Text of the meditation
The loss of today will add to the gain of tomorrow for one whose mind is set on the conquest of self. Let a person, therefore, press on courageously, heeding neither the revilings of their friends without nor the clamourings of their enemies within; aspiring, searching, striving; looking ever toward their Ideal with eyes of holy love; day by day ridding their mind of selfish motive, their heart of impure desire; stumbling sometimes, sometimes falling, but ever travelling onward and rising higher; and recording each night in the silence of their own heart the journey of the day, let them not despair if each day, in spite of all its failures and falls, records some holy battle fought, though lost, some silent victory attempted, though unachieved.
Learn to distinguish between the real and the unreal, the shadow and the substance.
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.