S01/E08: – “I Am Attention” – What I Feed, I Become

Introduction

Welcome back to the Martfotai podcast.

In our last episode, we stepped into the mirror of shadow, where what we judge in others reveals the parts we’ve hidden in ourselves. We explored how the traits we most reject are often the ones we once disowned. How identity forms not from essence, but from avoidance. And we ended with a call: not to fix or purify, but to reclaim.

Now, we turn to what makes any of that possible.

Attention.

Without attention, there is no presence. No shadow work. No transformation. Only drift.

Where your attention goes, your life follows. What you feed, you become.

This episode explores the invisible force that powers identity, fuels reaction, and determines what remains, and what fades.

You’ll see how attention functions in layers:
How it scatters, how it’s drawn, and how it can be directed.
How it’s hijacked by memory, stolen by devices, and weaponised by emotion.
And how, once consciously reclaimed, it becomes the lever that turns illusion into clarity.

You’ll learn how to fast from distraction. How to unify the lower centres through multiple attention. And how each moment of noticing is a moment of return.

Because if you do not direct your attention, something else will.
And that something is rarely working in your favour.

This is how the war ends.

Not by overpowering illusion,
but by starving it.

This is not a battle to win.
It’s a nourishment to end.

Let us begin.

Section 1 – The Currency of Being

Attention is not simply focus. It’s the substance of your experience.

It decides whether you are here or absent, whether you see clearly or remain lost in projection. It marks the difference between living as presence or living as echo.

Whatever holds your attention shapes your life. And yet, most people have no real say in where their attention goes.

It’s pulled. Drawn. Scattered. Consumed.

You open your eyes, and already the scroll has begun. Not just the phone. The mind. The memory. The imagined conversation. The unfinished loop.

Not because any of it’s important. But because your attention has already been hijacked.

What you glance at becomes what you think about. What you think about becomes what you feel. And what you feel begins to build the story of who you think you are.

This is not harmless.

When your attention is claimed by noise, identity forms around that noise.

Spend enough attention on fear, and you become cautious.

Spend it on judgement, and you become reactive.

Spend it on resentment, and you begin to believe you are the one who was always wronged.

The pattern is simple.

Attention is energy. It nourishes what it touches.

If you feed resentment, it grows.

If you feed stillness, it deepens.

Even anxiety cannot exist without ongoing attention to what might go wrong.

This is the part few want to admit.

Attention is not unlimited. It must be gathered. Directed. Preserved.

But most let it leak, moment by moment.

They watch lives they will never live. Scroll images they will never meet. Argue with futures that will never arrive.

And in doing so, they weaken the part of themselves that could one day be whole.

Attention is a capacity, not a reflex. It does not strengthen by habit, but by how consciously it is placed.

Attention does not control life.
It meets it.
It does not grip reality.
It brings you back to it.

To feed presence instead of persona.

To stop watering weeds.

Each unconscious glance, each unobserved reach, each reflexive reaction feeds the part of you that cannot rest. Keep feeding it, and it will begin to lead.

Unless you interrupt it.

Unless you turn the tide.

Attention is the currency of being.

Where it goes, your future grows.

But what exactly is this force that shapes everything? Let us look more closely.

Section 2 – What Is Attention?

Attention is not just focus. It’s fuel.

It powers everything you believe, everything you become, and everything you unconsciously maintain.

Where attention goes, energy flows.

And what receives that energy begins to grow.

Attention is not neutral. It nourishes what it touches. Whether it lands on anxiety, distraction, presence, or peace, it feeds it. It’s not a single act. It’s a continuous stream, flowing moment to moment. And unless it’s reclaimed, identity runs on whatever collects its current.

We have four distinct modes of attention: None, Scattered, Drawn, and Directed.

Each reveals not just a level of focus, but a state of being.

None is the blackout of self. The lights are on, but no one is home. The body may be upright, the eyes may scan, the head may nod, but awareness is absent. No noticing, no memory, no imprint. Life passes through like wind through a vacant house.

