The Circa Text of the Creator
A Saying of Jesus the Zennist
You have heard that it was said by many, in various ways, how the world came to be.
Some tell of a word spoken into the void. Some tell of a desire welling up from the Absolute. Some teach that the Creator shaped the world from nothing, like a potter shapes a pot, separate and distinct. Others teach that the world is an emanation, the very breath of the Creator, and that the creation is never separate from its source. And some, seeing this, deny a Creator entirely.
The mind hears these accounts and at once it chooses. It makes a preference. It says, "This one is right," and "That one is wrong." It builds a house on one story and calls the house of its brother, built on another, a house built on sand.
This is the disease of the mind.
I say to you, these stories are not a test of preference. They are the grace of imperfection. They are "circa" texts, given to show you the limits of words.
Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s story of creation, but do not consider the plank of rigid certainty in your own eye?
You are given these many accounts not to find the one, fixed, and perfect answer. You are given them to see that all human understanding is "circa" the mystery. We are all moving around the truth.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures in a single story, where moth and rust and argument destroy. For where your story is, there your heart will be also, trapped in a prison of words.
Let go of the need for the sharp edges of a final answer. The Creator is not a fact to be won in a debate.
Be poor in spirit, letting go of your need to be right. Be meek, for you inherit the earth, not the argument about how it was made. Be pure in heart, for when you let go of all your preferences for this story or that, you will see God.
This is the spiritual permission to be a work in progress. You are not your past beliefs, and you are not yet your final understanding. You live in the "circa" of this very moment.
To live this "circa" life is to let go of the need for sharp measurements. It is the humility to say, "I am here, present, and around this sacred mystery."
You ask me for the one, true story of the Creator. I say to you, let go of the story, and meet the Creator. This is not found in a beginning. It is found now.
Be still, and know.