Text: The Long Path is characterized by an understanding and effort to make oneself a better, more spiritually attuned person. The focus therefore is on what is wrong with oneself. Emotional purification is needed here, intellectual, character, and mystical development is needed there. The work on oneself along these different fronts is slow and hard. All this effort takes place within a polarity set up between one's striving and the goal, the glorious Overself. When considering the majesty and sacred presence of the Overself, the goal seems ever remote when assessing ourselves as we are. The world may think we're full of goodness, but we are still but a worm when compared to the Overself consciousness. All the attention and effort we place upon ourselves in striving for mystical experience and character development may be laudable, but it is marked by colossal egotism. I want to have a noble character, I can quiet my mind to experience deeper states, I want to be of loving service to others, etc.. is the mind's obsession with its offspring: the 'I' identified with its mental, emotional, and physical constitution with the ostensible aspiration of realizing its source in the Overself. All this spiritual striving is done and controlled by the 'I' complex. But this complex is precisely what is absent in the consciousness of the Overself. How then could this 'I' complex bring about the goal when it is required that it be completely negated and dissolved upon entry to the Overself consciousness? It never can nor would, hence the need for the change over to the Short Path. The Short Path emphasizes not what is wanting in the ego, but what IS now and always has been as the sacred source of our life and being - the Overself. There is nothing to achieve by effort, because we always are the Overself. Practicing the Short Path is a process of deepening profound understanding of the ever present source. It is the mind understanding what it is. There is no effort expended in changing oneself. It is a holding steady of the truth of one's existence until it matures into realization. One can start out with conceptual affirmations about the Overself's constant presence, but eventually concepts and dualistic thinking have to be dropped. Then just acting and thinking as if one were already the Overself without the mediation of concepts and images, because the Overself cannot be objectified, might be the second stage. But eventually because the mental orientation mirrors the actuality of the Overself's presence and reign, the optimal conditions for grace to bring about realization is effectuated. Paul Brunton

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