My physics teacher once told us that we don't walk by exerting a forward force.  Instead, we exert a backward force upon the Earth - we try to push the world backwards.  Since the Earth is so much more massive than we are, it doesn't work and instead our bodies move forward.  In the same way, if we're climbing a mountain, we're exerting a downward force against the mass of that mountain and the earth below it; it doesn't work and we go up instead.

Someone in a meeting said something that has stuck with me:  Prayers don't change God, they change me.

So in a sense, if I'm attempting to make spiritual progress, I'm exerting some kind of mental energy - but something must exist upon which my own energy can act -- something much greater than my own energy -- otherwise how could I get anywhere?

Just a thought.  Which leads to another thought... most of us have had the experience of either walking or driving in the country, or being on a ship or boat in the ocean, or perhaps on a plane above an empty landscape.  In this situation, it is possible to get a strange feeling that perhaps you are not really moving at all.  It is only when something new enters the landscape, giving you a reference point, that you can once again be confident that yes, you are in fact moving.  In the mean time, you almost have to take it on faith.  I think the same thing may be true about spiritual progress - there are times when we're exerting this mental energy (or maybe even physical energy while working some of the steps or doing something else that has been suggested to us) and not seeing any immediate results; and we may wonder whether we're getting anywhere at all.  During those times, it's important to have faith or we might just decide to stop rowing since it doesn't seem to make a difference whether we do or not.