Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks Book Review (2004)
Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks is a 2004 Hay House title that treats the Law of Attraction as a manual rather than a slogan. The Hickses present the material as coming from a non-physical group consciousness they call Abraham. You get 22 named processes, a 22-rung Emotional Guidance Scale, and a three-step model of creation. Kevin Trudeau recommends it, and the reason maps onto his own Training Balance Scale almost exactly. Read it if you want exercises. Skip it if you want evidence.
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This is the inner half of what Trudeau teaches, written by someone else, years before he founded his club. Most people who quote the Law of Attraction have never worked one process in it.
Who Are Esther and Jerry Hicks, and Who Is Abraham?
Worth knowing before you buy. The answer decides whether the book is for you.
Esther Hicks was born Esther Weaver in Coalville, Utah, in 1948. Jerry Hicks, her husband, had an odder résumé than most authors in this category: two years as a circus acrobat in Cuba, then twenty years on the road from 1948 as a musician, master of ceremonies and comedian. Wikipedia records that Esther Hicks began giving private readings in 1987 and started running conferences the following year, working from their estate in San Antonio. Abraham-Hicks Publications puts the start of the teachings a year earlier, in 1986, and describes this book as the summary of everything taught since then.
The two of them became a publishing operation. Hay House lists Esther Hicks as a #1 New York Times best-selling author, and the run of Abraham-Hicks titles that followed this one includes The Law of Attraction (2006), The Astonishing Power of Emotions (2008), Money and the Law of Attraction (2008), and The Vortex (2009). Jerry Hicks died on 18 November 2011, at 85. The workshops carried on without him. So did the back catalogue, and so did the New York Times placements.
What "channeled" means here, and why it matters to a buyer
Esther Hicks describes Abraham as a collective consciousness she channels, and she uses a different tone of voice and accent to signal that the entity is speaking through her. Hay House says the same thing in its own copy, describing Abraham as a loving group consciousness from the non-physical dimension and presenting the book as the inspirational teachings of the nonphysical entity Abraham. The wider body of work is marketed under exactly that banner: the Teachings of Abraham.
That is the authors' claim about their own work, stated openly on the cover rather than buried. Nothing in this review treats it as established fact. What matters to a buyer is simpler. Every page is written in that voice, so you decide whether you can read past it before chapter one, not on page 140.
What Ask and It Is Given Actually Teaches About the Law of Attraction
The full title is Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, and the book is built in two parts. Part I runs 22 chapters of theory, including one titled "The Law of Attraction, the Most Powerful Law in the Universe." Part II, titled "Processes to Help You Achieve What You Now Remember," is where the exercises live. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer wrote the foreword and calls the book "a publishing milestone."
Esther Hicks is the speaker. Jerry Hicks, her husband until his death in 2011, was the questioner, and the interview shape of the Abraham-Hicks teachings comes out of that division of labor. He asks. Abraham answers. The book opens with Esther introducing Abraham in her own words, so you meet both authors and the premise inside the first few pages.
The three steps, and why step three is the whole book
Chapter 10 lays out what the Hickses call the Creative Process, and it is short enough to memorize. Step one is yours: you ask. Step two is not yours: the answer is given. Step three is yours again: the answer has to be received, or allowed, and you have to let it in.
Almost nothing in the book is about step one. Asking happens automatically, the Hickses argue, because contrast produces preference whether you write goals or not. The bottleneck is step three, which they call the Art of Allowing. Their analogy is a radio tuner. The station broadcasts either way. If your dial is off the frequency you hear nothing and conclude the station does not exist.
That reframe is the reason the book is worth owning. It moves the question from "did I want it enough" to "what am I doing that keeps it out." Trudeau gets to a similar place from a different direction with his four-step formula of desire, belief, expectancy and inspired action, where the failure point is almost never the desire.
The Emotional Guidance Scale
Chapter 22 is the piece of this book that escaped into the wider culture. The Hickses rank 22 emotional positions, from Joy, Knowledge, Empowerment, Freedom, Love and Appreciation at position 1, down through Boredom at 8, Frustration at 10, Blame at 15, Anger at 17 and Jealousy at 20, to Fear, Grief and Powerlessness grouped at 22.
The instruction attached to it is more modest than most people who repost the scale realize. You are not told to jump from 22 to 1. You reach for the next available improvement, and the book warns outright that the word labels are imprecise and matter far less than the direction of movement. That is unusual honesty in a genre that oversells, and it is the single most powerful idea in the whole 352 pages.
Chapter 12 pairs the scale with what the Hickses call your Emotional Set-Point, the position you habitually sit at. Emotions, in this model, are a readout rather than a nuisance to suppress. Trudeau's version is the reactive mind he says runs your life on old programming. Different vocabulary, same observation: your default is doing the work, not your intention.
