Text of the meditation
Purification is necessarily severe. All becoming is painful. When a storm has subsided and all is calm again, observe how all nature seems to pause in a restorative silence. A restful quiet pervades all things, so that even inanimate objects seem to share in the recuperative repose.
So when a too violent eagerness or a sudden burst of passion has spent itself, there comes a period of reflective thought, a time of calm, in which the mind is restored and things are seen in their true outlines and right proportions. It is wise to take advantage of this quiet time by gaining a truer knowledge of oneself, and forming a kinder judgment of others.
The hour of calm is the hour of restoration. Joy comes and fills the self-emptied heart; it abides with the peaceful; its reign is with the pure. Make your every thought, word and deed sweet and pure.
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.
