Hi, I'm
Weston

After providing over 15,000 hours in session and speaking, I recognize that... “You’re much stronger and more empowered than you think you are…"

When does an Octopus become a spiritual Oracle?

My Octopus Teacher is a documentary with an invitation for Divine Connection.  Maybe there’s more to swimming in freezing cold water than anyone, Craig Foster, can imagine.  What does nature have to offer us in terms of our spiritual connection?

My Teacher Octopus

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Episode 064 of True Connections with Weston Jolly

Transcription:  My Octopus Oracle

Can conscious connection come from an Octopus Oracle?

Recently, I watched a documentary called My Octopus Teacher. The story is quite simple. It’s about a camera man who gets burned out with his life… and retreats to the sea to escape.

During his time away from his hectic life as a camera man, editing and traveling the world, he discovers an octopus when scuba diving in what he calls a forest of seaweed.

What’s unusual about My Octopus Teacher is the connection between a clever octopus and a wandering man in search of something greater. If you’ve seen the documentary on Netflix then you’ll understand exactly many of the points I’m referencing. For those of you that haven’t seen the documentary, be forewarned that some of what I say my spoil you’re seeing the documentary for the first time.

My purpose is to highlight the most incredible part of the life, which is way beyond the documentary. My question, can you find conscious connection in nature?

I am not concerned about offering you scientific evidence as much as witnessing with you some incidents about nature’s constant conscious connection.

Recently on FB I posted how Enzo Maiorca (MI Orca) who is a a world record free diver experienced with some wild dolphins.

This is what he shared…

“Years ago, while we were diving, a male dolphin guided my daughters Rossana and Patrizia, and myself, almost leading us by our hands, and gave us the chance to save a female dolphin who was tangled up in the meshes of a swordfish net.

“I maintain that his brain waves influenced our minds. What is certain is that our arms were the stretcher by means of which we carried that poor exhausted animal, wracked by contractions, to the surface.

As soon as she was on the surface, after breathing out foam and blood, she gave birth to a dolphin calf under the watchful eyes of her mate. The little one was led to his mama’s nipples by gentle strokes of the adult dolphin’s beak.
“I like to think that on that day we reunited a family.”

So how does a dolphin use brain waves to influence Enzo and his daughter’s mind to participate in some heroic act? Is it consciousness?

Dolphins and whales in more recent times are known for being more conscious mammals of the sea. But what about an octopus?

Is it possible that an octopus, any old octopus can extend a connection from nature?
In this story, of My Octopus Teacher does Craig Foster, the scuba diver needing a break from his life, really create a connection with a wild octopus?

If you watch the film, you’ll come to the obvious conclusion of … yes.

So, let’s spend a minute to talk about how.

Everyone wants to know how to connect and to create a conscious connection. I honor the fact that you may not be so drawn to going scuba diving to create a personal relationship with an octopus like Craig Foster… but let’s see what we can learn from this incredible connection.

1.) Craig was doing something fun. Swimming. He previously been lost in work with deadlines and all the things that come from doing something but sometimes we loose sight of the reason we’re doing it. So he returned to the sea. Swimming.

We’ll unlike Craig I don’t think swimming in cold water is fun. Sometimes as cool as 46 degrees.

I’m emphasizing this as what’s fun for Craig may not be fun for you. But honoring what is fun for you is key.

This point is so important that most people miss it because it’s so simple. But doing things that make you feel free, fun or expressed in indeed a pathway to the Divine.

2.) Craig is swimming around a local community. What I mean is he’s not trying to cover the whole ocean. He ended up swimming in the same 100 yard area again and again. This is kind of fun to observe too.

How many times have you been doing something that you are really not thinking? Without directly saying so, it appears Craig is enjoying the quiet of being “alone” and I put that word in quotes so you can hear it when you’re out in the ocean. What I mean is when you’re thinking that you’re alone.

One could easily say that Craig was swimming alone in the ocean because of his fondness of the water and because like a boy he appreciated the beauty of discovery.
Then one day, he discovers something.

It’s an odd piece of oceanic art.

It looks like a 3-D version of Jackson Pollack painting. Craig discovers a thing or an object that is covered in sea shells. These are dead sea shells so the fact they’re adhered to something that is covered in sea shells is interesting. Then it moves.
It has life.

Remember Craig is scuba diving so he can only hold his breath for certain limits. After taking a breath and coming back down to figure out what he’s actually looking at the 3-D shell art project has moved. It has locomotion.

What is it?

As your guide to this adventure, I need to highlight that when we discover something you could easily switch this thought to you being shown something.

So, allow me with this understanding to switch that Craig was presented something. It would take him a long time to understand what he was shown in the very beginning.