You can spend hours like this. Days, even. Entire stretches of life, unlived.

You eventually come back to the here and now and realise that the drive is over, the room has gone quiet, the person has stopped talking. And you have no idea what just happened.

This isn’t harmless forgetfulness.

This is the dissipation of being.

George I. Gurdjieff gave us a stark aphorism that touches this state directly:

“Man is given a definite number of experiences – economising them, he prolongs his life.”

This isn’t about time. It’s about impression.

And each moment you live without attention is an experience wasted, unused, and a life shortened and unlived.

Next, is Scattered, the waking default.

Here, the lights are on and someone is home, but they’re pacing from room to room, distracted by every noise.
Your attention jumps like static. You start one thing, switch to another, forget the first.
You scroll while eating. You talk while texting. You nod while thinking of something else.
Thoughts leapfrog one another. Your hands fidget. Your eyes dart. Your breath shortens.

You walk familiar paths and miss every detail.
You eat without tasting.
You arrive somewhere and realise you weren’t truly there.
You respond, but not from presence, only habit.

Scattered attention seems like movement, but it’s dispersion.
Energy leaks in every direction.
No centre holds.
You are here, but thinned out, stretched across fragments of thought, sensation, and impulse.

Impressions come and go, but nothing lands.
Nothing is digested.
You live, but you do not accumulate anything of substance.

This is the slow erosion of coherence.
Not lost, like in None, but dissolved, a little at a time.

Then comes Drawn attention.
This is not distraction, it’s capture.
Something outside you takes hold of your inner thread and yanks.
A sudden sound. A flashing screen. A sharp word. A raised voice.
The moment it appears, you’re already gone.

Your head turns before you think.
Your breath quickens before you know why.
Your thumb scrolls. Your eyes lock. Your jaw clenches.
You are not directing attention. it is directing you.

This attention feels strong, immediate, consuming.
But it’s not sovereign.
It’s not yours.
It’s claimed, by the loudest thing in the room, the most charged memory, the sharpest fear.

Drawn attention builds momentum without permission.
You don’t choose to replay the insult, you just do.
You don’t decide to obsess, you’re already halfway in.
And ou don’t intend to react, but your body already has.

This is the attention of the hunted.
It belongs to survival, not presence.
To the animal in you, not the aware one.

You may seem alert, engaged and responsive, but your will has been bypassed.
You are no longer the one steering.

To live in drawn attention is to be ruled by the urgent, the emotional, the unresolved.
It’s to become a vehicle for whatever has seized you.

Finally, Directed attention.
This is where choice begins.
You place your awareness deliberately, and you keep it there.
It doesn’t grip. It doesn’t strain. It simply remains.

You read, and meaning lands.
You listen, and something deeper is revealed.
A reaction stirs, but you don’t move with it.

This is attention with intention.
Quiet. Stable. Clear.

Here, your inner axis steadies.
You don’t drift. You don’t repeat.
You respond. You change.

Without this, there is no real Work.
No rooted self. No transformation.
Only fragments, only motion.

Directed attention is the shift.
The turning point.
Where presence becomes power.
Where you no longer chase the world.
You begin to live from within it.

Most people hover between scattered and drawn states, flickering between exhaustion and stimulation. They believe they are aware, but their attention is being directed for them.

The moment you begin to observe where your attention actually is, something fundamental begins to change.

You start to see how your inner state is not random. It’s shaped by what you feed.

You see how quickly attention is taken. How easily it’s handed away.

And you begin to realise:

The first step toward freedom is not controlling others.

It’s reclaiming attention from what never served you.

This episode is not about putting in harder effort or tuning out the world.

It’s about seeing clearly that attention is the axis of your selfhood.

The “I” you believe in lives wherever your attention goes.

Withdraw it, and the false begins to starve.

Hold it, and the real begins to appear.

But how does this mechanism actually work?

How does attention create the very sense of self we carry? To understand that we must see the deeper process at work.

Section 3 – Attention Builds Identity

You become what you feed.
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a mechanism.

