates the Law of Attraction in operation. Most of us can observe and validate for ourselves that when we start the day out in a negative space, we keep on attracting more of the same.

''When you feel fat,'' says Abraham, ''you cannot attract thin. When you feel poor, you cannot attract prosperity.''

2. The Law of Deliberate Creation: ''You and you alone are the creator of your experience.''

''All things,'' says Abraham, ''are invited by you.'' This does not mean that we are doing it on purpose. We can be creating ''by default.'' In fact, whenever we do not choose our thoughts, we are creating by default. Because whatever we focus on is invited in, and the more emotion we have going on about the thought — be it positive or negative emotion — the faster the invitation will be answered.

For example, if we are picturing being rich and feeling how joyous it would be to have that experience, we are attracting ''rich and joyful'' to us. But if we are picturing being rich and at the same time feeling unhappy because we are not there yet, then our unhappiness is pushing the prosperity experience away. Instead, we are drawing to us experiences that mirror our state of mind: noticing rich people, and feeling unhappy that we are not one of them!

But there is a second part to the Law of Deliberate Creation, and that is ''expectation.'' Once we have launched a creation, we must then look forward to it, not with hope, but with perfect confidence that it will happen. Abraham asks us to expect our creations to happen just the way we expect the market to be there when we are going out for groceries. We do not drive along going, Gosh, I wonder if the building is there. We do not even give thought to whether or not it will be there. In the same way, Abraham suggests that once we have launched a deliberate creation it is there in the same way that the market is there. If we doubt that, we have launched another creation, a no-market creation — this time, ''by default.''

Whether or not we choose our thought, the thought still attracts our experience.

3. The Law of Allowing: ''I am that which I am and you are that which you are, and I rejoice in our differences.''

Abraham says that most of us came into this lifetime understanding the first two laws, and are now working on a full appreciation of this Law of Allowing.

To illustrate this law, they repeatedly use the analogy of a cookie store. You go in and you see that both oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies are being offered. You do not like oatmeal cookies, so you buy chocolate chip. Someone else prefers the oatmeal cookies. All is well.

But if we did cookies the way most of us do life, instead of just enjoying our chocolate chip cookies and allowing other people to have their own experiences, we might walk up and down outside the bakery with a sign saying, ''Don't go in here, this guy makes oatmeal cookies.'' We might get others together and start an Anti-Oatmeal-Cookie League. We might go on radio and television expounding at great length on the evils of oatmeal cookies and the people who make them and the people who eat them. We might vote-in legislation to prevent people from making oatmeal cookies. When none of these things seemed to be working, we might even kill all the bakers, just in case some of them might be secretly making oatmeal cookies when no one else was looking.

Why? Because we have this idea that if we allow oatmeal cookies to exist, they may take over the world? That we will no longer be able to get the chocolate chip cookies we prefer?

If we thoroughly understand, says Abraham, that no one else can create in our experience, then we can allow others to be what they are.

Also, Abraham stresses, ''allowing'' does not mean ''tolerating.'' When we are tolerating someone, we are leaving them alone to do what they want, but we are feeling negative emotion about it. Whereas ''allowing'' means rejoicing in the diversity which alone makes it possible for our Universe to exist.

Without total freedom and diversity, says Abraham, the entire Universe would come to a halt. When we are directing energy at trying to get someone or something to conform to our ideas, we are actually directing energy at the end of everything!


Abraham gives many public workshops, where the Laws of Manifestation are reviewed, and then participants are able to ask questions. The tapes of these workshops, along with several series of subject-matter tapes, are all available, for us to listen to over and over until we ''get it'' or to help us remember who we really are whenever our minds seem out of control.[2]

Following are excerpts from one such tape, focused on creating prosperity.

Creating Prosperity
Our Guidance System

In introducing the tape,[3] Abraham begins by describing the various ways in which we push abundance away from us — all of which involve negative emotion.

Negative emotion, says Abraham, is a message that we are receiving from our Inner Being (Abraham's term for the Higher Self) that tells us that what we are thinking is creating something we don't want. Abraham calls emotion our ''guidance system.'' If we are feeling good, that tells us that our thoughts are creating what we want. If we are feeling bad, the message in that moment is that we are ''miscreating.''