When we’re too busy chasing our dreams through never-ending tasks do we often miss the very things that are presented before us. Nature is very clever about this. It’s always there but it’s never ever pushy about forcing some conscious connection upon you. But it is always there. The Universe is like this. It never forces us to see, feel or comprehend anything spiritual but it’s always there. Dare I say, consciously aware…

Okay, back to our story.

After a new breath, Craig see’s the sea shell jalopy move. Then suddenly the shells are dropped and almost like alchemy the shells are replaced in a puff of smoke with an octopus swimming away at full speed.

Craig, the boy-like discoverer, follows the octopus to a rock assumed to be his home in which the eight legged creature disappears underneath the rock. Even more importantly is how the octopus changes its skin coloration and even skin texture to match the rock homogeneously.

This is the end of Craig’s first swimming lesson. But like the powerful seed of an acorn a seed has been deposited in Craig’s mind.

3.) The third thing to observe about nature is its constant invitation to consciously connect.

Every day, as in every day, Craig goes into the cold waters to watch his new discovery of the wild octopus of the sea. If you’re listening and I know that you are, then you’ve already heard me say that nature is begging you to observe it. (If you want to continue to apply the spiritual equivalent then you must understand that the Universe is begging you to observe it.)

So, Craig starts documenting the habits of this one particular octopus. Imagine swimming every day to look and find just one, this one, octopus every day. But that’s what Craig is doing.

What’s he looking for? You may ask…

Hang in there and you’ll find out.

In time, the octopus recognizes Craig as a middle-sized and middle-aged white man swimming with super long and narrow black diving fins, scuba mask and breathing tube not as a predator. It’s amazing but you can see the octopus keep all seven legs securely attached to home-base, the rock, and reach out with a leg with its many tentacles to see who or what Craig is if he’s not a predator.

Slowly, cautiously, you see the octopus reach out and touch the Craig’s finger tips, then his hand, and even his face mask. In time, the octopus let’s go of his attachment to home and releases to discover for herself who and what Craig is.

For me, if I were an octopus, I may wonder many things too. Things like who has the time or the inclination to go swimming for 365 days with me- one octopus in the sea? Doesn’t Craig have a job that he has to report too? What about a wife? We know he has a son because he casually mentioned it earlier in the documentary.

From the perspective of an octopus, doesn’t Craig have something better to do than come out to the same 100 yard kelp forest near Simon’s town in the cape of South Africa?

Good questions for an octopus to ask, and frankly anyone else watching the film.
It’s easy to watch a 90 minute documentary that took 10 years to make even after swimming in the ocean every day for a whole year trying to find just this one female octopus.

4.) The fourth thing we observe, is that the octopus reaches back and extends Craig an invitation. As much as Craig is being touched by the octopus the octopus is feeling out Craig too.

As more time evolves, the octopus releases all his attachments from the rock and surrounds all of her legs around Craig’s hand. The picture of this is hard to imagine but this film captures it all. Well, it does capture the image perfectly but there’s something to see or to observe that the film can’t capture. And that’s Craig’s energy.

You can deduce that something is happening that would allow a single wild octopus of the sea to reach out intimately and vulnerably like this but the film can’t capture it. You can feel it. If you hear and listening to my voice right now you can feel the connection.
This is the spiritual connection of nature. And yes, it’s conscious. Let me continue about this energy.

Another trip to the sea and Craig and his female friend, the octopus, continue their relationship. Craig needing a breath goes softly to the surface to get the required air his lungs so deeply crave and need and the octopus rides comfortably all the way to the surface. A true display of trust.

This is a keyword. Nature does trust us. The more that we become at one with it, trust begets connection. And as you’ll witness here, connection of the most conscious and spiritual kind.

Let me take a breather here, like Craig coming to the surface for another breath, we’re talking of a grown man taking the time to swim and document the geographic area of kelp forest looking for one octopus. Seeing the octopus surround itself around Craig’s hand seems like it’s a good as it could get.

5.) The fifth thing you see is that the octopus releases from Craig’s hand and actually connects itself with Craig’s body or what appears to be his heart area.
This is obvious connection at a heart level. Seeing things spiritually you can see that there’s again an energy being shared here.

Perhaps there’s energy being shared by nature in the form of a wild octopus at sea to share energy with Craig’s heart chakra. Perhaps a wild octopus from the sea has noticed that Craig, seemingly, has lost his way maybe even his very own identity. Perhaps this heart felt connection is exactly what Craig needed to feel alive again.

I don’t know about you but before seeing this film I’ve never seen an octopus and a human interconnect in the way I physically watching the conscious connection of nature.

As in things of the material world, things happen and the Craig and the octopus encounter an issue whereby the octopus retreats. Craig is divested that his action, commonly thought of as a mistake, was something that breached the trust of his teacher and friend the octopus.

