Text of the meditation
Spurious things have no value, whether they be bric-a-brac or people. It is all-important that we be real; that we harbour no wish to appear other than what we are; that we simulate no virtue, assume no excellence, adopt no disguise. The hypocrite thinks they can hoodwink the world and the eternal law of the world.
There is but one person they hoodwink, and that is themselves, and for that the law of the world inflicts its righteous penalty. There is an old theory that the excessively wicked are annihilated. I think that to be a pretender is to come as near to annihilation as a person can get, for there is a sense in which the person is gone, and in their place there is but a mirage of shams.
The sound-hearted person becomes an exemplar: they are more than a person; they are a reality, a force, a moulding principle.
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.
