Text of the meditation
Only one who has succeeded in commanding and controlling themselves is fitted to command and control. If you would acquire overcoming power, you must cultivate poise and passivity. You must be able to stand alone. All power is associated with immovability. The mountain, the massive rock, the storm-tried oak all speak to us of power, because of their combined solitary grandeur and defiant fixity; while the shifting sand, the yielding twig and the waving reed speak to us of weakness, because they are movable and non-resistant, and are utterly useless when detached from their fellows.
The person of power is the one who remains calm and unmoved when all their fellows are swayed by some emotion or passion. The hysterical, the fearful, the thoughtless and frivolous, let them seek company, or they will fall for lack of support; but the calm, the fearless, the thoughtful and grave, let them seek solitude, and to their power more power will be added.
Be of single aim. Have a legitimate and useful purpose, and devote yourself unreservedly 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.
