More the Same All Over
“Not disconnected by virtue of difference, nor connected by virtue of sameness, but connected by virtue of differences.”
The golem is a mythical being from Judaic folklore that has the form of a human, but is made of clay. This idea is simple, yet provocative: even though the form of the clay golem manifests differently across it (an arm over here, a leg over there), when you look deeper, when you look INTO it, you see a recursive reality – the same molecule, repeating throughout the structure. It is just more of the same, all over.
“More the same all over” has been a mantra for me since James casually mentioned it; after many months of not seeing each other due to lockdowns, he saw me practicing and made the enigmatic compliment that I “look more of the same all over”. He was referring to the fact that parts of the body had begun to seem less differentiated.
It is a consequence of an ever-expanding mapping of the geography of the limbs and joints – refining an understanding of each locale, learning the local language and then learning to translate between languages.
This is a case of the Goethian Unity, in which multiplicity arises from unity. If you look for the the true form of the Golem by eliminating the differences across the various manifestations, to find the “least common denominator”, you will find only… clay. The approach of eliminating differences across the variety to find the form eliminates the differentiation itself, which is necessary to take into account to really understand the phenomenon.
I may be a sack of differentiated organs, but those organs are the same thing, manifested differently, just like the Golem. Realizing they are not disconnected by virtue of difference, nor connected by virtue of sameness, but that they are connected by virtue of their differences.
This begins to represent a form of self-knowledge – to know my body beyond anatomy and physiology, and into form and function (arguably, the domain of semiotics). I wouldn’t have guessed that a practice would take me in the direction of self-knowledge, and yet, I find that the only self-knowledge I have is acquired through practice. The rest is… fodder to sustain me long enough to keep growing.
(In more modern / non-Biblical tradition, Golem is a literary motif. As the critic Adam Kirsch put it, “The golem story addresses our post-Holocaust fear of insecurity, our Zionist admiration of and guilt about strength, and our 21st-century obsession with technology and the ways it can go awry.”
But strip it of the meanings it has acquired over the years, and reduced to its simple origins, the first manifestation of the concept… it points to a cross-cultural ontological concept: the shapeless mass, the unfinished matter. And shapeless mass is homogenous in nature. The golem is an unformed and amorphous thing, the material and just the material. True reductionism achieved.)
A lesson about adaptability
A common lesson in parenting and practice: adaptability means not insisting.
We learn about adaptability from our daughter. What worked yesterday doesn't work today. The brilliant words that struck the right chord a moment ago fall flat. So what? Do you insist on it?
Don't be insistent - when the window of opportunity closes, don't try to smash it open. There was a moment of openness about feelings, but then distraction happened... there is no rewind button there.
If you "fight" for your balance, like some kind of war against gravity, you can't win. But if you trust gravity to do its job...
How long until you realize you need to change your approach, your mindset?
Insisting is NOT listening. And listening is the heart of adaptability.
Tendon adaptation - the plot thickens
A recent research study (1) compared long-term changes in the achilles tendon between gymnasts & non-athletes. They found that gymnasts had developed greater muscle-strength, but no differences in tendon stiffness, suggesting “a training-induced imbalanced adaptation of muscle strength and tendon stiffness”. This confirms something Ido suggested almost 10 years ago (2, 3) - gymnasts lack tendon adaptations due to reliance on external springs.
We’ve been doing some bouncing work that specifically affects tendons & connective tissue. By limiting contribution of contractile/muscular elements, we shift the burden to the tendon, taking the energy provided by gravity to store & release it.
As we’ve been discussing in our classes, tendon is a soft-matter tissue. One property of soft matter, and connective tissues especially, is a shift of the stress-strain curve during cyclic loading (strain that loads/unloads repetitively). This shift means that there will be strains at a given load that would not otherwise produce an effect, because there is this repetitive component. Cyclic loading, such as in bouncing, produces the kind of strain that triggers adaptations towards elasticity - changes in proteoglycan content, fibril organization/orientation, and ultimately critical connective tissue properties).
This is a synergetic outcome - you cannot simply add up the effect of disparate jumps. 1+1 = 2 if you’re loading the tissue normally; but 1+1 = 17 when it’s done with bouncing, and a second-order effect arises - tendon adaptation.
