Text of the meditation
The perfecting of one's own deeds is a person's highest duty and most sublime accomplishment. The cause of your bondage, as of your deliverance, is within. The injury that comes to you through others is the rebound of your own deed, the reflex of your own mental attitude.
They are the instruments; you are the cause. Destiny is ripened fruit. The fruit of life, both bitter and sweet, is received by each in just measure. The righteous person is free. None can injure them; none can destroy them; none can rob them of their peace. Their attitude toward others, born of understanding, disarms their power to wound.
Any injury others may try to inflict rebounds upon themselves to their own hurt, leaving the righteous unharmed and untouched. The good that goes from them is their perennial fount of happiness, their eternal source of strength. Its root is serenity; its flower is joy.
External things and deeds are powerless to injure you.
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.
