Seek Your Own Truth is the motto of House Kheperu. The group's north star, if you will. The members of House Kheperu are a collection of fiercely independent and individualistic people, but that single saying unites our work, and guides almost everything we do; we each seek our own truths, and we each strive to support each other in doing the same.
On the one hand, it's hard to imagine such a supportive, open-ended motto being problematic. But in this day and age, with increasingly fuzzy definitions of truth, and increasingly seductive and misleading arguments proliferating online, aren't anti-vaxxers and COVID-deniers and hardcore Q-Anon aficionados, well, seeking their own truths? Doesn't that mean their approaches should be unassailable under the banner of personal freedom? Far too many fringe conspiracy theories could fly the same banner we do, in order to use it as a shield against well-deserved criticism, and dig in harder to their own skewed perspectives.
But those approaches are nothing like the way we in House Kheperu seek our truth.
There are a number of layers to our motto, and this is a good time to unpack a few of them. This article will dig into what those words really mean to those of us who practice the difficult, messy work of seeking our truth -- and we'll explore some of the problems that arise when we deny truths other than our own, and how to balance the personal and interpersonal consequences of seeking our truths.
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To really understand what "Seek Your Own Truth" means, we'll need to dig into a couple of definitions to start with. Not dictionary definitions, but personal ones. I'm not a fan of making sweeping statements, especially in this context -- in an entertaining glimpse of the entire point of this article, doing so assumes that there is a single, objective set of truths, and that those are the only ones that really matter. So, no sweeping universals here. I'll write unapologetically from my own perspective -- most of the time. And when I don't, you'll know I mean it. While there are truths about the world around us, the truths I'm interested in are the subjective truths that each of us inhabit, the ones that color and shape our perception of our place in the world.
Truth, to me, is a many-layered thing. The truth of any situation is rarely obvious. Sometimes, we agree on the truth, and sometimes we don't. Often, whether or not we agree, some portion of what we're looking at can be said to be objectively true. But just as often, our subjective understanding of the truth is also important.
Take the flat Earthers. It's obvious, in that context, that there is a truth to be found. Either the Earth is round, a planet spinning through space, tethered invisibly to our Sun, or it's flat and... not doing those things? I've never been clear on the alternative model, or if flat Earthers even bother to have one other than "I don't believe it!" The evidence is so overwhelmingly in favor of the planet-spinning-through-space that it's preposterous, at this point, to believe anyone takes the position that the Earth is flat seriously. But for thousands of years, most of the evidence we have now, from telescopes and space stations and advanced mathematics and physics and astronomy... didn't exist. We hadn't figured out how to think about the issue, we didn't have accurate models, we hadn't built the physical or conceptual tools to understand it, and as little as 500 years ago, it was just as common-sense to believe the evidence of our own eyes as it is common-sense now to believe the evidence of our telescopes and experts and pictures from space of our little blue planet.
The important thing to note, here, is -- while the truth of our situation on this lovely round planet hasn't changed -- the way we think about our reality, and the tools we apply to understanding it, absolutely have changed. And that change is important. It has profound effects on the way we think about our world. The way we think about nature's capacity to sustain us, the way we see ourselves in relation to other species on our planet, even our relationship to divinity or so-called paranormal forces -- these things are all interconnected. Everything is interconnected. And that "everything" includes our own perspective, because our perspective has profound impacts on how we approach everything else we interact with.
About the flat Earthers again. I've never spoken with someone who actually believed this particular conspiracy theory, full disclosure -- but it's easy to expect that that person would have a deep skepticism towards things they don't understand. It's also easy to expect that they wouldn't have much education, since education tends to help us realize how limited our own individual perspectives are, and how much more we can learn and understand when we rely on tools and theoretical frameworks and other people. But the key thing, for my purposes here, is that this hypothetical person *is not open to revising their opinion based on fact.* They'll look at a picture of Earth looking like a tiny blue marble in the black sea of space and say, "It's fake." They'll watch video of the Challenger taking off and say the same. Deny that the Hubble space station is really out there. They avoid looking too deeply at the whole discipline of astronomy.
They dismiss the pieces of the world that don't fit their existing understanding, because those things threaten them.
And that's where we in House Kheperu start. Seek Your Own Truth requires doing the opposite of that. The way I approach it, when I encounter something I don't understand, whether it's a sensation I experience during energy work or a theory about the nature of consciousness, dismissing it without some serious consideration is off the table. For me, this looks like a series of questions digging into both the details of an experience, and the ways that experience spirals out to impact the rest of my mental model of the world I live in.
What was that feeling, that sensation? Was it just me, reacting to something? Was it something that's happened before? If so, when? What does it mean to me? What might it mean to anyone else? Is it worth bringing up in conversation? Is it worth writing about? How does it connect to other things I've studied or learned or considered? What am I forgetting to ask?
