It's an age old task that's been passed on from age to age, a responsibility taken upon by sages, adepts, mystics and masters throughout time.

more, more, more...

People live in a world consumed with hopes, wishes, wants, and desires. We seek to possess all manner of things, tangible and intangible. We strive to acquire money, cars, houses, property of all kinds – we live to possess a husband, a wife, children, a family – we seek to gain careers, respect, social status, prestige, fame.

People are after intellectual and cerebral knowledge. We acquire education and in turn leverage it to gain worldly interests. We desire things that charm the intellect. We seek entertainment of the senses and social gratification. We seek experiences that indulge the body.

how do i look?

We seek to possess a certain self-image. We want others to have a certain image about us. We dress ourselves up in clothes, makeup, jewelry, smells and fragrances. We dress ourselves in emotions, feelings, habits, beliefs and other mental belongings.

Each one of us believes him or herself to be the center of the universe, separate from the world. We need to make ourselves known, assert ourselves, and get our piece of the pie. We desire to be a "somebody," a special person.

We become sad or fearful when events don't go the way we think they should. We become mad and angry when we don't get what we want. We throw tantrums to get our way. We manipulate to gain. We strut and we fret.

We only do things with the intention of receiving even if simple satisfaction is all we receive. That which may appear as the most innocent of actions has subtle strings attached. Even an act of tolerance can have ulterior motives.

listen to me, dammit!

"I know what's right!" we say to ourselves and others. We collect beliefs and judgements to help us forge and build our attitude of correctness. We seek to possess power and control. We seek to possess others by pushing our beliefs upon them. We wage war to force our ways.

We are lured and promised with receiving things in heaven. We are threatened with getting things in hell. We fear loss. We fear death.

We seek to possess a person's love. We love them one day, then we hate them the next. Today we want this, but tomorrow we decide we want that instead. Rhythm swings us between the opposites of our desires.

sigh... if only...

We are seldom, if ever truly content. Having gained something, we look to gain something more or something new. We live our lives in the future, looking towards a time when things will be better because we believe we will be happier after we have acquired something that we have set our eyes upon. We reminisce about the past, about how great things were or how we wish they would have been different.

We are engaged in incessant thought, thinking about the past or pondering the future. Rarely do we live in the present with no thought of tomorrow or yesterday. Rarely are we in the stillness of the moment, in the silence of our own consciousness.

keeping up with the joneses...

"Success" has been defined by what we possess. But striving to be successful has made us prisoners of a conditioned, programmed, and cultivated need to own. We just can't get away from it. Like a moth to the flame, we are driven to the point where we have incarcerated ourselves in attachment.

We are robots, creatures of habit, not questioning why we do the things we do. If someone should suggest that we examine ourselves, we feel threatened and become distressed or angry. We feel we need to protect our "territory."

We are so wrapped up in our self-made collection of material and mental "things," we identify ourselves with them. Totally and completely attached, we are shackled and bound by a ball and chain of our own creation.

the way of the heart...

You are not any of these things and turning life into the pursuit of them has buried your essence and locked you into an illusion. Your desire, your need to be a somebody, to be "special" has trapped you. If your sights are set on being somebody, if you are something, then you are a prisoner of it. Once you become something or anything, then that becomes your prison.

Life is simply about being. But the gravity of that statement, what "being" actually means, is something that cannot be explained or described. It must be experienced, and it can only be experienced by breaking out of the prison you've created in your mind -- by becoming a "nobody."

The purpose of Summum is to help you realize your prison and become aware of the blocks you use to build and maintain it. Summum provides tools and an environment to assist you in coming to know and understand yourself. Summum promotes the self study of your own personal psychology and behavior at the deepest of levels.

Through the understanding that you gain, you can free yourself from what you believe to be your mind. You can free yourself from the confining and incarcerating influences of your fears, habits, tendencies, and propensities that you have for so long developed.

Summum provides you with assets that you can apply in your life; assets that will enable you to have a personal experience with your essence and spirit. That experience will lead you beyond belief to the realization that you have an essence which lives on after the death of your physical body.

Following the experience of your essence and spirit, Summum will provide you with assets to develop the "Will" of your essence, so that you may direct your essence along a path of development rather than following along circles of belief, wishes, wants, and hopes. This experience endows your essence with the consciousness to be the master of your life instead of a prisoner of your existence.

Where does this path lead? It leads to nothing, for once you can turn yourself into a nobody, once you can become nothing, then you are free.

Summum is here to show you a door...

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

~ Morpheus in the 1999 movie, The Matrix