Text of the meditation
Cease to tread every byway that tempts your soul into the shadowland. A person has all power now; but not knowing this, they say, "I will be perfect next year, or in so many years, or in so many lives." The dwellers in the Kingdom of God, who live only in the now, say, "I am perfect now," and, refraining from all sin now, and ceaselessly guarding all the portals of the mind, not looking to the past or the future, nor turning to the left or right, they remain eternally holy and blessed. "Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation." Say to yourself, "I will live in my Ideal now; I will be my Ideal now; and all that tempts me away from my Ideal I will not listen to; I will listen only to the voice of my Ideal." Thus resolving, and thus doing, you will not depart from the Highest, and will eternally manifest the Truth.
Manifest your native and divine strength now.
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.