There are no right answers to those questions. There are no wrong answers, either. But, if I'm serious about seeking my own truth, not asking those questions on a regular basis -- about all kinds of things -- would absolutely be wrong. Answering the questions without a great deal of commitment, honesty, discernment, and self-reflection would also be wrong. I'm not seeking something unattainable here. But what I'm seeking isn't simple or easy to find, or it wouldn't be worth the search.
So, if Seeking is the process, how do I know when I've Found My Own Truth?
One short answer is that I probably never will find it. Personal truth isn't a static or monolithic thing. Expecting it to be a findable thing, a journey with an end, is like expecting that once you know how tall you are, you'll never experience emotion again.
A more useful and slightly longer answer is that I usually know when I've found an aspect of my truth because I feel intensely uncomfortable at first, but despite that, I have trouble looking away. This motto and this approach to living is meant to be a lifelong process of shadow work, or digging into the parts of your psyche that you deny or repress. Pro-tip -- you don't have to keep denying or repressing. You'll almost certainly be more fulfilled in the long run if you deal with that shit. I know that's how it works for me.
But really, the point of the motto is built into its language. If our motto was Find Your Own Truth, we'd be an entirely different group. The fact that we emphasize the seeking is meant to poke you, friend, in the place where you realize that seeking isn't *only* the process. It's also the point. I only awaken to deeper and deeper truths about myself if I bother to consider what is true, and what is myself. What matters about my existence? What do I care about, and why?
I have to seek to understand, and if I understand anything, it's that seeking is less about finding than it is about cultivating an approach to the world that doesn't require finding to be worthwhile. It doesn't require a complete understanding to start. It doesn't demand perfection, either -- in fact, this approach cautions you that you won't get perfection, no matter how many years or lifetimes you seek it.
Strangely, one of the most useful truths I've learned from this approach is the inherent value in gentleness. There's nothing at all prescriptive about seeking my own truth. Many people might find that unhelpful, like what do we look for if we don't know what to look for, but for me it feels freeing. If I'm seeking, I'm doing it right. I can look in different places, I can use different senses to seek, but if I am doing this work honestly and regularly, no matter how hard or easy or silly or unsettling it feels, *I'm doing it right.* I don't have a leg to stand on if I try to criticize myself.
And, after a while of this sort of seeking, I can't help but realize that if that's true for me, it's true for others, too. The kind of criticism that tears people down doesn't have a place in this. Gentleness. It's been a challenge for me for a long time, as someone who was raised in an intensely academic family, who always held herself to standards that were (thanks, retrospect) unachievably high, and demanded more of myself than I ever would have asked of anybody else. I still have high standards, but I know now that I can have those standards and not shame myself when it takes me longer than I expect to come close to them. I can share thoughts that aren't fully formed, I can ask what other people think while I'm still figuring my own thoughts out. Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially bold, I'll even talk about my feelings without running the old script about how unhelpful and boring they are in the back of my head the whole time.
That's one of my truths. It might not be one of yours. Maybe yours is that discipline is important, that you need a structure to be able to spend 5 minutes or 30 minutes every day engaged in some practice that offers you a consistency you need, where mine is that if I set a schedule for personal work, I'll end up doing less and being unhappier than if I pay attention to my mental rhythms, and carve out a few minutes every day at whatever time feels like the right time that day.
And that's where the balance comes in.
My truths are mine. Your truths are yours. The culture we live in has come up with a bunch of stereotypes and ideas and truisms that have been implanted into our brains as TRUTHS for years, and shrugging those off can be a lifelong challenge. My truth may not be your truth, and yours may not be mine, but it's much easier to compare ours as people and learn from each other than it is to shake a fist at our whole society and tell it to do better. I know because I've tried. That one-way conversation is only satisfying for a little while before it starts to be depressing.
I don't know how to change those overarching cultural truth-stereotypes, except in one way: I know how to seek my own truth. But I can hope that in doing that and living that and being a person and talking about what I do, maybe other people who feel oppressed and depressed and suppressed by that culture can find back alleys and ways out of the morass that lead to healthier ways of being people together.
The thing is, we're social animals. Most of us don't do really well in complete solitude, and most of the myths of solitary people are just that -- myths. All our deepest measures of success are founded in some way on respect from other people, from getting a college degree or a PhD to being honored after death to raising a loving family. None of that is about our own satisfaction or contentment, unless those external things happen to be what satisfies us.
But the balance I'm talking about is not internal vs. external, me vs. everyone else. It's a balance between what I'm capable of understanding on my own, and what I rely on other people to help me understand.
I said earlier that there's no place for tearing people down in this work. That's true -- but that's not the same as saying that there's no place for questioning. For dialogue. For clarification. For skepticism, too. There's always room to say, that's not how it works for me. There's also room to say, I don't see how that could work for you. Members of House Kheperu are just as fallible as anyone, and it takes us time to see things from other perspectives. But discernment, honesty with ourselves and each other, and commitment to seeking our elusive truth, lets us talk through some of the deeply personal stuff, and trust in our north star motto lets us hear the truths others speak, even when those truths aren't what we want to hear.
