This meditation carries on from yesterday's, concerning living in the present moment.  I'm glad James Allen focuses another day on this, because it has been a valuable understanding in my own life.  The 'shadow-land' might be interpreted as the rapidly fading past or the foggy future.  Stay in the clarity of now. To think of the future is to create anxiety over what may be.  To think of the past creates fears that circumstance may be repeated.  The truth is that we make of each moment what we will.  Focus on God and God's love and bring it to the moment.  That's been the most rewarding practice for me.

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>*Cease to tread every byway that tempts thy soul into the shadow-land.*
>
>**May 24th**
>
>MAN has all power now ; but not knowing this, he says, " I will be perfect next year, or, in so many years, or in so many lives." The dwellers in the Kingdom of God, who live only in the now, say, I am perfect now, and refraining from all sin now, and ceaselessly guarding all the portals of the mind, not looking to the past nor to the future, nor turning to the left or right, they remain eternally holy and blessed. " Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." Say to yourself, " I will live in my Ideal now ; I will be my Ideal now ; and all that tempts me away from my Ideal I will not listen to ; I will listen only to the voice of my Ideal." Thus resolving, and thus doing, you shall not depart from the Highest, and shall eternally manifest the Truth.
>
>*Manifest thy native and divine strength now.*
-[Source](http://james-allen.in1woord.nl/daily.php?date=2017-05-24)

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*Excerpt from "James Allen’s Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year" (1913)*

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There is only one moment to do what is right.  The point of power is in the present moment.  All things are possible for those who can act in that moment.

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I'm going to throw in my favorite existentialist quote, from the father of Christian Existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard.

>*“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”*

Meditate on this too, on this day.  As we face forward into the flow of immediate experience, we are awed and sometimes overwhelmed by the infinite.  As we reflect back on those moments, we can begin to connect the dots, but should we reflect too long, we will no longer being living in that wonderous mystery of immediate experience.  Paradox and mystery.  Just the type of stuff that God loves to confound man's wisdom.

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More of the work of James Allen can be found at:

-  [The James Allen Free Library](http://james-allen.in1woord.nl/)
-  [Project Gutenberg (Allen, James)](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1483)
-  [Libre Vox (Audiobooks)](https://librivox.org/author/1323?primary_key=1323&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results)

![](https://4b2.me/mediawiki/images/f/fc/Jamesallen2x50p.png) 
*James Allen (28 November 1864 – 24 January 1912) was a British philosophical writer known for his inspirational books and poetry and as a pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, As a Man Thinketh, has been mass-produced since its publication in 1903. It has been a source of inspiration to motivational and self-help authors.*
-[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Allen_(author))