This page offers you a daily dose of James Allen. Here you’ll find today’s entries from James Allen’s book of meditations for every day in the year and Morning and evening thoughts:
previous day - July 24th 2017 - next day
Lack of sympathy arises in egotism; sympathy arises in love.
SYMPATHY leads us to the hearts of all men, so that we become spiritually united to them, and when they suffer we feel the pain ; when they are glad, we rejoice with them ; when they are despised and persecuted, we spiritually descend with them into the depths, and take into our hearts their humiliation and distress ; and he who has this binding, uniting spirit of sympathy can never be cynical and condemnatory, can never pass thoughtless and cruel judgments upon his fellows, because in his tenderness of heart he is ever with them in their pain.
But to have reached this ripened sympathy, it must needs be that he has loved much, suffered much, and sounded the dark depths of sorrow. It springs from acquaintance with the profoundest experiences, so that a man has had conceit, thoughtlessness, and selfishness burnt out of his heart.
Sympathy, in its real and profound sense, is oneness with others in their strivings and sufferings.
Not by learning will a man triumph over
evil; not by much study will he overcome
sin and sorrow. Only by conquering
himself will he conquer evil; only by
practising righteousness will he put an
end to sorrow.
Not for the clever, nor the learned, nor
the self-confident is the Life Triumphant,
but for the pure, the virtuous and wise.
The former achieve their particular success
in life, but the latter alone achieve the
great success so invincible and complete
that even in apparent defeat it shines with
added victory.
The true silence is not merely a silent
tongue; it is a silent mind. To merely hold
one’s tongue, and yet to carry about a
disturbed and rankling mind, is no remedy
for weakness, and no source of power.
Silentness, to be powerful, must
envelop the whole mind, must permeate
every chamber of the heart; it must be
the silence of peace.
To this broad, deep, abiding silentness
a man attains only in the measure that
he conquers himself.
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