Text of the meditation
Guard well your thoughts, reader, for what you really are in your secret thoughts today, you will become in actual deed. "There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed," and every thought that is harboured in the mind must, by virtue of the impelling force inherent in the universe, at last blossom into act, good or bad, according to its nature.
The divine Teacher and the sensualist are both the product of their own thoughts, and have become what they are as the result of the seeds of thought they have implanted, or allowed to fall, into the garden of the heart, and have afterwards watered, tended and cultivated.
Let no one think they can overcome sin and temptation by wrestling with opportunity; they can overcome them only by purifying their thoughts. A person can attract only what is in harmony with their nature.
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.