Text of the meditation
By practice, association and habit, thoughts tend to repeat themselves. By daily dwelling upon pure thoughts, the person of meditation forms the habit of pure and enlightened thinking, which leads to pure and enlightened actions and well-performed duties. By the ceaseless repetition of pure thoughts, they at last become one with those thoughts, and are a purified being, manifesting their attainment in pure actions, in a serene and wise life.
The majority of people live in a series of conflicting desires, passions, emotions and speculations, and there are restlessness, uncertainty and sorrow; but when a person begins to train their mind in meditation, they gradually gain control over this inward conflict by bringing their thoughts to a focus upon a central principle.
It is easy to mistake reverie for meditation.
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.