Thoughtlessness is an amazing unconditional state,...one that deeply frightens the majority of people on Earth. Most people today need diversions, noise, anything to stay away from their inherent stillness. The word stillness frightens them,...only dead people or the mentally impaired are still, they may think.
The truth is this,...all thinking is in the past. If you are thinking you are not in the Now. However, people on the Long Path are said to begin and end with ego,...with personal thinking self, not the Still Higher self.
"On the Long Path we search for truth, reality, the Overself. That is, we use the ego's forces and faculties. On the Short one we keep still and let truth, reality, the Overself's Grace search for us instead. The ego is then no longer in the picture."
"The Long Path is based on the beliefs of ordinary living, which start from the imagined reality of the person and therefore start with a fiction. The Short Path rejects this from the beginning and seeks to penetrate without delay to the unchanging and unchangeable Essence."
"The assertion that the Long Path is a necessary complement to or preparation for the Short one is correct only for those who are still under the thraldom of illusion, who are asleep"
http://wisdomsgoldenrod.org/notebooks/23/5
V