Daily meditation, Feb 7th: James Allen

He only is fitted to command and control who has succeeded in commanding and controlling himself.

FEBRUARY SEVENTH

IF you would acquire overcoming power, you must cultivate poise and passivity. You must be able to stand alone. All power is associated with immovability. The mountain, the massive rock, the storm-tried oak, all speak to us of power, because of their combined solitary grandeur and defiant fixity; while the shifting sand, the yielding twig, and the waving reed speak to us of weakness, because they are movable and non-resistant, and are utterly useless when detached from their fellows. He is the man of power who, when all his fellows are swayed by some emotion or passion, remains Calm and unmoved. The hysterical, the fearful, the thoughtless and frivolous, let such seek company, or they will fall for lack of support; but the calm, the fearless, the thoughtful and grave, let such seek solitude, and to their power more power will be added.

Be of single aim. Have a legitimate and useful purpose, and devote yourself unreservedly to it.

Daily meditation, Feb. 6th: James Allen

There is nothing that a strong faith and an unflinching purpose may not accomplish.

FEBRUARY SIXTH

THERE is no difficulty, however great, but will yield before a calm and powerful concentration of thought, and no legitimate object but may be speedily actualised by the intelligent use and direction of one’s soul-forces.

Not until you have gone deeply and searchingly into your inner nature, and have overcome many enemies that lurk there, can you have any approximate conception of the subtle power of thought, of its inseparable relation to outward and material things, or of its magical potency, when rightly poised and directed, in re-adjusting and transforming the life-conditions. Every thought you think is a force sent out, and in accordance with its nature and intensity will it go out to seek a lodgment in minds receptive to it, and will react upon yourself for good or evil.

Think good thoughts, and they will quickly become actualised in your outward life in the form of good conditions.

Daily meditation, Feb. 5th: James Allen

All men’s accomplishments were first wrought out in thought, and then objectivised.

FEBRUARY FIFTH

WHEN the thought-forces are directed in harmony with the over-ruling Law, they are up-building and preservative, but when subverted they become disintegrating and self-destructive. To adjust all your thoughts to a perfect and unswerving faith in the omnipotence and supremacy of Good is to co-operate with that Good, and to realise within yourself the solution and destruction of all evil. Believe and ye shall live. And here we have the true meaning of salvation; salvation from the darkness and negation of evil, by entering into and realising the living light of the Eternal Good.

It is the silent and conquering thought-forces which bring all things into manifestation.

Daily meditation, Feb. 4th: James Allen

To them, that seek the highest Good All things subserve the wisest ends.

February fourth

HE who clings to self is his own enemy, and is surrounded by enemies. He who relinquishes self is his own saviour, and is surrounded by friends like a protecting belt. Before the divine radiance of a pure heart all darkness vanishes and all clouds melt away, and he who has conquered self has conquered the universe. Come, then, out of your poverty; come out of your pain; come out of your troubles, and sighings, and complainings, and heartaches, and loneliness by coming out of yourself. Let the old tattered garment of your petty selfishness fall from you, and put on the new garment of universal Love. You will then realise the inward heaven, and it will be reflected in all your outward life.

All glory and all good await The coming of Obedient feet.

Daily meditation, Feb. 3rd: James Allen

What you are, so is your world.

FEBRUARY THIRD

ALL that you positively know is contained in your own experience; all that you ever will know must pass through the gateway of experience, and so become part of yourself. Your own thoughts, desires, and aspirations comprise your world, and, to you, all that there is in the universe of beauty, and joy, and bliss, or ugliness, and sorrow, and pain, is contained within yourself. By your own thoughts you make or mar your life, your world, your universe. As you build within by the power of thought, so will your outward life and circumstances shape themselves accordingly. Whatsoever you harbour in the inmost chambers of your heart will, sooner or later, by the inevitable law of reaction, shape itself in your outward life.

Every soul is a complex combination of gathered experiences and thoughts, and the body is but an improvised vehicle for its manifestation.