The 22 processes, matched to where you already are
Part II is what separates this book from every other Law of Attraction title on the shelf. The cover line promises 22 proven processes to improve your manifesting, and each of the 22 carries a stated "Current Emotional Set-Point Range," so the book tells you which ones fit where you actually are today. The first process sets the rule for the rest: if it annoys you in any way, discontinue it and choose a process with a higher number.
The named processes include The Rampage of Appreciation, The Magical Creation Box, The Creative Workshop, Virtual Reality, The Prosperity Game, The Process of Meditation, Scripting, The Place Mat Process, Segment Intending, Which Thought Feels Better?, Pivoting, The Focus Wheel Process, Finding the Feeling-Place, and Moving Up the Emotional Scale.
Some take two minutes. The Place Mat Process is one sheet split down the middle, headed Things I Will Do Today on the left and Things I Would Like the Universe to Do on the right. The Focus Wheel Process puts your desire in a hub and rings it with twelve statements you already believe. That one is the most practical thing in the book: a way to approach a desire you do not yet believe in without lying to yourself. The Process of Meditation is where the book comes closest to what Trudeau describes as the THETA state, the brainwave condition he says makes suggestion stick.
Chapter 21 gives the timing claim the book is known for. The Hickses state that a matching vibration activates within 17 seconds of focusing on something, and that holding a pure thought for as little as 68 seconds is where they say manifestation begins. Those numbers are the book's assertion, not a measured finding, and the book offers no study behind them.
Ask and It Is Given: Key Takeaways at a Glance
| Concept | What the book says it is | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| The Three Steps | You ask. The answer is given. The answer must be received or allowed. | Chapter 10 |
| The Art of Allowing | The book's name for step three: tuning your own frequency to match what you asked for. | Chapters 6 and 10 |
| Emotional Guidance Scale | 22 ranked emotional positions, Joy at 1 down to Fear, Grief and Powerlessness at 22. | Chapter 22 |
| Emotional Set-Point | The position on that scale you habitually return to, which you select processes against. | Chapter 12 |
| 17 and 68 seconds | The book's claim that focus activates a match at 17 seconds and begins producing at 68. | Chapter 21 |
| The 22 Processes | Named exercises, each labeled with the emotional range it is meant for. | Part II |
How It Compares to the Other Big Law of Attraction Books
Buyers rarely own only one of these. Here is where the money actually goes, what you learn from each, and what every one of them leaves you holding at the end.
| Title | What it is | What you can do on Monday | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ask and It Is Given (2004) | A 352-page manual of theory plus 22 named processes | Pick the process that matches your current emotional range and work it | Offers no evidence, and repeats itself hard |
| The Secret (2006) | A short popular treatment of the same law, built from a film | Very little. It argues rather than instructs | Almost no procedure, which is why its readers end up here |
| Think and Grow Rich (1937) | Thirteen steps aimed at money, framed as a philosophy of achievement | Write the definite sum, build the mastermind, run the autosuggestion | Says almost nothing about what to do when you feel nothing |
| Your Wish Is Your Command | Kevin Trudeau's own audio program on the same territory | Work his four-step sequence and the counterintention material | It is a program, not a reference book you open at random |
The short answer: the Hicks book has the most homework in it. That is its whole competitive position, and the reason readers who found The Secret thin get more out of this one.
Why Kevin Trudeau Recommends Ask and It Is Given
Trudeau's Training Balance Scale is the cleanest explanation of why this book is on his list. In his telling, success is roughly 90 percent internal alignment, belief, mindset and energy, and only about 10 percent physical action. He says most people have it inverted. They pour the 90 into cold calls and eighty-hour weeks and give the inner work whatever is left over in the car.
Ask and It Is Given is a 352-page instruction manual for that 90 percent. The subtitle is Learning to Manifest Your Desires, and almost nothing under it is a task. The Hickses spend the entire book on the state that precedes the task, which is precisely the half of Trudeau's scale he says people skip. If you want the shorter route into the same idea, this site also has a plain guide to how to manifest your desires.
The second connection is sharper. Trudeau's central diagnostic is counterintentions, the subconscious programs he says run opposite to your stated goal, one foot on the gas and one on the brake. The Hickses call the same thing resistance, and their framework exists to detect it. Your emotion, in their model, is the readout that flags a counterintention before your results do. Trudeau says find the buried belief and clear it. The Hickses say notice the feeling and move it one rung. Same brake, two ways to find it.
Third: this book explains why affirmations flop. The Focus Wheel Process is explicit that a statement too far from what you currently believe will bounce off you, and the book has you build a bridge of statements you already accept. That is the mechanical version of Trudeau's argument that positive thinking on its own does not work.
Where This Book Sits Next to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a private success club, with members he says span more than 160 countries. GIN is a progressive system: material, events, a defined path through the ideas. This book is not that. It is a single reference volume, no sequence, no coach, no accountability attached.
A component, not a curriculum. If Your Wish Is Your Command is Trudeau's on-ramp to the manifestation side of his system, the Hicks book is a deeper cross-reference on one specific mechanism: what to do with your emotional state when it refuses to cooperate. GIN gives you the framework and the room. This book gives you 22 things to try on a Tuesday when the framework is not landing.
