Text of the meditation
Every sin may be overcome. A person's life, in its totality, proceeds from their mind, and their mind is a combination of habits, which they can, by patient effort, modify to any extent, and over which they can gain complete ascendancy and control. Let a person realise this, and they have at once obtained possession of the key that will open the door to their complete emancipation.
But emancipation from the ills of life (which are the ills of one's mind) is a matter of steady growth from within, and not a sudden acquisition from without. Hourly and daily the mind must be trained to think stainless thoughts, and to adopt right and dispassionate attitudes, until it has been wrought into the Ideal of one's holiest dreams.
The Higher Life is a higher living in thought, word and deed.
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.
