Text of the meditation
In the knowledge of truth there is freedom. People suffer because they love self and do not love righteousness, and loving self they love their delusions, and it is by these that they are bound. There is one supreme liberty of which no one can be deprived by anyone but themselves: the liberty to love and to practise righteousness.
This includes all other liberties. It belongs to the whipped and chained slave as much as to the king, and whoever enters into this liberty will cast every chain from them. By this the slave will walk out from the presence of their oppressor, who will be powerless to stop them.
By this the king will cease to be defiled by their surrounding luxuries, and will be a king indeed. No outward oppressor can burden the righteous heart.
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.
