The Truth-Seeker's Guide to Power
A Course about How to Navigate Uncertainty and Grow in Clarity about Your Deepest Questions | Epistemology Foundations: Unlock Your Powers to See
I am creating a mini-course to help you tap into your most fundamental powers to know. The course begins with the great puzzle of how any knowledge is possible. I’m designing this course for those who know the despair of not knowing, who have felt the rug of reality pulled out from under them, or who want to level up in their understanding the foundations of knowledge. There is wisdom to get from the pit of skepticism. My aim is to help you see the foundations of your knowledge, so you can approach life’s deepest questions with greater honesty, clarity, confidence, and power.
As I plan it, I want to see who might be interested. So I am creating a simple experiment:
If at least 20 people pre-order by July 4th, I will create the course in July and release it by August 1.
The pre-order price is $79, but I am also opening it as pay what you want. This will help me learn not only who is interested, but also what level of investment feels right for different people.
If you pre-order and later decide the course is not for you, for any reason, you may receive a full refund.
The first 10 people to sign up will receive a bonus lesson that will be personalized to your questions throughout the course. (100% of the funds will go toward supporting the mission of Worldview Design in supporting truth-seekers on the journey.)
This is a reality-facing course. Many psychological tools help you with the meaning ascribe to your experiences. That’s important, but there is also a question about how to trust that any meaning you come up with is supported by reality. That’s where this course comes in.
This course grows out of my larger aim in Worldview Design: to help you develop, iteratively, a view of reality that serves your life because it is grounded in sight.
There are two sides to this project: design and view. Design is the part you control directly. It concerns how you look, where you look, why you are looking, and what powers of awareness you bring to the search. Your view is what gradually emerges as you learn to look more carefully. The goal is not to overlay a made-up story onto reality, but to see what is there from your own vantage point with increasing depth, clarity, and insight. As you learn to design your view, you become better able to move through reality with wisdom, courage, and power. That is the aim behind all my work.
The Core Transformation
This course is about becoming more powerful as a truth-seeker. It is built around one central transformation: From confusion to clarity about your deepest questions.
Obstacles to truth come from many directions:
Who can I trust when experts disagree?
How can I trust myself when I do not yet know the truth?
How can I choose a path when so many paths seem to lead to pits, traps, or dead ends?
Where do I turn?
If you can relate to these questions, I am designing this course for you.
The goal is to help you gain clarity about any topic, especially the deepest questions about reality, purpose, identity, and the foundations of a well-designed life. You need more than tools for well-being. You also need tools for seeing more clearly the kind of reality you live in. These tools work best together.
In my own search to understand life’s deepest questions, I have discovered patterns for making progress on difficult topics. These patterns help you tap into powers of sight. They help you see more, increase the resolution of clarity, and make progress where things once felt tangled or overwhelming.
The key idea is this: You can make progress on your hardest questions.
The system I want to show you is not philosophical speculation or a technique for endlessly reinforcing one side of a debate. It begins with aligning with your center, anchoring your attention, and preparing yourself to seek truth from a clear aim, like an athlete preparing for a run.
As you tap into this power, you will gain confidence in responding to the truth-seeker’s common questions:
How do I orient my life when I am not yet clear?
How do I seek truth without becoming overwhelmed by competing voices?
How do I listen to experts without outsourcing my mind?
How do I learn from traditions without merely inheriting conclusions?
How do I question things without becoming cynical?
How do I stand in my own awareness without becoming isolated inside myself?
How do I grow in wisdom over time?
These questions affect your life in fundamental ways. Your beliefs about reality shape your sense of safety, significance, purpose, courage, love, and direction. They influence how you make decisions, how you relate to others, how you face suffering, and how you imagine what is possible.
That is why this course is about more than collecting ideas. It is about orientation. It is about a way of life. Truth serves well-being: tools to see reality help you use the tools that support your well-being.
The 3-Step Worldview Design System
In the course, I plan to introduce my 3-Step Worldview Design System for gaining clarity where there is controversy, confusion, and uncertainty.
This system helps you tap into your power to untangle confusing knots about the foundational areas of your perception of reality.
You will learn:
How to enter the truth-seeker’s state, which equips you to explore paths to insight.
How to recognize and cultivate the 7 intellectual virtues that empower every truth-seeker.
How to use 4 universal worldview-design tools for going deeper in your understanding of foundational topics about the nature of reality.
These three steps orient you to your power to see more truth by your own clearest lights. They orient you to things accessible inside you so that you can see more clearly about the things outside you.
