The Law of Least Effort.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
I have pondered on this Law long and hard and at one level it makes sense. As I read it, one’s path to success should feel effortless e.g. grass doesn’t try to grow it just does. I am three quarters through my life and am just realizing that I have become addicted to taking the hardest path.
I had a career in the military (Commandos). Looking back, I was not particularly well suited to this, I had to struggle to get even satisfactory results but forced myself to make a moderate success of my career. Before retiring I became involved in network marketing but this has proved to be a monumental struggle for me and little to show for it. I have tried trading on the financial markets but again struggle to achieve anything. The harder things are the harder I try but perversely I have linked this with some sort of pleasure.
Recently I got into a new relationship which I think I have now destroyed by subconsciously forcing it into something it was not. So I think I have been fighting against the universe all my life.
Now here is something really odd: on leaving the military I re-trained as an electrician. I am a very good electrician, I don’t advertise, work floods in from recommendations. People appear immediately attracted to me, I virtually never have quotations for work turned down. Money flows to me without effort. People heap praise on me. But I hate being an electrician. Why, I am not entirely sure why, but I feel I am not challenged, for once I am not going against the flow and don’t’ like it. I also want more out of life than being an electrician can give me.
So what is my specific question? It is this, how can one possibly achieve personal goals, affluence etc. by just going with the flow? Surely one needs iron hard determination and discipline to do this?
Response:
Some people, like yourself, have an inner purpose that is served by a striving that may not bring conventional success along with it. The law of least effort doesn’t mean no activity, and I think the important factor here is that you get pleasure in challenging work. The pleasure you feel from those activities comes from the sense inside that you are growing and becoming stronger, because that is what you need to do. It’s not a perverse sense of enjoying failure. In your case, functioning in accord with the flow of Nature doesn’t mean you are passively drifting, it means you are exercising your energy and intelligence into something that feels necessary for you at the time. Even if those endeavors have not been lucrative, they have served a more important role in activating your consciousness and moving your life forward. Nature has provided the electrician avocation as a way to financially support you so you can pursue the activities that interest you. Find something outside of work that challenges you in a creative way and a way that brings you closer to who you want to be.
Love,
Deepak
