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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Man is responsible only for his own deeds ; he is the custodian of his own actions.
THE " problem of evil " subsists in a man’s own evil deeds, and it is solved when those deeds are purified. Says Rousseau :
"Man, seek no longer the origin of evil; thou thyself art its origin."
Effect can never be divorced from cause ; it can never be of a different nature from cause. Emerson says :
" Justice is not postponed ; a perfect equity adjusts the balance in all parts of life."
And there is a profound sense in which cause and effect are simultaneous, and form one perfect whole. Thus, upon the instant that a man thinks, say, a cruel deed, that same instant he has injured his own mind ; he is not the same man he was the previous instant ; he is a little viler and a little more unhappy ; and a number of successive thoughts and deeds would produce a cruel and wretched man.
An immediate nobility and happiness attend the thinking of a kind thought, or doing a kind deed.
The will to evil and the will to good
Are both within thee, which wilt
thou employ?
Thou knowest what is right and what is
wrong,
Which wilt though love and foster?
which destroy?
Thou art the chooser of thy thoughts and
deeds;
Thou art the maker of thine inward state;
The power is thine to be what thou wilt be;
Thou buildest Truth and Love, or lies and
hate.
The teaching of Jesus brings men back
to the simple truth that righteousness,
or right-doing, is entirely a matter of
individual conduct, and not a mystical
something apart from a man’s thoughts
and deeds.
Calmness and patience can become
habitual by first grasping, through effort,
a calm and patient thought, and then
continuously thinking it, and living in it,
until “use becomes second nature,” and
anger and impatience pass away for ever.
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