Abraham gives the example of paying bills as one way in which we push money away from us. He says we are holding two columns in our heads: ''When money comes in, you add it, and when it goes out, you subtract it. You are taking score. And when you take score, you cause a resistance in your vibration, and push more dollars away. But we are here to tell you that there is no ending to the inflow of abundance. It is like water, ever flowing into your life.''

Abraham suggests that we begin each day by telling ourselves that good things will come to us. And although we don't really know what can happen to us in that day, we can affirm that whatever happens, the best path will be shown to us. That we will always have the answers we need to make the happiest choices.

''When you do that,'' Abraham says, ''when you start each day with that thought, life unfolds as a terrific adventure. Abundance, dollars, relationships, health, — everything you are wanting will flow, in incredible, wonderful, joy-filled ways, into your life experience, and you begin to live as you intended before you came in.

''All you have to do is find thoughts that make you feel good when you think about money, and you will be inundated with it.''

Work and Abundance

During the question-and-answer period on the tape, a participant in the workshop asked how he could create working less and having more money.

Abraham pointed out that this question revealed his feeling that abundance was related to his work, and stressed that we must not specify how our desires are fulfilled. We do not realize how our words create what we get, how when we say that we want our work to be more profitable, we are limiting our ability to receive abundance. We need to ''USE DIFFERENT WORDS.''

And trust the Law of Attraction. When we think we need to do something to make whatever we want happen, we are focusing on what we have to do rather than on what we want. Instead of allowing the law to work for us, we are trying to do the work ourselves.

In answering the man's question, Abraham said: ''The vibration the Universe is hearing from you and responding to you, goes more like: I'm a good person, I want to do my part, I want to contribute to society in a good way and for it I want to be rewarded.''

And we can earn money through working, Abraham says elsewhere,[4] because action is very powerful. But producing things through action is difficult. We are doing it the hard way when we are ''banging it out in the physical.''

And often, what we are doing with action is trying to get rid of the mistakes we made in our thinking and feeling. People in hospitals, for example, are taking actions to reverse prior negative thinking.

Yes, it takes effort to change our thinking. But it's all we can do if we want to be happy. So why not make the effort? ''We see you spending more time,'' said Abraham, ''learning to use your food processor.''

So how do we phrase our desires for more money? Abraham suggests something like this:

Ooooh, isn't that a lovely thing. Oh, I'd love to have that in my life. Wouldn't that be a lovely experience. Ooooh, I just can feel what it would be like to have that in my life. Ooooh, isn't that a lovely place to go, I can see myself there. And if I was there I would do this and do this and see this. Mmmm!


At this point, the participant commented that he really didn't have to make his money through work. It would be fine with him if someone would just show up at the door and hand it to him. And Abraham exclaimed, ''Here you are, doing it again. You are trying to orchestrate the way that the money will come.''

It is not our work, Abraham told him, to say how things will happen, to outline all the steps we will take, to dictate the methods by which money will come to us. Our work is to identify what we want, not how we will get it.

There was a silence. Gently, Abraham said, ''It's hard to hear, isn't it. . .?''

But if creating is all done through thought and emotion, then what purpose does action have?

Joy, Abraham says. Our physical actions are for joy, and no action that is without joy can truly have the consequences we want.

Be Outrageous in Your Wanting

''You're afraid to be outrageous in your wanting ... because the din of society is not outrageously abundant, and so when you are, you step outside what they are comfortable with.''

To illustrate the point, Abraham asked a participant how she would feel about going on vacation to a lovely villa that cost fifty thousand dollars a week. The participant said that would be great.

Abraham replied: ''We heard 'great.' We heard possible. But, mostly, we heard waste. In your vibration. What a waste, what a waste of fifty thousand dollars that would be. Do you know how many peanuts I could buy for fifty thousand dollars?''

We feel this way, Abraham said, because we think that this is the only fifty thousand dollars we will ever see. But we do not need to ask whether something we want costs too much. We need to ask only whether this is what we want. If it is, then we can create it.

''It is as easy to create a castle,'' Abraham says, ''as it is to create a button.''[5]

Three Processes for Attracting Abundance[6]
Segment Intending

Abraham's concept of segment intending simply involves taking time, as we go through each day, to declare what we would like to have happen during the next ''segment'' of our experience.

