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 - February 18th 2024 - next day
There is but one religion, the religion of Truth.
YOU may easily know whether you are a child of Truth or a worshipper of self, if you will silently examine your mind, heart, and conduct. Do you harbour thoughts of suspicion, enmity, envy, lust, pride ; or do you strenuously fight against these ? If the former, you are chained to self, no matter what religion you may profess ; if the latter, you are a candidate for Truth, even though outwardly you may profess no religion. Are you passionate, self-willed, ever seeking to gain your own ends, self-indulgent, and self-centred; or are you gentle, mild, unselfish, quit of every form of self-indulgence, and are ever ready to give up your own ? If the former, self is your master ; if the latter, Truth is the object of your affection.
The signs by which the Truth-lover is known are unmistakable.
The gospel of Jesus is a gospel of living and
doing. If it were not this it would not voice
the Eternal Truth. Its Temple is Purified
Conduct, the entrance-door to which is
Self-surrender. It invites men to shake off
sin, and promises, as a result, joy and
blessedness and perfect peace.
The Kingdom of Heaven is perfect
trust, perfect knowledge, perfect peace. . . .
No sin can enter therein, no self-born
Thought or deed can pass its golden gates;
no impure desire can defile its radiant
robes. . . . All may enter it who will, but
all must pay the price-the unconditional
abandonment of self.
I say this-and know it to be truth-that
circumstances can only affect you in so far
as you allow them to do so. You are swayed
by circumstances because you have not a
right understanding of the nature, use, and
power of thought. You believe (and upon
this little word belief hang all our joys and
sorrows) that outward things have the
power to make or mar your life; by so
doing you submit to those outward things,
confess that you are their slave, and they
your unconditional master. By so doing
you invest them with a power which they
do not of themselves possess, and you
succumb, in reality not to the circumstances,
but to the gloom or gladness, the
fear or hope, the strength of weakness,
which your thought-sphere has thrown
around them.
previous day - February 18th 2024 - next day