Text of the meditation
The body is the image of the mind. One who suffers in body will not necessarily be cured at once when they begin to fashion their mind on moral and harmonious principles; indeed, for a time, while the body is bringing to a crisis, and throwing off the effects of, former inharmonies, the morbid condition may appear to be intensified.
As a person does not gain perfect peace immediately upon entering the path of righteousness, but must, except in rare instances, pass through a painful period of adjustment, neither do they, with the same rare exception, at once acquire perfect health. Time is required for bodily as well as mental readjustment, and even if health is not reached, it will be approached.
If the mind is made robust, the bodily condition will take a secondary and subordinate place, and will cease to have the primary importance that so many give it. Mental harmony, or moral wholeness, makes for bodily health.
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.