We may have, for example, the overall intention for clear communication, but that intention is not very useful for the life-segment of going somewhere in the car. For that, we might want to take time to specify that we enjoy our trip, that it is smooth and pleasurable, and that we arrive safely.

When we call someone on the telephone, we can spend a moment first imagining what we want to have happen in the conversation. Here is where clear communication might be an appropriate intention.

We should use segment intending for the different segments of our day, all day long. This, says Abraham, will ''prepave'' our future. Once we start mentally and emotionally ''creating'' a smooth journey everytime we go out in our car, for example, it is more likely to happen this time, and even more so the next time, and the next. By this prepaving, we can divert negative events that otherwise might have made their way to us through previous miscreating.

The Daily Workshop

To begin with, Abraham suggests that we clarify our wants by writing each one down on a piece of paper, and then making a list of ''Why I Want This.'' Then, on the other side, we are to make a list of ''Why I KNOW that I Will Create This.'' Thus, we are activating the two aspects of the Law of Deliberate Creation: adding emotion to our thought of what we want, and building expectation of receiving it.

Also, Abraham says, we need to go through each day ''collecting data'' on what we like. No matter what we are doing, we could also, with part of our mind, be noticing what we like — things that we want to attract into our lives, or things that are already in our lives and that we'd like to keep on having.

We take these wants and this data into our daily Workshop, where we will sit down each day and spend fifteen minutes doing absolutely nothing but thinking about having what we want and how ''delicious'' that feels.

Before we start, however, we need to be happy. For if we think about what we want with negative emotion, we push it away instead of drawing it to us. So a part of this assignment is to create feeling really happy at least once a day!

We may already be feeling happy when we go into our Workshop, and if so we can start the process right away. If not, though, there are things we can do to invite the appropriate feelings. Listening to joyous music, burning incense or using an aroma diffuser, reading something uplifting, walking in nature, thinking about what we love. . . any method that works is fine, just so we make sure to achieve a happy mood before we go into our Workshop and start to create things.

In our Workshop, we are to think of everything we want, and ask ourselves, ''What would it be like, if. . .?'' And let ourselves totally plunge into the fun, the joy, the happiness, the deliciousness, of that experience.

The Prosperity Box

Abraham suggests that one method of focusing our intent is to create a Prosperity Box. This can just be a plain cardboard box with a slot in it, or it can be something beautiful that we decorate in a way that pleases us.

Then, when we've written down what we want, including why we want it and why we know that we will get it, and we have ''launched the creation'' in our Workshop, we would put the piece of paper into the Prosperity Box and wait for it to manifest.

Listening to the Abraham Tapes

To the three processes outlined above, this writer would like to add that an Abraham tape-a-day may help keep negativity away. There are hundreds of tapes, at this point, on everything from healing addictions to raising children. But whatever the subject matter, it is almost impossible to listen to an Abraham tape without lifting one's vibrations into the positive.

Enjoy Your Journey
We look around us, and we see all the things that are wrong, all the things we have not yet been able to create. We think of all the things that we want. But, Abraham says:

The fact that here I stand with a desire that is unfulfilled does not make me a failure. It makes me an ongoing, eternal Creator. . .

So enjoy the Journey. Because the Journey never ends. You never get it done. You're never going to be at the place where no more desire will ever come up. So you might as well get used to being someone who always temporarily has unfulfilled desires. It's the name of the game.


Because desire is what summons the Life Force. ''Being'' means continuing to have new desires:

To give birth to unfulfilled desire, and then to fulfill it, which will then give birth to more unfulfilled desire. . .

That is what eternity is about.


Footnotes:

1. All quotes in this section are from the Abraham tape titled Introduction to Abraham, which is available free (plus shipping charges) at their website (see footnote 2).
2. You can visit the Hickses and Abraham at abraham-hicks.com.
3. Quotes in this section are from the Abraham Dollars tape (1991).
4. Tape entitled: ''The Law of Deliberate Creating.''
5. Ibid.
6. All taken from ''The Law of Deliberate Creating'' — they are repeated and amplified on many other tapes.