THAT IS THAT

Essays About True Nature

SEEKING, GIVING, AND BEING

The spiritual life can be divided into three stages: seeking or acquiring, giving or
expressing, and being. Each of these three stages has unique characteristics and
qualities, and each is equally important and necessary. They are not linear, but
rather a cycle that moves from one to the next and back again.

The first stage of seeking is a period of searching for truth and trying to get there.
It's the period of greatest doing and also the greatest sense of a separate self
that is seeking. This is what most of the world is up to, although most people are
seeking or acquiring wealth and fame and the other things the ego wants. But
underlying even these activities is a deeper pull to find love, peace, and
happiness.The ego just mistakenly thinks money or fame will give it peace, love,
and happiness. Eventually, the individual discovers that these ego-driven
activities don't really satisfy, so the seeking becomes more subtle and direct. We
eventually seek peace itself and love itself, not something that will bring us
peace or love.

The second stage, giving or expressing, is what naturally happens when we start
finding true love and happiness. It's such a joy to find the real sources of
satisfaction and fulfillment that we are inspired to share love and joy with others
and to express them in everything we do. This phase is still a phase of doing, but
there's much less of a sense of a separate self that is doing it. It seems more like
we are being done by the love and joy flowing through us.

The third stage, being, is really a moving beyond the duality of the first two stages
into a place of such complete fullness and perfection that there's no more need or
pull to do anything. There's a simple recognition that you already are everything
and so is everybody else. So what need is there to seek or find, or give or
express? Everything is already fulfilled beyond any possibility of improvement or
gain. Outwardly, this is a time of very little doing beyond taking care of the basic
necessities of life. There's no motivation to do anything for what it will
accomplish or give you, so it's enough most of the time to just rest and be.

The first thing we tend to do when we hear about these stages is to try to apply
them as a prescription for our spiritual life. We try to do the actions of the second
and especially the third stages as a way to get there. And yet, these stages aren't
a prescription, but simply a description of the phases or cycles of our spiritual life.
They are a description of how Essence, or Being, moves in this world of form. In
fact, to try to get to the second or third stage is really an expression of the
first stage. It's trying to achieve or acquire spiritual depth.

Instead, we can simply be curious about how these stages are unfolding in our
life. They are all necessary aspects of spiritual life, and one isn't better than
the other. Each phase can naturally follow the others in an endless cycle of
movement from pure being to active creation and doing and back again.

It's not uncommon to overemphasize one of these stages or to become stuck or
attached to any point in the cycle. Most of us have experienced being stuck in the
first phase and being very attached to achieving and acquiring more happiness
and spiritual realization. In the process of seeking these, we often become
attached to the activity of seeking itself because it gives us a sense of a mission
and purpose. Being a spiritual seeker is quite a dramatic and inspiring thing.
We can become just as stuck in the second phase, in the identity as someone
who has found the truth and is now here to give it to others. The sense of
identity that comes from being a spiritual teacher or guide is quite
seductive. While it's natural and fulfilling to be a teacher or guide once
you've discovered the truth, there's no lasting identity to be found in this,
and any attempt to form an identity around being a spiritual teacher will
eventually become a source of suffering.

One can't really speak of getting stuck in the third stage, as it isn't a place where
any identity can form or any attachment can happen. There's only everything
being as it is and no sense of a separate self to be stuck. However, as the cycle
repeats and we find ourselves back in a phase of doing or giving, we may
then form an attachment to our memory of the pure state of being that we
seem to
have lost.