One contrast worth naming. Trudeau's scale still leaves 10 percent, and this book ignores it. Nothing here tells you how to make a hard call. For that you want an execution book.
Common Criticisms of Ask and It Is Given
Any honest review of the Abraham-Hicks teachings has to deal with the objections, because they are not fringe and they are not unfair. Three of them stand up.
No evidence is offered, and none is claimed
Wikipedia's entry on the law of attraction states there is no empirical scientific evidence supporting it and that it is widely considered pseudoscience or religion couched in scientific language. The authors cite no studies. They never say they have any. If you need a framework tested before you will work with it, this book will frustrate you on page five and every page after, and no amount of goodwill from a reviewer changes that.
Notice what that does to the pitch. Nothing in the Teachings of Abraham asks you to believe a study. It asks you to run a process and watch your own emotions move.
The "you attracted it" problem
This is the strongest criticism of the whole category, and it is worth reading before you hand the book to anyone. Writing for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Mary Carmichael and Ben Radford put it bluntly: the premise has an ugly flipside, because if you have an accident or a disease, it is your fault. A framework that explains good outcomes by your own alignment has to explain bad ones the same way, and that lands on people who are already having the worst week of their lives.
The book is gentler than its worst readers. Its instruction is always to move one rung, never to blame yourself for the rung you are on. That does not make the criticism go away. Read the scale as a tool for your own state, never as a verdict on anyone's.
It repeats itself, and 352 pages is the price
The material was assembled from workshop content going back to 1986, and it circles. The same idea arrives four times in different clothes. Some readers find that reinforcing. For the rest, the practical answer is to treat it as a reference rather than a cover-to-cover read. Open it at the process that matches your mood, work it, close it again. Nobody is grading you on Abraham's theory.
Who Should Read Ask and It Is Given, and Who Should Skip It
Read it if you already suspect effort alone is not the whole story and you want something more usable than a slogan. Read it if you have done the goal-setting and the vision board and nothing moved, because the book's diagnosis is aimed at exactly that person. Read it if you want the most practical book in a famously impractical genre, and if the phrase "learning to manifest your desires" reads to you as an instruction rather than a promise.
Skip it if you want proof, or if channeled material is a wall you cannot get over. Both are reasonable positions and both are covered in the criticisms above.
One caution, plainly. Position 22 on the scale groups fear, grief and despair. A book of processes is not a substitute for support from qualified people, and nothing here is advice for a serious personal crisis. Read it as a framework, not a replacement for help.
Ask and It Is Given: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Ask and It Is Given about?
It presents the Law of Attraction as a working system. Part I explains the model over 22 chapters, including the three steps of asking, receiving and allowing. Part II gives 22 named processes, each labeled with the emotional range it suits. Hay House published it in 2004.
Who is Abraham in Ask and It Is Given?
Abraham is how Esther and Jerry Hicks describe the source of the material: a non-physical group consciousness that Esther says she channels. The publisher describes Abraham the same way. That framing is the authors' own claim about their book, presented openly rather than hidden.
What are the 22 processes in Ask and It Is Given?
They are 22 named exercises in Part II, including The Rampage of Appreciation, The Creative Workshop, Scripting, Segment Intending, Pivoting, The Focus Wheel Process, The Place Mat Process, and Moving Up the Emotional Scale. Each carries a stated emotional set-point range so you pick by how you feel now.
What is the Emotional Guidance Scale?
A ranking of 22 emotional positions from chapter 22. Joy, Knowledge, Empowerment, Freedom, Love and Appreciation sit at 1. Fear, Grief and Powerlessness sit at 22. The book's instruction is to reach for the next better-feeling position, not to leap to the top.
Is Ask and It Is Given the same as The Secret?
No. It predates the film by two years and is far more procedural. Esther Hicks appeared in the original 2006 cut of The Secret and is described as a central source of its inspiration, but her footage was removed from the Extended Edition after a dispute with Rhonda Byrne. For how Trudeau's material differs, see Your Wish Is Your Command vs The Secret.
What is the Vortex in the Abraham-Hicks teachings?
It is vocabulary from a later book, not this one. Esther and Jerry Hicks published The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships in 2009, five years after this title. If you bought Ask and It Is Given expecting the Vortex material, you have the wrong volume.
Do you have to read the processes in order?
No, and the book tells you not to. Each process states the emotional set-point range it fits, and the text instructs you to discontinue a process that annoys you and choose one with a higher number instead.
Is Ask and It Is Given worth reading in 2026?
As a manual, yes. The processes are concrete, cheap to try, and organized better than almost anything else in the category. As proof of a mechanism, no. Treat it as a set of tools for managing your own state, not as a description of how physics works.
Further reading: Esther Hicks on Wikipedia and the Law of Attraction entry on Wikipedia.