Text of the meditation
All temptation comes from within. People fail to conquer, and the fight is indefinitely prolonged, because they labour, almost universally, under two delusions: first, that all temptations come from without; and second, that they are tempted because of their goodness.
While a person is held in bondage by these delusions, they will make no progress; when they have shaken them off, they will pass on rapidly from victory to victory, and will taste spiritual joy and rest. The source and cause of all temptation is in the inward desire; that being purified and eliminated, outward objects and extraneous powers are utterly powerless to move the soul to sin or to temptation.
The outward object is merely the occasion of the temptation, never the cause; this is in the desire of the one tempted. A person is tempted because there are certain desires or states of mind that they have come to regard as unholy.
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.