Text of the meditation
What temptation appeals to and arouses is unconquered desire. Temptation waylays the person of aspiration until they touch the region of the divine consciousness, and beyond that border temptation cannot follow them. It is when a person begins to aspire that they begin to be tempted.
Aspiration rouses all the latent good and evil, so that the person may be fully revealed to themselves, for no one can overcome themselves unless they fully know themselves. It can scarcely be said of the merely animal person that they are tempted, for the very presence of temptation means that there is a striving for a purer state.
Animal desire and gratification is the normal condition of one who has not yet risen into aspiration; they wish for nothing more, nothing better, than their sensual enjoyments, and are, for the present, satisfied. Such a person cannot be tempted to fall, for they have not yet risen.
Aspiration can carry a person to heaven.
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.
