“I’m Popeye the sailor man…”

Alrighty. So I’m willing to bet everyone here’s seen a Popeye cartoon. If not type it in, P-O-P-E-Y-E. Popeye’s that goofy little cartoon guy that…

He needs to eat spinach and his muscles get bigger, primarily his bicep. This is important. So I want you to stand with your arms by your side.

Stand up right now.

If you’re not already standing and I want you to bend your arms up and let them drop and bend your arm up like you’re doing a curl and let it drop.

That’s your bicep.

And that’s how most people try to run their entire lives, like their bicep. And I want to talk today about the miracle of your ankle.

I have been fascinated by ankles…

…for at least 20, 30 years now. I can’t tell you when it started. I remember talking with them to my Rolfer.

• I remember talking with them with various chiropractors that I’ve known over the years.
• A lovely Feldenkrais girl, and I used to talk about the ankle.
• My Tai Chi guy, we used to talk about the ankle a lot.

And I find the ankle fascinating because…

….I’m watching people walk on the trail right now and I was just doing a little bit of playing ball with Brucey and Emmett…

….and I realized I had to give this message to you because the lady walking the trail that I’m looking at right now, I can tell she’s got a destination in mind and she’s not thinking about every step and she’s probably totally unaware of the thousands and thousands of movements that her ankle makes in a little journey.

Literally, I want you to discover that your ankle makes thousands and thousands of movements and you don’t have a clue.

All you do is, if you decide I’m going to get up, and I’m going to stand up and bend my arms, right?

• When you stand up to bend your arms, bend them, let them go, bend them, let them go.
• Your ankle has performed dozens of movements, while your arm pretty much has done one.

The mere act of standing…

…wiggling back and forth, a little bit of wobble in your stance.

The very act of standing up if you were sitting down. If you’re standing up, sit down and then stand back up and do a couple curls, and notice how much of your ankle, probably a little bit more of it’s gotten into your attention, but it’s always been within your consciousness.

So very little…

…gets into your attention, so very, very little gets into your attention.

Almost nothing gets into your awareness. But consciousness is the only reality. Boy, we’ve got three words today.

• Consciousness is the only reality. Let’s just call that awareness of being.
• Okay, got it. So what are you aware of being, let’s define that as awareness, right?

Just chunking down a little bit.

So just being-ness is consciousness.

Awareness of being a teacher, awareness of being cold when my hands are purple, right now we have frost here.

It’s wild, man. Not used to it, but awareness. You see my hands, my eyes, my ears are only capable of sensing very little. Let’s just call that awareness.

Now let’s talk about attention.

What actually gets into your attention, what gets into your stories. Again, that’s very, very little.

What gets into my… see, imaginally I am aware that I have two puppies in the car, but I am not… They’re not in my, see if I turn around now and do a couple million movements with my ankles.

Now I can physically see them.

See, consciousness is the only reality. In other words, consciousness. It’s a really big chunk.

• Awareness. Physically, I’m aware of the dog park. Physically now I turn my head and I’m aware of the dog’s.
• Physically what’s getting into my attention a little more are my ankles and a little bit of confusion and clarity around these terms.

Think of it this way….

If a ball came at you and you unconsciously catch it, it may not have gotten into your attention, but it was definitely within your awareness and some sort of reflexive action has you catch it.

You get it? Clear as mud. I hope so.

I’d love to chat about this in the Facebook group or elsewhere.

But consciousness, it’s a big thing.

Awareness. Yeah. What gets into your imaginal and physical senses, but what do you actually notice?

See I just… see consciousness is the only reality.

Awareness of being is God. That’s a big, big chunk.

• I look over there and I see the grass.
• I didn’t notice the grass before.

I noticed the trees and the sky and the sunrise, but I’m aware my eyes are picking up a lot over there, but what actually gets into my ATTENTION right now is the grass.

• What gets into my attention now is the sunrise.
• What gets into my attention now is some of you all have been here.

What gets into my attention is a mixture of imaginal and physical.

Maybe you’ve noticed in Manifesting Mastery, the first week was devoted to getting more into your attention because we all have those girls giggle moments, but until…

You see if they’re just in your awareness, you have no idea where it’s coming from, probably.

Yeah, I’m just aware that I feel bad.

