Text of the meditation
Men and women of real power and influence are few. It is easy for a person, so long as they are left in the enjoyment of their possessions, to persuade themselves that they believe in and adhere to the principles of Peace, Brotherhood and Universal Love; but if, when their enjoyments are threatened, or they imagine they are threatened, they begin to clamour loudly for war, they show that they believe in and stand upon, not Peace, Brotherhood and Love, but strife, selfishness and hatred.
Whoever does not desert their principles when threatened with the loss of every earthly thing, even the loss of reputation and life, is the person of power, the person whose every word endures, the person whom the after-world honours, reveres and worships. There is no way to the acquirement of spiritual power except by that inward illumination and enlightenment.
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.
