Text of the meditation
People will be free when they are freed from self. All outward oppression is but the shadow and effect of the real oppression within. For ages the oppressed have cried for liberty, and a thousand man-made statutes have failed to give it to them. They can give it only to themselves; they will find it only in obedience to the Divine Statutes that are inscribed upon their hearts.
Let them resort to the inward Freedom, and the shadow of oppression will no longer darken the earth. Let people cease to oppress themselves, and no one will oppress their fellow human beings. People legislate for an outward freedom, yet continue to make such freedom impossible to achieve by fostering an inward condition of enslavement.
They thus pursue a shadow without, and ignore the substance within. All outward forms of bondage and oppression will cease to be when people cease to be the willing bond-slaves of passion, error and ignorance. Freedom is for the free!
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.
