By indirect or progressive spiritual paths, I mean paths or approaches that prioritize training or cultivating concentration, morality, wisdom, and states of mind. Many of these paths stop there, and some later offer awakening as a future possibility that can be attained once we've met some varying requirements or we've done enough preliminary training. Direct paths, on the other hand, recognize that [[Self]] can be recognized directly and immediately: [[You can go directly to Self]]. There's nothing wrong with indirect paths. In fact there are some advantages: - Generally easier for beginners to start: "Pay attention to your breath". - Generally easier to teach: "Pay attention to your breath". - Desirable and more commonly understandable benefits that can be more quickly attained: increased concentration, more peace and calm, less lost and thoughts and emotions, more control over mind and behavior. - Can quickly provoke pleasurable and interesting states of mind. - Clear progress can encourage increased effort and practice. And direct paths have some disadvantages: - Some struggle to understand direct (or [nondual](Nonduality)) paths at first: [[Thinking parts can make nondual practices and teachings seem ineffective]]. - Generally harder to teach, because it points to an experience that can't be understood by the mind or found by making an effort to do something: [[Awakening isn't something for the mind to understand]] and [[Awakening is relaxing effort, not exerting it]]. - Most people don't know what [[Awakening]] is and describing it and its benefits isn't straightforward: [[Self is beyond description]]. - Some direct path teachings wrongly discount the practical value of training the mind, making some efforts, and taking steps to heal [[Parts]] and [[Trauma]]. (And those that don't are often misunderstood as having done so.) See: [[True spiritual practice is effortless effort]] and [[Healing aids awakening, and awakening aids healing]]. But indirect paths have problems too: - [[You can go directly to Self]]. - [[The true purpose of spirituality is to awaken]], not to train the mind or attain spiritual states. - [[You don't need to train your mind, concentration, morality, or wisdom to awaken]]. - [[Practices can reinforce duality, but they need not]]. - [[Indirect spiritual paths can strengthen the role of burdened parts]]. - [[Indirect spiritual paths can require immense amounts of sustained effort]]. - [[Indirect paths can encourage internal polarization]]. - Many of the qualities that are trained indirect spiritual paths are natural to [[Self]].