The octopus fled her normal homestead and Craig becomes a tracker of the sea.

6.) The sixth thing.
We’ve heard of tracking animals on the ground because of their footprints, droppings, and how they might change the terrain based upon what and how they eat or even sleep but have you ever thought of tracking an octopus in water?

Okay, okay, let’s bring all this down to some rational simplicity shall we? Finding an octopus that will hold your hand in the ocean is more than amazing enough. Having that same octopus ride on your body because of an energetic bound that is being created by all is beyond words…. But who would think they can find their wild octopus that has fled the community?

Well, Craig did.

Earlier in Craig’s life, as a cameraman in Africa, he watched native trackers look for all the tiniest of clues that were a part of the wildlife’s daily routine. Somehow this stuck with him and he thought he could track a wild octopus.

I have to bring up what is typically in our minds. Who has time to find an octopus that has left its home? Is it possible to track a fish, crab, shark, and or one particular octopus of the sea? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking Yes, it’s possible.

Biologists have tracked dolphins, whales, fish, birds and so much more usually with some radio beacon kind of device. But let’s be clear, Craig didn’t tattoo his octopus with a name, pulsating tracker or with any kind of technology. He’s literally swimming out there in middle of the freezing water of the ocean, trying to find an octopus that’s run off.

Craig does what all humans do when trying to figure something out. Especially, if they’ve lost something. Craig started making a map. First of where the octopus once called home. And then he started mapping all the places he’d seen the octopus hunt, play or otherwise be. In making this map, Craig started looking for the tiniest clues as to what or where the octopus might be.

In this daily observation, which has to be called what it is, which is practice. Craig takes his practice of mapping the ocean and finds all kinds of other things in addition to the octopus. For many people, this could be frustrating because we’re looking for one lost octopus and we keep finding shells, clues that may or may not have anything to do with finding the octopus at all.

Certainly, this whole thinking isn’t rational. Trying to find an octopus in the ocean is worse that trying to find a needle in a haystack because at least the needle isn’t moving from haystack to haystack. Do you get my drift? This is insane right?

I don’t know if Craig was thinking like this as he was too busy trying to think like an octopus. He continued his underwater tracking I think it was for weeks…

7.) The seventh thing.

The octopus is found. A relationship is reunited and whatever was the breach between the Craig and the female octopus is resolved. There’s more to discover.

8.) The eighth thing.
Craig steps back from the lens of his camera, his perspective, to see the big picture. It’s a considerable choice because he has the ability to interfere and to protect the female octopus but he thinks that he shouldn’t interfere. He watches the balance of nature from birth to death and how the cycle repeats.

9.) The ninth thing.
All of this craziness, which Craig himself calls an obsession, comes to the end upon the death of his friend the octopus. Craig realizes that his time of observing this one octopus is up but because of all that he’s encountered he wants to explore more.

10.) The 10th thing.
He shares his story. First with his son and then though the very nature of his gift to tell a story with film. He takes a chance and expressed how My Octopus Teacher

11.) The 11th thing.
Netflix who eventually purchased the rights to the film originally turned it down. “but was seen by the right person and “it was like a bit of a miracle…that obviously makes a huge difference because suddenly you can reach a very, very big audience with your message. I mean the whole motivation behind spending so much time and what we do, is very much to do with conservation.

12.) The 12th thing.
The octopus that Foster followed for so long was never given a name.  Foster explained that he did that on purpose.  “I didn’t want it to become like a pet or curiosity or just some arbitrary thing. This is an individual animal living this extraordinary life in the great African sea forest. And you know, she’s my teacher and that’s why I didn’t give her some arbitrary name.”

Now let me string together everything we’ve heard about so far about conscious connection with nature:

1.) Doing something fun.
2.) Doing something fun while not really thinking.
3.) Constant practice. I actually call this deliberate practice
4.) Nature offers us a conscious invitation.
5.) There is connection that is offered in this invitation.
6.) The more you observe the more you discover.
7.) When a separation occurs, find your balance and come back to mother nature’s invitation for conscious connection.
8.) The macro view of what’s real and what’s not.
9.) A desire to explore more. A desire to go deeper within.
10.) Sharing the experience.
11.) Who would thing the world would want to see a movie about a grown man and an octopus? What’s the story really about? Conscious connecting by nature or the Universe.
12.) A knowingness not to name the octopus. Or to even credit himself. Craig, stated decidedly, that the whole experience, including the filming, editing and distributing it was a miracle.

Maybe that’s what we all need… more conscious connection with nature… to see the miraculous conscious connection in and around us. This invitation is ever present and ready for your consideration, acceptance or even joy! Come on, let’s have some fun!

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