Our  sweet and beloved Hay House author Jerry Hicks maintained his unfaltering zest for life until the day he passed on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. Known for co-authoring numerous New York Times best-selling books and audio programs on the teachings of Abraham® with his wife of 30 years Esther, Jerry devoted his life to sharing Abraham’s solutions to real-life challenges and helping others to use this wisdom to joyously manifest all they desire.

We offer this powerful excerpt from Esther and Jerry’s book, The Vortex below as a tribute to this fun-loving, joy-filled and inspiring mentor whose passion was to help others find their true Source through the wisdom of Abraham. Jerry’s passionate and joyous spirit will live on in our hearts and we will miss him dearly.

Jerry: Can you guide us on how to feel good? Can you give us a process or a technique to feel good about ourselves? In other words, speak to us about how we can deliberately acquire self-appreciation.

Abraham: The ultimate in self-appreciation is the allowing of yourself to be in Vibrational alignment with Source, with the expanded you inside your Vortex, and it is not necessary that you focus upon yourself in order to do that. In fact, for most people, especially in the beginning, it is easier for you to find alignment while focusing on many other things, other than you.

Over time, you have developed many opinions and attitudes, and habits of thoughts—or beliefs about yourself—that when activated hold you outside the Vortex. And so, it is easier to get inside the Vortex by focusing upon other subjects that are easier for you to feel good about.

For example, you could think about your favorite pet, and in your appreciation of that pet, you may move right into the Vortex because you do not hold resistant thoughts of envy or blame or guilt toward your pet. We would really like you to see that when you are thinking about your cat—or anything that holds no resistance to your Vortex, and so you flow easily inside—you are then joined (or better stated, you have allowed yourself to merge) with the whole of that which you are. We would call that the ultimate self-appreciation, even though you were not thinking about you in order to accomplish it. If we were standing in your physical shoes, we would choose the subjects that we easily feel good about as our focal points for getting into the Vortex.

Your physical orientation has trained you to be objective, to weigh the pros and the cons of every subject, but you will discover, as you play the game, that the pros of a subject may very well put you right inside the Vortex; while, as you focus upon the cons, the Vortex will spit you right out. You cannot focus upon unwanted and be in the Vortex at the same time. . . . By often making the statement “Nothing is more important than that I feel good,” you will make yourself more aware of your proximity to your Vortex.