• I want you to move your attention around that “flashlight of attention” a little tiny bit, and notice it’s not the girls giggling that got the guy upset or you.
• It’s what you imagined. If you move that flashlight of attention around you notice, hmm. Getting a little clearer?

Let’s get back to the bicep and the ankle, then.

Your bicep. All right, bend your arm, let it drop. Bend your arms slowly. Let it go down. That gets your bicep into your attention.

Usually you don’t notice it, but that’s also how you try to run your life. I’m bending my arm. I’m bending my arm, but your ankle. Go take a walk.

• Notice your ankles a little bit more, but I guarantee you can’t keep your mind totally focused on them. Nor do you want to.
• I want you to take a walk and notice your ankles a little bit more, but also notice the grass, the sunrise, the sunset.
• Notice if you’re imagining me and Victoria taking a walk with you there, or are you walking with us here? Move that flashlight around a lot more.

One more tiny bit.

I want you to have more of an ankle driven life than a bicep driven life.

You’ll notice Popeye needs to do something. Oh, there’s a crisis. The Bluto is beating up or trying to take his woman away or something like that.

And what’s Popeye got to do?

He’s got to eat the spinach, it makes his muscles strong. Right. And so then he gets to go and solve the crisis. You get we’ve had crisis solving.

• We’ve been watching that since we were little kids.
• We watched mom and dad have arguments about crises and probably not solve that many.

Maybe even get divorced because of a crisis or 10 million that they kept giving life to.

We watch cartoons.

Oh my God. For me it was Popeye, Superman, Spider Man, stuff like that. Speed Racer. Go Speed Racer go. It couldn’t just be a race.

That would be boring, wouldn’t it?

Speed Racer had to have problems. You also had to have a hidden hero. Turned out to be his brother.

Meanwhile, why would I mention that?

Meanwhile your ankle, you’re not aware of your ankle all that much. Your ankle really isn’t given much glory.

It doesn’t solve many problems, but God, it’s involved with you crossing a lot of bridges and walking on a lot of paths.

And yet all you do is you imagine changing the channel on the television.

Back when I was a kid, we didn’t have remote controls and you’d have to stand up to do that, and walk over and then go back and sit down.

We changed channels a lot less, maybe had longer attention spans because our ankles got used more than our biceps.

Meanwhile, listen to that little fella.

Cause then everybody knows the dogs are in the car going, I want out, I want out. What can the little birds tell you? See, I remember a long time ago I’d be in the woods and I’d be aware that I was in the woods.

• All right. I mean, consciousness is the only reality. I’m aware that I exist. I would be aware.
• In my awareness I’d be aware of the woods. I’d be aware of the birdsong.
• But it’s not until it got into my attention in a new way that I actually learned what the different bird calls mean.

And that little fellow is just talking about me and my puppies right here. The puppies want out. This guy’s standing here, he’s telling everybody there’s an anomaly here. That’s what that little bird just told everyone. There’s some dogs and there’s a calm guy.

A LITTLE BIRDY TOLD ME….

• The dogs want out.
• The guy’s just standing there.
• It’s a little odd.
• Just take a look at this.

Notice that it’s here.

• I want you to notice that you’re here. I want you to notice the stillness that you are.
• Awareness of being as God. Consciousness is the only reality. How you are aware of being.

Chunking down a little bit…

…,what is GETTING into your awareness and what do you GIVE attention to?

That might be one worth writing down.

What gets into your awareness?

Right now I see… and what do I give attention to? This lesson, giving us some semi cryptic hints, wanting you to explore, not just have an answer, but to explore. And again to notice your ankles because your ankles God they do a lot. They get no credit. And if you had to look for signs, am I actually walking?

If you had to monitor your ankles constantly…

…to know whether or not you were getting closer to your path, you get you’d probably get lost on the path.

Versus if you know you’re going to Petty’s orchard, to have some yummy coffee or something. We used to do that and maybe we’ll do it again. But if we’re aware of, that’s where we’re going.

If we’ve imagined, oh, the coffee’s so good. Let’s go.

Suddenly, the walk happens and very little attention’s on the ankle.

How, what’s happening? What all’s little muscles, what all tendons. Oh, my God. Meanwhile, hope you had some fun. I sure did. I bet you did too. Alrighty, see you in the Facebook group, don’t be Popeye. Go play. See you.