Text of the meditation
Meditation centred upon divine realities is the very essence and soul of prayer. Tell me what you most frequently and intensely think about, what your soul most naturally turns to in your silent hours, and I will tell you to what place of pain or peace you are travelling, and whether you are growing into the likeness of the divine or the bestial.
There is an unavoidable tendency to become literally the embodiment of the quality on which one most constantly thinks. Let, therefore, the object of your meditation be above and not below, so that every time you return to it in thought you will be lifted up; let it be pure and unmixed with any selfish element; so your heart will become purified and drawn nearer to Truth, and not defiled and dragged more hopelessly into error.
Meditation is the secret of all growth in spiritual life and knowledge.
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.
