Text of the meditation
You must get outside yourself, and begin to examine and understand yourself. Evil, when rightly understood, is found to be not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and so it becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn.
Evil is not an abstract something outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will gradually be led to discover the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication.
There is no evil in the universe that is not the result of ignorance, and that would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away. Every soul attracts its own, and nothing can possibly come to it that does not belong to it.
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.