A couple months back, I came face to face with some very unpleasant truths about how my behavior was affecting the people around me. I had taken on more responsibility than I really wanted over the years, and I was starting to fray at the edges trying to juggle too many projects at once. It wasn't a truth I expected, it wasn't one I wanted, but when members of House Kheperu confronted me with it... I had to admit they were right. I hated that they were right. It sucked to realize that not only was I disempowering people by taking on responsibility, I was also siphoning off my own time and talent, and directing it to places that didn't really need it.
So what do I do from there? Double down, dig in, and assert that I'm just seeking my own truth and they should fuck off?
Nope. That is, in fact, the opposite of what seeking my own truth means. Part of my truth, part of the way I exist in the world, is about how I impact the people around me. So when they say something, no matter how hard it is to hear it, if I'm serious about seeking my truth I will listen. I'll do my best to understand what they're saying, and why. It could be that they're mistaken about events, that they're misinterpreting something -- and that can also come out once we're in conversation about whatever-it-is. But more likely, in my experience, I've missed something because it's hard to see all the angles when I only live in my own head. Seeking my own truth doesn't mean only seeking from my perspective. It means casting a wide net, with literature and art and movies and friends and family and lovers and enemies. It means using every conceptual tool available to me.
Put simply, my commitment to seeking my own truth requires me to consider other perspectives than my own. I don't have to consider irrelevant perspectives, or uninformed ones -- but when a close friend or mentor or even a perceptive acquaintance raises a flag for me to look at, if I ignore it, that is the moment when I've failed to seek my own truth and started trying to be right.
Which, it turns out, is not the motto of House Kheperu. What would that even look like? "Seek Your Own Pride?" "Ignore Everybody Else and Be Right?" "Fuck You, I'm The Expert of Me?" No. None of those are worth bothering with. They don't challenge me to understand hard, true, worthwhile things. And that, ultimately, is what our motto is supposed to do.
The Neverending Story -- the book, not the movie -- hinges on that distinction. Bastian is told at some point that he has to do what he truly wants. Not just anything he thinks of on a whim, but the deepest, most real desire that he has as a person. Trying to find what that desire is almost destroys him.
And although it's fiction, that danger is not an overstatement. There are some corners of our psyche that we like to keep in the shadows, because they're horrible and uncomfortable and if I look at them too deeply, I'll probably discover that I'm a monster. Not the haha-rawr-grrr kind of monster. The kind of monster who can live with having hurt people in the past, and who can look forward to probably hurting many more people in the future, and who can still enjoy ice cream and kittens and terrible puns... while also acknowledging my own capacity for hatred and violence and callous disregard for other people. The kind of monster who can love and be loved, who can be a contradiction and a curse. The kind of monster who can learn to do better, while knowing that sometimes, I'll still choose to do worse.
If you want to really dig into seeking your own truth, I'm going to recommend right now that you find a good therapist and start talking with them. We talk about it in the House often enough that it almost sounds like a joke, but it's really not. This work is hard, and it hurts. If it doesn't, you're either missing the point or you're a masochist, and it doesn't matter either way because therapy will still help. In a lot of ways, seeking your truth IS therapy -- it's at the heart of what therapy is and does, only therapists have a lot of training in how to ask questions in a way that doesn't completely upend the life of the person engaged in seeking their own truth, and hurt people they care about.
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There is no single right way to go about the work of seeking your own truth. There's no path through the wilderness of your heart, because there is no destination. This north star is a mandate to know yourself. Where are your hills and valleys, where do you keep what matters to you, what do you still struggle to acknowledge?
We each have a unique internal landscape, and if I tried to tell you how to map yours, it would probably make about as much sense as a farmer from the Middle Ages talking to an astronomer about whether the ground was flat or not. The frames of reference don't intersect. The tools for thinking about the question are from different universes. And in the land of imagination, maybe the farmer and the astronomer develop a friendship over time. Maybe they could come to understand each other and offer useful insights to each other (who knows what overlaps between growing seasons and orbital cycles could be discovered!). But if they just try to bludgeon each other with how they see the world already, both will come away frustrated and certain the other is missing their point.
They'll both be right, in their own frame of reference, but neither of them will have learned much in the process.
Seek Your Own Truth. Share the ideas and the conceptual tools that helped you along the way. Question what other people tell you about the world if it doesn't resonate with you. Learn your own internal landscape, and learn what works for you. Reject nothing from the world around you without understanding clearly why it's worth rejecting. Talk about your process, so others can understand it, you, and lift the tools that may work for them. Seek Your Own Truth. Do it with gentleness, because there's no point to seeking your own truth unless you understand that your truth -- and you -- have value, and that value is not increased by adding pain to the equation. Understand that the struggle you're going through isn't unique to you, and develop empathy for the struggles of others. Learn, grow, transform -- and then go learn some more.
Seek Your Own Truth.
(submitted by Elyria, a first degree member of HK’s counselor caste)