Identity forms through repetition.
What you return to, stays. What you revisit, takes root. Over time, it begins to shape you.

A pattern becomes familiar, then expected.
A reaction settles in and starts to feel like a trait.
A story, repeated enough times, begins to pass as fact.

Look at a child.
Whatever draws consistent attention, whether praise or punishment, becomes the scaffolding of their self-image. A glare becomes a warning. A smile becomes approval. And soon, they are no longer responding to life but managing the identity that grew around those cues.

This never stops.
In adulthood, the attention continues, but now, it feeds subtler forms of selfhood.
You dwell on criticism, and soon you criticise yourself.
You replay betrayal, and trust begins to look naive.
You bask in approval, and performance becomes survival.

Attention outlines you. And with enough repetition, those outlines become walls.
You are not simply who you believe yourself to be.
You are what your attention has kept alive.

The self is not a single truth.
It’s a loop of remembered impressions, what you watched, feared, followed, defended.
These loops deepen not because they are accurate, but because they are familiar.
And familiarity begins to feel like fact.

You tell the same stories.

Cling to the same roles.

Nurse the same old wounds.

And each return hardens the shape that returns.

Even the images you cherish can become a trap.
You tell yourself, “I’m the calm one. I’m wise. I’m clear.”
But calm might not be your nature. It might be your defence.

When a real emotion surfaces, you suppress it, because it disrupts the story.
You stop responding. You start managing.
Presence fades. Performance takes over.

The self becomes a costume, shaped by repetition and held in place by attention.
What you cling to begins to harden.
And once hardened, it resists change.

It doesn’t matter whether the identity is positive or negative.
What matters is that it’s being fed.

Sustained attention becomes attachment.
Attachment hardens into identity.
And identity, once fixed, begins to fear its own erosion.

So, look honestly.
What do you return to, again and again?
What thoughts still claims your energy?
What role do you keep trying to protect?

Each repetition is a vote.
And each vote keeps a version of you alive.

But there is another part.
The one who notices the loop is not inside it.
The one who sees the pull is already standing slightly apart.

That is where freedom begins.

You don’t need to fight the story or rewrite the past.
You only need to pause. To see clearly.
And to move your attention away from the part that no longer feels true.

You cannot stay the same if you stop feeding what shaped you.

Change does not begin with effort.
It begins with famine.
And from that absence, something new has a chance to live.

Section 4 – Attention as a Spiritual Lever

Attention is not just a tool. It’s a sacred resource.
You carry it through every moment, every interaction, every inner shift.
Yet most people surrender it without a thought.

And in that surrender, something else takes root.

Attention is power.
Where you place it decides what lives in you.
What grows. What fades.

This is not poetry. It’s mechanics.
What you give attention to, you give life to.
Most speak of time as their greatest asset.
But time without attention is emptiness.

You can sit beside someone for hours and not be with them.
You can live within the same habit for years and never notice it running you.

Attention is the gateway to presence.
And presence is the only ground where real transformation begins.

If you want to reclaim your energy, do not start by cutting out distractions.
Begin to fast.
Attention fasting is the conscious choice to stop feeding what depletes you.

You can fast from gossip.
From retelling the same wound.
From reliving old conversations as if they still define you.
From imagining future disasters and calling it planning.
From rehearsing your irritation so you don’t have to outgrow it.

Try this:

Ignore your inner critic.
Not by debating it. Not by disproving it.
By turning your attention away.

At first, it will get louder.
It wants to be heard.
But if you do not look, it begins to weaken.
A thought unrecognised loses its hold.

Imagine you are brushing your teeth, and a voice whispers, “This isn’t enough. You’re still not doing it right.”
You don’t argue.
You don’t comply.
You simply return to brushing.
Your attention remains with the act, not with the accusation.

This is the essence of fasting.
A turning away from noise, to return to what is real.
You are not starving yourself.
You are refusing to keep feeding what was never true.

Freedom is not found in eliminating every trigger.
It’s found in no longer rewarding the ones that appear.

