Law of the Reversed Effort

'Yield and you need not break:'

Bent you can straighten,
Emptied you can hold,
Torn you can mend;
And as want can reward you
So wealth can bewilder.

Aware of this, a wise man has the simple return
Which other men seek:

Without inflaming himself
He is kindled,
Without explaining himself
Is explained,
Without taking credit
Is accredited,
Laying no claim
Is acclaimed
And, because he does not compete,
Finds peaceful competence.

How true is the old saying,
'Yield and you need not break'!
How completely it comes home!
-Lao Tsu

This statement follows his famous
Law of the Reversed Effort
The Law which sees to it that
When you try to stay afloat, you sink;
When you try to sink, you float;
When you hold your breath, you lose it.
Those who justify themselves, do not convince.

It is in the letting go,
that we are enabled to receive;
In the stillness, that we can participate;
In the silence, hear;
and, out of the dark night, see.

To know the Truth, one must get rid of knowledge.
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In Upadesa Saram, Sloka 27, Ramana Maharishi states:
jñana-varjitâ'jñâna-hîna-cit,
jñânam-asti kim jñâtum-antaram.

chith (Awareness) is jñanam which is unqualified knowledge.
When we are free from objective knowledge (jñana-varjitâ)
and when we also get rid of the notion "I am ignorant" (â'jñâna-hîna)
through Self-enquiry, thereby gaining Self-knowledge,
there is no difference between the knower and the known.
There is one Awareness and that is yourself.
There is, then, nothing else to know. (asti kim jñâtum-antaram)
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Further statements illustrating the Law of the Reversed Effort:
from Kahlil Gibran:
Only when you drink from the river of silence
shall you indeed sing;
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb;
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly dance.
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from Alan Watts
Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die,
it remains alone.
But if it dies,
it brings forth much fruit"...
What religion calls the vision of God
is found in giving up
any (pre-conceived) belief in the idea of God.

By the same law of reversed effort,
we discover the "infinite" and the "absolute,"
not by straining to escape from the finite and relative world,
but by the most complete acceptance of its limitations.

Paradoxical as it may seem,
we likewise find life meaningful only
when we have seen that it is without purpose,
and know the "mystery of the universe"
only when we are convinced that we know nothing about it at all.