Kum Nye: Developing Direct Experience.

Have you ever held a newborn child, fallen in love, watched a sunrise or held hands with a good friend without feeling a deep connection with the divine? Time stands still, and for a moment we are breathless. When I hold my newborn child in my arms, feelings of warmth and connection flood through me. My heart opens and I’m in love. At that point, there are not two, but one, and the idea of subject and object slumbers with us.

The capacity to experience life directly, without labeling, commentary or instruction is in all of us, and we often slide right by it.

Developing this capacity is a central skill of Kum Nye, which in turn liberates us from suffering. “Labeling is the source of suffering,” writes Rinpoche Tarthang Tulku.

Labeling — the practice of defining experience as good or bad, right or wrong,  mine or not mine — makes things sticky: we cling to or resist the present thing.

We do have the capacity to experience life directly; it is simply hidden behind the constancy of habits learned from infancy and reinforced  everywhere. When we glimpse direct experience, the world takes on a magical glow, our energy grows: we feel connected to life.

How do we begin to experience life more directly? The main key is relaxation, and then presence centeredness, and body centeredness.

The first goal of Kum Nye is relaxation, achieved through mindfulness of body and senses. Relaxation is also the practice of making no effort. Imagine not being able to swim, and then being cast into water. At first we might thrash wildly to stay afloat, but if we relax, we’ll float, we’ll discover that no effort is required. In fact, we’d discover that effort makes things worse.

It seems to me that this sense that we must ‘keep ourselves afloat’ occurs at a deep level, beyond conscious awareness. The gestures and movements of Kum Nye release tensions at this deep level, and we gradually learn to float in our internal experience.

This deep relaxation is supported by a warm curious interest in the body,  loosening up our ideas about feelings, and contacting feelings directly.

We tend to label certain sensations and we get caught up.

What does this look like? We say that we feel sad or anxious or uncomfortable, for example. And yet, when we contact the sensations themselves, with open curiosity, we might sense warmth or tingling or a feeling of weight. Kum Nye involves stimulating and then sitting with feeling, very gradually opening energy channels and over time, opening up our ability to experience life directly.

We discover that feelings have information and wisdom and when we contact them in this way, they provide energy. This energy flows to the heart, and our hearts become the driving force of our lives, open, without any need to define.

We can gradually train the mind to be interested in the present phenomena of the body, or more accurately, the energy fields within the body. As we touch to these fields, they naturally bring themselves into balance; no effort is required of us beyond loving attention. And when the mind finds its home in the body, it ceases to be so restless, and we discover a dynamic stillness and clarity of purpose.

We remember that we are whole.

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