Each time you catch yourself wandering, and return, something in you strengthens.
A presence that does not rise from thinking,
But from choosing.

Presence begins where repetition ends.
And it deepens when you stop giving energy to what once defined you.

This is the quiet lever.
It moves without noise or force.
Yet everything begins to turn.

From this shift, a different self can emerge, called forth by where attention rests, and shaped by what you’re willing to see.

Where you choose to look is where life begins again.

So how do we begin this practice of choosing where to look?

How do we actually direct attention when it feels so scattered?

The answer lies in understanding that your attention is not a single spotlight.

Section 5 – Exercises in Attention

Your attention is not a single spotlight. It’s not one narrow beam you aim and hold. It’s threefold. A trinity. Each centre of your being, moving, instinctive, and emotional, can attend, sense, and respond on its own.

Body. Feeling. Instinct.

When these parts are fragmented, they pull in different directions. One frets. One wanders. One distracts. But when they align, attention regains its strength. And presence returns to its seat.

Let’s walk through this together now.
This isn’t theory. It’s something to try.
We begin with three directed attention exercises. One for each centre.
Then we bring them together into a single, unified presence.

Directed Attention – Moving Centre

Sit still. Begin counting your breath. Inhale as one. Exhale as two. Let the body count for you. No control. No pause. Just flow.

One. Two. Three. Four.

If the mind wanders, return.
No need to force it.
Let the breath guide you back through movement.
The moving centre understands rhythm.
Give it rhythm, and it will steady itself.

This is presence through the body.

Notice how the body begins to settle when given this simple task. The moving centre, when engaged consciously, becomes an ally rather than a distraction.

Directed Attention – Instinctive Centre

Keep the breath count going. Now, open your hearing. Let sound enter without judgment.

A distant hum. A passing car. The creak of furniture. The rustle of clothes.

Do not name. Do not seek. Just receive. Let instinct take in the world as it is.

You are now holding two lines of attention: One through the breath, steady and embodied. One through sound, open and receptive.

Let them hold. Let them stay.

Feel how the instinctive centre naturally knows how to listen. It doesn’t analyse, it simply receives the world as it comes. This is its gift: immediate, unfiltered contact with what is.

Directed Attention – Emotional Centre

Now welcome the third thread. Let a feeling arise, not a story, but a tone.

Begin with a sense of gratitude. Not for anything in particular, Just for being here. In this moment. Breathing. Hearing. Feeling.

Let the emotional centre hold that tone. A steady warmth. A simple gladness. Behind breath. Beneath sound.

Three attentions. Three centres. Three threads.

All present. All steady.

This is not multitasking. This is multi-being.

Let them stabilise together. Let the field of your presence widen.

Notice how each centre has its own quality of attention. The body is rhythmic. The instinct is receptive. The emotional is tonal. Together, they create a field that is both grounded and open.

Multiple Attention Practice – Unifying the Centres

Now we move to the deeper practice. The earlier threads: breath, sound, feeling, have been activated. Now, bring them together.

Let them draw inward. Breath. Sound. Feeling. Each one still present. Each one steady.

Let them meet in one field. Not forced. Not arranged. Just seen.

You do not need to do anything. You do not need to hold them tightly. Simply remain where they gather.

Breath moves. Sound enters. Feeling rests. And you, aware of them all, are present.

This is not a technique. It’s a return. A return to what never left.

Allow each centre to stay alert in its own way. The body sensing breath. The instinct receiving sound. The emotional field holding tone. Three capacities. One presence.

You are not switching between them. You are seeing from all of them at once. This is not division. It’s integration.

Stay here.

Let your whole being observe this attention. Not narrowed. Not distracted. Not searching. Not retreating.

No resistance. No narrative. Just presence. Breath. Sound. Feeling. One field.

You may sense something shift. A coherence. A gathering. Or you may sense nothing at all.

That does not matter.

What matters is that something in you remained. It didn’t escape. It didn’t divide. It stayed.

This is the foundation of unification. This is multi-being. alive, aware, and whole.

