The concept of Truth-work

My single biggest struggle in developing the Empyrean deck was articulating its category.  What kind of thing is the Empyrean?  What are the other things, projects, or products that sit side-by-side with it?  This partly a marketing issue: I need to be able to say what the Empyrean deck is in order to sell it: is it a game?  A philosophy?  A kind of ceremonial magic or form of divination?  The deck never seemed to fit neatly into any of these categories, though it is certainly adjacent to all of them. 

The answer came with the realization that I sort of needed to discover or create a new concept: the concept of truth-work.

Truth-work refers to any discipline for uncovering and clarifying significant truths.  In the personal life, psychoanalysis is perhaps the most familiar technique.  Intercessory prayer also would be considered truth-work, since it involves laying bare your true feelings, needs and desires, as well as admitting your relation to the divine.  Spiritual direction and having your tarot cards read would also count.  “Life-coaching’ generally would not count, since its focus is generally on accomplishing tasks that you have already set for yourself, rather than on the process of discovery of your own deepest goals and ambitions.  Similarly, we can distinguish mindfulness (directed towards stress-reduction or ‘inner peace’) from those forms of meditation (Zen, Dzogchen) aimed at uncovering the ontology of the self.  Any form of scientific research or scholarship should also count, to the extent that these are aimed at real discovery, rather than mere professional advancement or bringing profitable products to market. 

We all seek to know and understand the world.  What makes the various forms and dimensions of truth-work powerful is the fact that they are disciplined: they rely on systematic techniques, strategies, and principles that are recognized as valid by a community of inquiry. 

Truth-work can should be clearly distinguished from both dogmatism and evangelism.  Dogmatism is the effort to preserve and maintain ideas that have been previously discovered or articulated, while evangelism is the effort to share or publicize such ideas.  Both of these things are important in their place, but both have a tendency to eclipse, and even interfere with, the more basic project of truth-work.  Truth-work, like being human, is an activity directed at a certain outcome, not the outcome itself. 

In our world, truth-work has become drowned out by competing interests, primarily financial and political.  My hope is that be naming the category, and sharing my own forms of truth-work, our culture will come to appreciate the importance of truth-work in its various complementary forms.