Text of the meditation
A person has no character, no soul, no life, apart from their thoughts and deeds. Each person is responsible for the thoughts they think and the acts they do, for their state of mind, and the life they live. No power, no event, no circumstance can compel a person to evil and unhappiness.
They themselves are their own compeller. They think and act by their own volition. No being, however wise and great, not even the Supreme, can make them good and happy. They must choose the good themselves, and thereby find the happy. This life of triumph is not for those who are satisfied with any lower conditions; it is for those who thirst for it and are willing to achieve it; who are as eager for righteousness as the miser is for gold.
It is always at hand, and is offered to all, and blessed are those who accept and embrace it; they will enter the world of Truth; they will find the Perfect Peace. There is a larger, higher, nobler, diviner life than that of sinning and suffering.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