Integration and Daily Practice

This unified attention is not reserved for meditation. It lives in walking. In conversation. In simple tasks.

You can practise this anywhere. On a walk, feeling your steps, hearing the world, holding a feeling of calm, and a sense of presence. At a desk, sensing your posture, receiving the room’s sounds, maintaining inner warmth. Lying in bed, following your breath, opening to night sounds, resting in gratitude.

Begin with one centre. Then the second. Then the third.

Let them converge. And remain.

The practice builds gradually. First, you notice when you’ve scattered. Then, you return more quickly. Eventually, the centres begin to remember their unity without constant effort.

This is not perfection. It’s direction. Each return strengthens the capacity. Each moment of coherence builds the foundation.

We will release a complete guided version of this practice in the Martfotai Premium Series, with deeper refinements and expanded layers for each centre.

But for now, let this moment be the opening.

Return to attention. Return to coherence. Return to the one who sees.

These practices reveal something essential about the nature of attention itself. When the centres align, you begin to sense who is actually directing your awareness.

This brings us to a crucial question: Who holds your attention?

Section 6 – Reclaiming Sovereignty

Who holds your attention?

Not in theory. In this moment.

When nothing is required of you, where do you turn?
When no one is watching, what do you follow?

Most people don’t choose.
Their attention runs on reflex.
A phone. A memory. An argument. A hunger.
The same scroll. The same story. The same thought loop from yesterday.

Attention becomes identity through repetition.
It endures not because it’s real, but because it’s fed

You are not the contents of your mind.
You are not the inner monologue.
You are the place where attention lands.
And wherever it lands, that is where your self takes shape.

If it rests in fear, you move through life guarded.
If it lingers on rejection, you brace for loss.
If it clings to validation, you become a shape made for praise.

But the moment you remember attention, you return. There’s no need to think about it.
You come back by feeling, by contact, by presence itself. The body is felt. The room is seen. And something in you recognises, “I am here.”

Presence was never gone. It was simply drawn elsewhere.

This is what it means to reclaim sovereignty.
Change does not begin with resistance.
It begins with attention.
What you feed stays. What you ignore fades.

Freedom does not come from overpowering the self.
It comes from seeing clearly what you nourish.

So, ask again, with full honesty: Who holds your attention right now? Is it a loop, a longing, or a life you’ve only imagined?

And does it deserve the life you’ve been giving it?

Attention creates.
It does not wait.
And it does not discriminate between illusion and truth.

If you keep feeding the false, it will grow strong enough to feel like you.
But if you stop, if you withdraw the nourishment, what was never real will begin to fall away.

This is not suppression. It’s selection.
This is not control. It’s clarity.

Reclaiming attention isn’t conquest.

It’s alignment. A chosen return to what you really are.

Section 7 – Final Reflection

Attention is not a tool.
It’s the axis of the self.
Where your attention rests, self takes shape.
Where it lingers, something grows.
Where it withdraws, something dissolves.

This is not philosophy.
It’s mechanics.

If change is what you seek, begin with what you feed.

Withdraw attention from the imagined version of yourself.

From the conversation you keep replaying.

From the performance of who you think you must become.

From the voice that insists presence is a reward, not a right.

And return to what is here. Now.

Attention isn’t effort.
It’s contact.
The touch of awareness.
The contact that makes you real.

The more you return, the more you remain.

Let each day write one line of your life in full awareness.
Let your attention return home.
That home is not a place.
It is the seeing that never left.

If something in you opened today, let it stay open.
You can subscribe at martfotai.com for our weekly newsletter, reflections, guided practices, and upcoming access to the full premium series.
A deeper guided version of today’s practices will also be released.

Next, we move to Episode 9 – I Am Intention.
What directs attention also directs life.
When intention is unconscious, reaction leads.
When intention is conscious, clarity becomes your compass.

Thank you for walking this path with me.
This isn’t a journey outward. It’s a return to the centre of yourself.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and this is Martfotai.
Until next time, stay with presence.
It never left.