1 - The study: Development of Muscle-Tendon Adaptation in Preadolescent Gymnasts and Untrained Peers: A 12-Month Longitudinal Study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34649260/
2 - RawBrahs interview, the relevant excerpt can be found in “Ido Portal on Paleo Diet, CrossFit, Gymnastics, Motivation, Movement & More” at 4:58 (https://youtu.be/WPnXjFNSf1o?t=238)
3 - Facebook post - November 22, 2018. https://www.facebook.com/portal.ido/photos/a.630345403674110/2342011115840855/
Ido Portal Intensive, November 2021
Just returned from one month with my teacher Ido Portal in Berlin. Through many containers, we examined timeless themes/lessons…
developing will, emotional stability, effortless attention.
going deeper into the life practice, what it means to be a practitioner.
the relational nature of reality, with a current emphasis on the emergent phenomenon that arises from intelligent arrangement of push and pull, active and passive…
And what were the containers used to distribute these lessons? We studied…
boxing and wrestling through multiple entry points, providing a meticulous learning process
acrobatics, where I learned a few new “tricks”, but by far the best gift was a huge upgrade for subsequent development - and it has everything to do with HOW.
methods for separating the active and passive elements of the body, to create clarity and turn the body into the conduit that it can be.
dance through various scores, many instructions, learning to listen to the inner “voice” (arguably the most “you” thing about you, and yet the one we are least familiar with…)
engaging improvisation through the highest mode: listening
various libraries of movement vocabularies/systems that Ido has developed and refined
and the “dark arts”… stillness.
And for the first time, lectures in which Ido shared the knowledge he has synthesized from studies across seemingly disparate fields: physiology, psychology, philosophy, biology, spirituality, etc etc etc.
A major takeaway for all - the practice that centers on the body is uniquely suited among all practices for spiritual/personal growth. If your internal/spiritual practices are divorced from physicality, physical scenarios will crack you to pieces. And because we inhabit a body, even the least physical scenario, like arguing with your spouse, is a physical scenario (just watch your cortisol levels and heart rate rise…).
Discussions with a stranger, on my wall to stand on a wall
At the threshold to the path which winds up to my favorite wall, a shirtless man sat in his wheelchair. His belongings, including plastic bags, two bibles, bars of soap, and canned foods were strewn about the floor.
We exchanged friendly greetings; he wished to move beneath the sun and asked for help moving his belongings beside him.
As I began moving bags and books from one spot to another, a conversation sprung to life. It soon became clear that this man was cut from a different cloth as others: his choice of words was deliberate, calculated, and he spoke of sharpening the mind. He probed with ideas, and not one to let an interesting idea drift by, I delayed my training session to speak with this man.
At first, I thought I was benevolently entertaining the incoherent thoughts of a person to whom life has been too harsh, that his fancy words were dead husks around disorganized ideas, a simulacrum of intellectus. But I was soon humbled, and I slowly realized I was face to face with a fully lucid mind. And beyond that, that this was a mind that was very meticulous in how it organized itself, and that I might have something to learn from him.
(It is at this point that I wish to make clear - it doesn't matter how coherent a person is or how fragmented their thoughts are: all humans are worth speaking to. We have something to learn from all. Every soul shines, even if the vessel has been broken by the hardships of this city and society.)
Our back and forth evolved into a discourse. We spoke at length about mind after death, the nature of knowledge and wisdom. He confronted my presuppositions, and when my points were unclear he demanded clarification. In turn, when I requested from him more clarity he was able to provide it as well.
The discussion culminated on some ideas about intuition, which my friend believed was a critical capacity for discerning truth. He called it an aptitude, a capacity for seeing what IS. I added that intuition is the product of observations and experiences (in more or less the fashion of Bayesian inference). In this moment, his eyes lit up as he agreed, and maybe my own reflected it. We paused to dwell in our own independent realizations, the product of a relationship between two minds, that could not have occurred alone.
And on the wall, the fruit…
And as I stood on my wall, letting the events of that exchange percolate through me, a gut punch of realization struck. It was something I always believed, had words for, but now affected me more powefully.
I have long had the idea that we can only know things by refining our models. (Where my friend believes we can know an absolute truth, I am not sure.) And to know anything at depth, it must be juxtaposed against its environment. In addition, it can be used to shed light on the environment. Any phenomenon or philosophy can be a lens for constructing an understanding of the world, but similarly, at this moment of exposure to the world/environment, we gain clarity about that phenomenon as well.
You, like any phenomenon or philosophy, can be used to understand the world, and vice versa.
It reminds me of a description Ido once gave, of rubbing up against the world to know yourself, to discover the contours of your own existence. At this moment, perched on the wall and beneath the trees, this concept became a focal point for pulling together my practice on the wall, my relationship with this man, my interpretation of the ideas we discussed about intuition and wisdom.
And parallel to this, a sense that I am not different from my environment, or from that man. The difference between the inside and the outside, say of a cell, is really only the barrier. But otherwise, there is no difference between those two constructs.
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What a blessing is a practice that takes you into the world, to rub up against it.