Text of the meditation
The small-minded person and the large-hearted person live in two different worlds, though they be neighbours. The kingdom of heaven is not taken by violence, but whoever conforms to its principles receives the password. The ruffian moves in a society of ruffians; the saint is one of an elect brotherhood whose communion is divine music.
All people are mirrors reflecting according to their own surface. All, looking at the world of people and things, are looking into a mirror that gives back their own reflection. Each person moves in the limited or expansive circle of their own thoughts, and all outside that circle is non-existent to them.
They know only what they have become. The narrower the boundary, the more convinced a person is that there is no further limit, no other circle. The lesser cannot contain the greater, and they have no means of apprehending larger minds; such knowledge comes only by growth.
People, like schoolboys, find themselves in the standards or classes to which their ignorance or knowledge entitles them.
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.
