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James Allen daily

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:


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The cause of the common lack of thoroughness lies in the thirst for pleasure.

September Thirteenth.

EVERY employer of labour knows how difficult it is to find men and women who will put thought and energy into their work, and do it completely and satisfactorily. Bad workmanship abounds. Skill and excellence are acquired by few. Thoughtlessness, carelessness, and laziness are such common vices that it should cease to appear strange that, in spite of " social reform," the ranks of the unemployed should continue to swell, for those who scamp their work to-day will, another day, in the hour of deep necessity, look and ask for work in vain.

The law of " the survival of the fittest " is not based on cruelty, it is based on justice ; it is one aspect of that divine equity which everywhere prevails. Vice is " beaten with many stripes " ; if it were not so, how could virtue be developed ? The thoughtless and lazy cannot take precedence of, or stand equally with, the thoughtful and industrious.

The mind that is occupied with pleasure cannot also be concentrated upon the perfect performance of duty.


Thirteenth Morning

As darkness is a passing shadow, and light
is a substance that remains, so sorrow is
fleeting, but joy abides for ever. No true
thing can pass away and become lost; no
false thing can remain and be preserved.
Sorrow is false, and it cannot live; joy is
true, and it cannot die. Joy may become
hidden for a time, but it can always be
recovered; sorrow may remain for a period,
but it can be transcended and dispersed.

Do not think your sorrow will remain;
it will pass away like a cloud. Do not
believe that the torments of sin are ever
your portion; they will vanish like a
hideous nightmare. Awake! Arise! Be holy
and joyful.

Thirteenth Evening

Tribulation lasts only so long as there
remains some chaff of self which needs to
be removed. The tribulum, or threshing
machine, ceases to work when all the
grain is separated from the chaff;
and when the last impurities are
blown away from the soul,
tribulation has completed its work,
and there is no more need for it;
then abiding joy is realized.

The sole and supreme use of suffering
is to purify, to burn out all that is useless
and impure. Suffering ceases for him
who is pure. There could be no object
in burning gold after the dross had
been removed.


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