Core Principles of Sum Wah

The essential principle of Sum Wah is this: we are not battling against belief.

Sum Wah is a system of knowing.

It is a system of being present, of staying aware of ourselves and of our relationship to reality. It is a way of finding harmony within this complete path.

Sum Wah has no desire to copy belief.

What Sum Wah does is give you a way to understand yourself and to understand reality. It helps you make the best of what you already have.

And what do you have?

Your capacity to learn and grow.

Your capacity to be physically present.

Your capacity to respect the physiology of your thinking.

The physiology of our ideas is often ignored, yet we know how passionate we can become about them.

An idea can stir up passion. Our thinking can stir up every kind of emotion and feeling: joy, sadness, regret, elation, and more.

Sum Wah is here to help you navigate the emotional spaces that could lead to something disruptive in your life, and to help you find your way back from a disruptive experience.

In our teachings, we understand that feelings are physiological. They are felt in our bodies.

Sadness will still come.

Disappointment and regret will still come.

So will joy, peace, satisfaction, and love.

Living through the Five Gates of Sum Wah, we abundantly increase our experience of peace, love, joy, and fulfillment.

At our core, we are light.

When we speak of light, we do not mean only a light that shines, a physical or visible light. We mean light as energy. Light as a message. Light carries information. It carries an existential truth, a thread.

There are many kinds of light. There is an energy that moves throughout this existence: through the planets, the galaxies, and the whole of the universe. We are directly connected to that light.

It is this light the ancients sought to put into words through their spiritual systems, naming the movers of the wind and the rain, the growing of the crops, fertility, and the stars moving across the sky.

That energy, that presence, that light is what we speak of when we say light.

You are born from it.

And at your core, you are it.

So the Light of Sum Wah is not only this truth. It is also you: the practitioner, the adherent, the one who has decided to become their own liberator in this life. The one who has decided to own their choices and take action toward their joy, their happiness, and their peace.

The Light of Sum Wah is the understanding that you are your own savior.

You are your salvation.

To be clear, this is not a denial of a savior, someone coming to save us from our ills, our sins, our harmful behaviors, and our choices.

Not at all.

Sum Wah and its Five Gates are a recognition that you are already here.

The savior has already arrived.

Everything you have chosen, you chose for a reason. We unpack that reason through this complete way.

Your choices serve a purpose in your life. Even choices with so-called negative consequences were chosen for a reason. We may have made them from a lack of information, under manipulation, or because of our circumstances, but we chose them for a purpose: to achieve an outcome.

We must honor that.

That is accountability. That is ownership.

From there, we dig deeper and find the lesson through wisdom, creating plans and strategies for better outcomes.

Better outcomes sometimes require strengthening our temperament, so that we can remain calm and nurture peace even when everything around us is in turmoil.

And we deepen our understanding, so that we move better in the future.

The practice is to own and accept the choices we have made, knowing we can learn from them.

But we can only learn once we take ownership and begin authoring our own lives.

We accept with honor, not shame.

We accept that we made the best choices we could at the time.

We honor that.

Now we can learn from them, and make choices that are better for us in this moment.

When we are not clear, when we are unaware of our motivations or unable to face the reality of who we are being, life can get out of hand.

Life can feel like it is living us, instead of us living it.

But there is a way out.

There is a way to be free, to be liberated.

We accept the imperfections we carry.

We accept the light that is us: the light that is truth, that knows, and that only needs the opportunity to express itself.

We make choices.

We own those choices.

We learn.

We develop our emotional intelligence.

And we always come back to the breath, asking:

What was my role in this?

What is life teaching me here?

We stay present in this moment, in this experience, where the past is only a lesson to learn from, and its wisdom ours to apply today.

So be with yourself fully and completely. Be conscious in every moment, not with anxiety, but with an awareness and an ease that says:

There I go.

That's me again, enjoying.

That's me again, paying attention.

That's me again, being a light, being my light.

I am present.

I am here.

I am Sum Wah.

I am the light.