Awesome Dude asks: “I appreciate your comments on arrogance. I have noticed the people I know around here fit your definition of arrogance, but only those who follow Abraham. All of them I know get off on other people’s misery and suffering. They say “they brought it on themselves” and I know that is true, at least some of the time. But I still don’t rejoice in their unpleasant situation. I have Friends in CA and they report the same there. Is this how Esther Hicks teaches it? I’m guessing by intuition and this article (the one on arrogance) that you do not, as such.”

Dear Awesome Dude,

First, let’s clear one thing up: There are many, many people who follow the teachings of Abraham-Hicks, and you can’t put them all in the same boat. That would be like saying “all Catholics”, or “all women”, or “all people who like chocolate”. There are those who listen to Abraham who struggle to implement what they are hearing, those who really get it and those who totally don’t. So, when you say that someone is following Abraham, that’s all you can say about them – they are studying Abraham. It doesn’t tell you how well they understand the material, what resistance they are personally dealing with or where they are in their journey.

I can assure you that Esther Hicks does not teach people to get off on the suffering of others. What she teaches and what I also teach, is that suffering WITH others doesn’t help them or you. It serves no one. Not suffering with someone, however, is NOT the same as rejoicing in their pain.

Why would anyone feel good about someone else’s pain?

That having been said, there are instances when someone else’s pain can lead someone feeling better, but it requires that the person who is doing the observing is in a very, very low and painful vibration. It is possible to feel so powerless, so utterly helpless, that gaining power over another actually feels better. Controlling someone else is better than having no control at all. This is what’s happening when you see a dictator slaughter his own people, or when you hear about a sadistic murderer torturing his victims. While it’s not impossible, it’s highly doubtful that someone in that emotional state would resonate with the teachings of Abraham or this blog (happy shiny place that it is, and all…).

Do victims really manifest their pain?

Everyone manifests 100% of what’s in their personal reality. No exceptions. But, there’s a huge difference between taking responsibility and taking blame. The problem is that many people, even those who study Abe and/or come here don’t yet fully understand this difference.

While we manifest everything in our reality, a lot of those manifestations were attracted unknowingly. No one would create pain on purpose! The fact that the pain is there is an indicator that something is wrong. If the engine light on the dashboard of your car comes on, you don’t scream “Why?! Why?! How could this have happened to me?!” You realize that something in the engine needs attention. The warning light is a good thing – it lets you know that something is wrong so you can take care of it before it gets worse. That little indicator light lets you know that if you want to keep driving down the road and get to where you want to go, you’ll need to take care of a problem first. If you don’t pay attention, a larger manifestation, like an overheated engine, will slow you down even more. You can deal with it now, when it’s a minor issue, or you can deal with it later when smoke is billowing from the front of your car. Either way, it’s not the light’s fault that there’s an issue and it’s not yours, either. Unless you noticed some prior indication (there could’ve been an indication that you weren’t aware of, like a rattling sound you didn’t hear), there’s no way YOU (not a mechanic with special training. YOU) could’ve known that some imbalance was occurring in the engine. That’s what the light is for. It lets you know.

When we manifest something “negative”, it’s a sign that something is off. The manifestation is our indicator light, it’s what lets us know that something is wrong. The manifestation isn’t there to punish us; we had no way of knowing that there was a limiting belief in there until it manifested! Now, we have a choice. We can do something about it or we can wait until it gets worse. We’ll have to deal with it eventually, though.

Responsibility vs. Blame

I’m going to play a little game with semantics:

“I create my own reality.” This sentence is often totally misunderstood. There should be a disclaimer after that sentence: “I create my own reality, whether I know it or not”, with heavy emphasis being placed on the second part of the statement. People often think that if we create our own reality, that must mean that we deserve everything we get and that anything bad that happens to us was brought on by ourselves. There’s an assumption that we knew exactly what we were doing and that when things go awry, it must be because we screwed up. Nothing could be further from the truth!

“I receive my own reality.” When you consider that you don’t so much create your reality as receive it, that everything is out there for you to match up with, and that what you match up with is your indicator of where your vibration is at, it takes the blame out of it. We are not designed to know where our vibration is at until we get some kind of manifestation. When we get really, really good at this, we can often head off negative manifestations at the emotional stage (emotions are the earliest stage of manifestations), but even the best among us often need the physical feedback. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the way the system was designed.

You don’t know what the input is until you get some kind of output. When you see the output, you can change the input and then see what you get. Adjust, wait for results. Adjust again, wait for results. Rinse and repeat.

When you see others suffer

So, what should you do when you see others suffer? Well, telling them they brought it on themselves generally doesn’t help at all. Helping them (if you are intuitively called to do so) figure out what vibration they’ve got going on that attracted this to them, so they can change the input (the vibration) and get a different output (the manifestation) will go a lot further towards them fully understanding just how much control they have over their reality.

Moving out of self-blame takes a bit of work. Many people, when they figure out that they do, in fact, control their realities, look around at what they’ve attracted and begin to feel horrible. They wonder how they could’ve been so stupid. They’re applying their new found clarity to their entire lives, forgetting that even just moments before, they had no idea what they were doing and how they were doing it. They suddenly think they should’ve known better, when there was no way that they could’ve. And then, they begin to apply that same twisted and painful perspective to others.

It is possible that an individual in that state could rejoice a little at seeing someone else struggling. When you’re in pain, it can be gratifying (to a degree) to see that you’re not the only one in the muck. But in every case, someone who views others as having brought on their own misfortune, also sees themselves that way.

Negative manifestations can be exciting

I know, I know, this is going to sound very hippy dippy happy shiny puppy, but it’s entirely possible to see negative manifestations and get excited about them. When you understand that anything that goes “wrong” is simply an indicator light on your dashboard, and that when you figure out what caused that light and fix it, your car will not just run again, but better than it ever has (your car doesn’t just get fixed, it gets upgraded), you can see the value in putting up with a teensy bit of hassle. Think about it: If each time you had to get an oil change or fix a spark plug, that dude Q from the bond movies came along and added a few gadgets (like the ability to turn the car into a boat, some helicopter blades to make your commute easier, or a massage table complete with Sven, your very own six foot five, muscle-y, straight, Swedish masseur with the baby soft hands… not that I’ve given this a lot of thought or anything. *sigh*), you’d spend every day staring at the dashboard lights being all like “come on, come on, come on, blink already!!” Yeah, you would.

Well, our “negative” manifestations are just like that – when you clear the resistance that this experience caused you to become aware of, you won’t return to your reality the same as you were before. You’ll be a new and improved version of yourself. Your vibration will have been upgraded, and since it’s just a mirror of said vibration, so will your reality. Let that sink in for a moment. Suddenly not so hippy dippy, are we?

Bottom line

No, Abe does not teach people to rejoice in the suffering of others. Neither does Esther. Neither do I. What we teach is that suffering, while ultimately unnecessary, does serve a purpose and when we fully understand that, we can use that knowledge to diminish and eventually eliminate that suffering from our lives. While we don’t want to blame ourselves for anything that has gone wrong, we can take advantage of the massive opportunity that manifestations of resistance provide us. And then get massages from Sven. Giggidy.