Text of the meditation
Nothing can prevent us from accomplishing the aims of our life. A person's power subsists in discrimination and choice. They do not create one jot of the universal conditions or laws; these are the essential principles of things, and are neither made nor unmade.
They discover them; they do not make them. Ignorance of them is at the root of the world's pain. To defy them is folly and bondage. Who is the freer person: the thief who defies the laws of their country, or the honest citizen who obeys them? Who, again, is the freer: the fool who thinks they can live as they like, or the wise person who chooses to do only what is right?
A person is, in the nature of things, a being of habit, and this they cannot alter; but they can alter their habits. They cannot alter the law of their nature, but they can adapt their nature to the law. The good person is the one whose habits of thought and action are good.
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.
