Efficiency secures a job and helps to secure promotions. That efficiency helps to lose a job is not well known. When the strikers are on the ascendant, one common demand is to dismiss the efficient foreman. Employees retain their job or secure their promotions, not because they are efficient, but because they are in the favour of the employer. The employer loves obedience more than capacity, tale-bearing more than efficiency. An employee who has no character or reliability will not be chosen by any company just because he is efficient. Once you are in the good books of the Management for whatever reason, they will expect you to be efficient. In practice, employees come to value proximity to management more than acquiring capacity. This is, in a way, true in higher life too.
It is not the tapasvi practising severe austerities who gets the reward, but one who deserves it. He who deserves it may be someone who is, in the eyes of an austere man, completely undeserving. The Mother Superior of a French convent who was a renowned nun felt all the outrage when the vision came to a shepherdess and not to her. The Spiritual desert is a whole while austerities and rituals are a part. Character and reliability are a whole while efficiency is a part. The WHOLE achieves while the part is still qualifying. In the complexities of life, where not only the positive factors play, but also the negative factor are active, this aspect gets twisted and presents itself as evil succeeding over good. If you are one whose promotion has been denied over several years because of such a phenomenon, you can try the following experiment.
This experiment will not directly explain this theory, but will get you the long delayed promotion. If you are perceptive and subtle, the needed explanation too will be available. The Experiment: with respect to the JOB, attempt perfect perfection with no inner reservation in the mind. The moment you reach perfection, the promotion will be granted to you. That will be instantaneous and certain. There is a difference between the perfection the job requires and the one you can offer. Even when you exhaust your capacities honestly to the full, things will move and you may get the reward in some form or other. If you are a pure person inside, even this much can get you the fullest reward in its full, rich measure. Experienced people often say, "I don't care what anyone does, let me do my best and whatever is my due will certainly seek me."