Text of the meditation
A beginning is a cause, and as such it must be followed by an effect. The nature of an initial impulse will always determine the body of its results. A beginning also presupposes an ending, a consummation, an achievement or goal. A gate leads to a path, and the path leads to some particular destination; so a beginning leads to results, and results lead to a completion.
There are right beginnings and wrong beginnings, which are followed by effects of a like nature. By careful thought you can avoid wrong beginnings and make right beginnings, and so escape evil results and enjoy good results. In aiming at the life of Blessedness, one of the simplest beginnings to be considered and rightly made is the one we all make every day: the beginning of each day's life.
The effect will always be of the same nature as the cause.
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.
