Spiritual Exercise: Law of Reversed Effort

By Harold Klemp

If you feel you are trying too hard to accomplish something, consider the Law of Reversed Effort.  This law is a practical law of nature concerned with the use of the imaginative powers.

It goes like this: The more you concentrate on putting your imaginative powers upon something, the less you are able to do it.  Or, the harder one struggles to avoid something the more it will be attracted to him.

For example, when one is trying to ride a bicycle and avoid hitting rocks on the road, he is so conscious of hitting the rocks he’ll probably do so.  Or if a person tries to walk across a small plank from one building to another at the tenth floor, his mind would be on falling, not on walking.

This law is concerned with imagining and feeling.  The negative thoughts are apt to be more effective than the positive, because the negative usually has more feeling with it.

Take your goal into contemplation and focus on relaxing, letting go the negative feelings associated with not achieving this goal.  Set up a positive image about the goal, then put feeling with it.  It’s that simple.

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Excerpted from The Spiritual Exercises of ECK, where more than 130 spiritual exercises like this can be found. Learn more about spiritual exercises.