Bliss

Creation is not a "making" of something, it is the struggle to regain the equilibrium, as when atoms of cork are thrown to the bottom of a pail of water and rush to rise to the top, singly or in clusters. Life is and must be accompanied by evil. A little evil is the source of life; the little wickedness that is in the world is very good; for when the balance is regained, the world will end, because sameness and destruction are one. When this world goes, good and evil go with it; but when we can transcend this world, we get rid of both good and evil and have bliss.

Swami Vivekananda

Let us be God!

The world for me, not I for the world. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is (not to progress); it is the nature of man to seek good and avoid evil; it is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be God! Make the heart like an ocean, go beyond all the trifles of the world, be mad with joy even at evil; see the world as a picture and then enjoy its beauty, knowing that nothing affects you. Children finding glass beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with calm complacency; see good and evil as the same — both are merely "God's play"; enjoy all.

Swami Vivekananda

Renunciation

Our best work is done, our greatest influence is exerted, when we are without thought of self. All great geniuses know this. Let us open ourselves to the one Divine Actor, and let Him act, and do nothing ourselves. "O Arjuna! I have no duty in the whole world", says Krishna. Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces, we can only see the results. Put out self, lose it, forget it; just let God work, it is His business. We have nothing to do but stand aside and let God work. The more we go away, the more God comes in. Get rid of the little "I", and let only the great "I" live.

Swami Vivekanada

Daily meditation, Feb. 2nd: James Allen

You must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.

FEBRUARY SECOND

EVIL, when rightly understood, is found to be, not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and it therefore becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn. Evil is not an abstract something outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will be gradually led into the discovery of the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication. ... There is no evil in the universe which is not the result of ignorance, and which would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away.

Every soul attracts its own, and nothing can possibly come to it that does not belong to it.

Daily meditation, Feb. 1st: James Allen

Unrest and pain and sorrow are the shadows of life.

February first

IS there no way of escape from pain and sorrow? Are there no means by which the bonds of evil may be broken? Is permanent happiness and abiding peace a foolish dream? No, there is a way—and I speak it with gladness—by which evil may be slam for ever; there is a process by which every adverse condition or circumstance can be put on one side for ever, never to return; and there is a practice by which unbroken and unending peace and bliss can be partaken of and realised. And the beginning of the way which leads to this glorious realisation is the acquirement of a right understanding of the nature of evil. It is not sufficient to deny or ignore evil; it must be understood.

Men remain in evil because they are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.

Daily meditation, Jan 31st: James Allen

If you ceaselessly think upon that which is pure and unselfish, you will surely become pure and unselfish.

JANUARY THIRTY - FIRST

IF you are daily praying for wisdom, for peace, for loftier purity, and a fuller realisation of Truth, and that for which you pray is still far from you, it means that you are praying for one tiling, whilst living out in thought and act another. If you will cease from such waywardness, taking your mind off those things, the selfish clinging to which debars you from the possession of the stainless realities for which you pray; if you will no longer ask God to grant you that which you do not deserve, or to bestow upon you that love and compassion which you refuse to bestow upon others, but will commence to think and act in the spirit of Truth, you will day by day be growing into those realities, so that ultimately you will become one with them.

Enter the path of Meditation, and let the supreme object of your meditation be Truth.

Daily meditation, Jan 30th: James Allen

Mediation centred upon divine realities is the very essence and soul of prayer.

JANUARY THIRTIETH

TELL me what that is upon which you most frequently and intensely think, that to which, in your silent hours, your soul most naturally turns, and I will tell you to what place of pain or peace you are travelling, and whether you are growing into the likeness of the divine or the bestial. There is an unavoidable tendency to become literally the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks. Let, therefore, the object of your meditation be above and not below, so that every time that you revert to it in thought you will be lifted up; let it be pure and unmixed with any selfish element; so shall your heart become purified and drawn nearer to Truth, and not defiled and dragged more hopelessly into error.

Meditation is the secret of all growth in spiritual life and knowledge.