When the Vortex Feels Ungrounded: Esther Hicks Through a Buddhist Lens
I will be straightforward in sharing that Esther Hicks is someone who has never sat right with me in my heart. She has come up many times within the spiritualist and healing communities I move through. It is not that I believe she shares no wisdom of merit—far from it. In terms of positivity and manifestation, much of what she offers is spot on in my own experience. Yet with her, something has always felt off.
One of my most beloved psychic and healing elder teachers was a devoted fan of hers. I remember telling him that I found him far more inspiring, and a deeper healer, than she. He was always so sensitive, gentle, and rooted in his heart. Listening to her, though, and feeling the energy she carries, left me with a sense of something repulsively brash beneath the high frequencies she transmits.
In fact, as I reflect, a few of my teachers were great admirers of her work, and they guided me in ways of shifting the mind for which I remain profoundly grateful to this day. Just today I walked into a friend’s healing workshop, curious to see how she worked—and once again found myself in the presence of another devoted follower of Esther Hicks. I will admit I often receive a great deal from those who draw on her teachings: clarity in healing, and the gift of making the unconscious visible. Yet too often, when I spend time with people shaped by her approach, I leave feeling unsettled, even confused.
I have been in deep meditation today, trying to come to terms with what truly bothers me about her work. The energy and light she channels can feel ecstatic and elevated, yet part of all that brilliance leaves an uneasy stirring in my heart. I often feel almost assaulted by the force of what she brings through. What has come into clarity is a comparison with certain people I have known who live with imbalances that keep them from fully grounding. They can channel overwhelming waves of positive, inspiring energy and light—energy I can only liken to the intense, high-speed rush of a roller coaster. It makes me laugh and smile, yet it can suddenly whip around into a startling insensitivity, an inability to rest in the quiet center of empathy and heart.
Esther Hicks’s words, to me, often teeter on the edge of victim-blaming. At times I sense a kind of fanatical turning away from Earth’s darker shadows of pain and empathy. It moves too fast, too high, too ecstatic—like an ungrounded rush of pure intensity that never quite settles into the body. Am I being overly negative and critical, as some of her followers have accused me of being? I do not feel that I am. Or at least, I feel that this particular current is not a balanced match for my soul’s path. Still, who am I to judge? I judge no one for liking her or working with her approach. I hold the simple truth that if something attracts a person, it is likely what they most need in that moment.
In further contemplation of her teachings and the energy they carry, I have begun to gather pieces from my own research and from studies along my Buddhist path. Buddhist masters and scholars have spoken of her work in ways that feel centered and grounded within my direct experience of it.
Their critiques suggest that Esther Hicks and the Law of Attraction philosophy invert core Buddhist truths, encourage a form of spiritual suffering, and simplify complex cosmic laws into a kind of Western consumerism. The most profound disagreement I have encountered lies in what truly drives human behavior. Monks teach that the root of all suffering is craving—thirst, attachment to egoic needs. They do not necessarily negate the value of desire; rather, they encourage its redirection toward what nourishes the collective heart. Using spiritual energy to continually desire more worldly pleasures—a sports car, a larger house—is seen by Buddhists as feeding the very engine of suffering. Instead of liberating the mind, it draws the individual deeper into the cycle of dissatisfaction and rebirth.
A larger concern I have found is that Hicks frequently equates her Law of Attraction with the concept of karma, a comparison that draws major criticism from those walking Eastern paths. She offers a short-term, highly transactional view of reality: think a thought in this moment, shift your vibration, and attract a corresponding physical reward or consequence. Eastern teachers point out that Buddhist karma is vastly more complex—mysterious, unfolding across multiple lifetimes. Reducing it to a simple vibrational match for a desired vision of life and possessions strips the concept of its ethical weight. They voice concern that this can foster a dangerously self-centered, overly individuated worldview in which a person focuses only on their own “vortex,” overlooking the collective, interconnected nature of reality and our shared need to remain deeply grounded in ceremonial presence with one another and with the living world.
