“Ku” is who you are, in the fullest sense–your physical body, your thoughts, your feelings, your physical sensations, your energetic body. mNye is roughly “massage:” It is interesting to contemplate, but you can “massage” feelings, and even thoughts. They have textures, and by touching those textures, you can affect them in interesting ways.
This morning I was walking the streets downtown, watching the snow, feeling the wind and cold, and it hit me that if you exist at the level of being–of existence before judgement, existence before identifying even with physical sensations–then the world has no danger. I was looking at the world quizzically, as if even the most prosaic things had hidden inner meaning, as if leprechauns were possible, even if I see no reason to believe in them.
Somewhere around a century ago the famous German thinker Max Weber warned of “Entzauberung” (usually translated as “disenchantment”, although “demagicalizing” would be closer) as a consequence of the modern age, and of our pending confinement in “iron cages of reason”. One sees this everywhere. The diabolical atheists, those unable to differentiate humans from cattle, seek to confine us permanently in an emotionally immature, disconnected state of consciousness. They are, of course, cowards, who abuse reason in the maintenance of their own immature psychological defenses against whatever emotions they fear to feel.
I would suggest, though, in the spirit of the age, that technology can be used for REenchantment (Wiederzauberung, in my own, I think, German neologism) as well. Why not want life to be magical and interesting? Why not choose to place our faith in the sincere science which tells us that we are all interconnected? No facts need be denied. On the contrary: it is the dogmatic atheists who are the ones who MUST ignore both the content and implications of current metaphysical models, and mountains of empirical data supporting this rough idea.
As I say often, there is no reason whatever not to grant them A to B. I don’t need to doubt that damage to the Broca area affects speech. I have no reason to doubt that certain drugs can create experiences which appear metaphysical, but appear to happen entirely in the brain. The interesting areas are those events which plainly happen, which DO NOT FIT within those models, such as developing sensory memory when it is precluded by the setting (eyes taped shut, ears covered with clickers to test brain activity, bodily death; I posted on this case some time ago, but there are thousands of good examples).
Hell, I’m preaching again.
Net: this morning I did roughly an hours practice, and when I went out I felt like I was on a very pleasant drug. And this has happened to me now a number of times. The effects are subtle, and may not be obvious at first, but at some point you will find yourself in a moment, and realize that everything around you is interesting.
We all have moments which evoke deeper feelings, which touch something intangible, but quite real. The best example I can offer is how some songs create moods. This song is an example for me (Twist in my Sobriety by Tanita Tikaram). Here is another (Telegraph Road by Dire Straits).
We all know intuitively that much more is possible, but don’t know how to get it. We pursue it in “love”; we pursue it in excitement. Always all we get is a hint, a bad clue, a perfume from someone who has left the room.
This need not be the case.
This system is not like any other form of meditation I know of, and in general I would not call it meditation at all. It is preparatory to meditation (Dhyana), and in my view a very necessary and helpful preparation for modern people, who run around as little boxes of anxiety all day every day. For the extent that we grant ourselves the right to feel, we may as well be machines.
Here is the link to where you sign up: http://shop.dharmapublishing.com/pages/e-kum-nye
It’s a bit odd, and I think indicative of the low volume of demand, currently, for this system, but you need to call them or email them. They send you a form, upon which you can place your credit card number, and you can fax it back. What you get is a structured practice–delivered weekly by email–put together by someone very familiar with the ingredients.
You can of course just get the books, and there are many videos of different exercises on YouTube. Here is one example. There is nothing athletic about these postures, and the point is not the stretch, but rather paying attention to the feelings that the stretch brings up. All of us have many things hidden in our soma, hidden in muscular and nervous patterns, which create blockages of energy that prevent our enjoyment of life.
For me, I believe I have reached my emotional core, and both seen and FELT the landscape. That latter is very important. I have realized I cannot fight my way out of who and where I am, but that I can GROW out of it. Conflict, even inside, is always the last recourse of an exhausted mind. Who you are is in fact very interesting, if you go there.
My feeling is that all of us land on this earth with our unique little fortune cookies, which have our own unique fortune, our unique self, our unique destiny, our own path of beauty. I cannot express how much I hope the bastards running this earth let us create a world in which this beauty can be fostered and expressed.