Text of the meditation
Love is not complete until it is lived by the individual. Every precept of Jesus demands the unconditional sacrifice of some selfish, personal element before it can be carried out. A person cannot know the Real while they cling to the unreal; they cannot do the work of Truth while they cling to error.
While a person cherishes lust, hatred, pride, vanity, self-indulgence and covetousness, they can do nothing, for the works of all these sinful elements are unreal and perishable. Only when they take refuge in the Spirit of Love within, and become patient, gentle, pure, pitiful and forgiving, do they do the works of Righteousness, and bear the fruits of Life.
The vine is not a vine without its branches, and even then it is not complete until those branches bear fruit. Practising love daily toward all in heart and mind and deed, harbouring no injurious or impure thoughts, they discover the imperishable Principles of their being.
A person's only refuge from sin is sinless Love.
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.