What the Course Will Include
The working outline includes lessons designed around the 3-part system to empower truth-seekers. This course will draw from ancient philosophers, contemporary epistemology, and the practical tools that have helped me most.
Provisional outline:
Module 1 (step 1): The Truth-Seeker’s Calling
Why the search for truth matters, and why many people lose heart.
Module 2 (step 2): The Problem of Skepticism
Seeing the depth of the problems is an important step to getting equipped. This step is about facing the real pain of uncertainty and the reasons to doubt. Here we prepare the way to seek truth effectively by understanding on a deep level obstacles to knowledge.
Module 3 (step 3): Systems of Knowledge
A survey of major systems in epistemology (theory of knowledge) and how you can use them strategically.
Module 4 (step 4): Intellectual Virtues
Learn the habits of the effective truth-seekers.
Module 5 (step 5): Principles of Power
How to remove obstacles to your success in knowledge in any domain of inquiry by tapping into your most fundamental powers.
Module 6 (step 6): Universal Strategies
Learn my 4 “worldview design” strategies for advancing your understanding about reality in a systematic way.
Module 7 (step 7): The Integrated Truth-Seeker
How to seek truth from clarity, humility, love, and real power.
Module 8 (application): The Nature of Reality
To showcase how the 3-part system works in specific domains, we will also zoom in on four core topics:
Fundamental reality
Consciousness
Your identity
Meaning and purpose
Module 9 (secret level) [BONUS — for first 10 who sign up]: Your Life
This module will be tailored to the first 10 who sign up, and I will consider the kind of questions you might have in particular, whether about the principles in the course or the nature of reality (or both).
In this bonus module, I also include a section about how worldview design supports life design: a well-designed worldview supports a well-designed life.
If You Are Skeptical
Good.
Healthy skepticism protects you from traps. This is a course for skeptics who want more power to see more truth, while stewarding freedom from paradigms or packages that conceal, flatten, or oversimplify reality.
One obstacle to progress is the feeling that progress is not possible. But if you feel confused, that may be a signal that you are ready for greater wisdom.
Confusion is the feeling of tension between ideas. That tension can create pressure that prepares you to see something deeper. It tells you that you care about the topic, but that your current map is not adequate. It tells you that you have reached the edge of what you currently know how to see.
The course is also person-first. You do not seek truth as a detached machine. You seek truth as a person, from your own vantage point of awareness.
Note to atheist friends: I am creating this course with skeptics in mind, not to pressure you toward pre-packaged answers, but to support you in your search. My aim is to show how universal truth-seeking principles can help us gain clarity on foundational questions, whatever our current perspective may be. Many atheists and theists alike follow my work because I appeal to universal principles that you can test for yourself and point you back to your own powers and insights. Whatever your view, I hope this course serves you as I seek to trace the wisdom of the lights already available to each of us.
The Invitation
To help me make this course, I need help bringing it to life. If you believe in this course, whether for yourself or for others, consider signing up.
Here are the details of my invitation:
Course: The Truth-Seeker’s Guide to Clarity
Subtitle: How to Grow in Clarity When Life’s Deepest Questions Feel Confusing
Founding pre-order window: June 10–June 30
Suggested founding price: $79
Payment option: Pay what you want
Expected regular price: $149
Creation threshold: 20 founding students
Estimated course release: August 3
If at least 20 people pre-order by June 30, I will create the course.
Whether you are just beginning your search for truth or have been walking that path for many years, I am designing this course to help you move forward with greater clarity, courage, and wisdom. My hope is that, together, we can learn to see more truth in more places.
If you want to reserve your spot for The Truth-Seeker’s Guide to Clarity, you can pre-order to reserve your spot here:
The founding window closes July 4th.
Once again, if we reach 20 enrollments, I will create the course and send updates as it develops. If we do not reach that threshold, every pre-order will be refunded in full. The first 10 people to sign up will receive a bonus lesson. Either way, your response will help me discern whether this is the right time to build this course.
Thank you for being part of this work!
About the Author
Joshua L. Rasmussen is a philosopher, author, and professor whose work focuses on the deepest questions of reality, mind, knowledge, and God. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied with Alvin Plantinga, Michael Tooley, and other leading philosophers. He has written several books, including How Reason Can Lead to God, Who Are You, Really?, and Necessary Existence, and he has over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Rasmussen regularly appears in public lectures, interviews, podcasts, and other media conversations. Through years of academic research and public teaching, Rasmussen has devoted his life to probing reality with intellectual honesty, careful reasoning, and a desire to help others see more clearly.