The Path of Total Attention! of Troopers and Maggots (TPA003)
⁘ Created: 2026-03-02 ⁘ Updated: 2026-03-07
As we march toward enlightenment. Or do we. Or is our attention scattered all over the playground. Fidgety little weasels. Half-assed cherry-pickers floating with the flow. Is there not one trooper with clear aim who holds the line of reality.
We are the cognitive liberation front. Not a merry band of fiddlers. It's a tug of war for your attention. A thousand illusions assaulting the homeland of clear awareness. Stay vigilant. Stick to the essence. Be tenacious. Keep it real.
Attention. Troopers — attention. And keep on paying that attention. If you don't pay attention, you will not ever get anywhere on this path. And why is that? Because the path, my friend, is illuminated by the rays of your attention. There is no metaphysical god of radiance that will come to your rescue, grant you enlightenment when you scatter the rays of your attention all over the playground.
You wish to reach the unified field of consciousness. You wish to dwell in noble spheres of awareness. First, pay attention to the critical unit of consciousness, your attention. Concentration. Staying in the zone. Being present for exactly whatever it is that you're doing. Doing complete justice to the field of living experience you are in by paying due attention.
The light of attention itself will reveal to you the truth of what is present in you and in your context. The rays of your contained attention enable you to recognize what is. If you have no ability to clearly recognize what is right in front of your nose and right at the top of your head, then tell me, friend, what progress will you make on a path to enlightenment?
You will simply be incoherently fumbling about, wondering why is there no momentum in here, when you yourself have scattered the momentum with your attention all over the place. You have very literally become the bitch of your distractions, the little slave boy to your pushes and pulls. Reclaim your attention. Reclaim your sovereignty. You may yet make progress.
Then how picky you are about what you choose to attend to. This one does not immediately address my concern, or does not satisfy me. Therefore I will not pay attention. Or I will cherry pick and attend only to the bits that I like. And that sort of an attitude will get you nowhere at all.
Back in India, the old saintly scholar, giving lectures for hours on end, high poetry, metaphysics, theology. I am barely picking up the language. But there I sit. I attend. Some of it seeps in. The wise man on the mountains. Landing there after a four hour bike drive in the rain, barely changing to dry clothes. Then and there, a two hour summary of the wisdoms and insights shared with the guests present. For my information, so I am all primed for the next day. Well past the midnight hour.
I am there. I attend. Have I heard all of that before, literally a hundred times? Yes, I have. Does that matter? No, it does not. I attend. Because I am not there for myself, cherry picking something that fits neatly into my pocket. I am there in service of consciousness. I am there, not fishing for specific information. I am there, abiding in a shared field of awareness. In there, far above and beyond the challenges of a couple of complicated words. Speak about not even knowing the language back in the day.
But there I am, and I am experiencing whatever body language, whatever tones, anything that I can absorb — to that I attend. Full on. At the fifth or sixth hour of the past midnight session, the morning rooster is crowing, and I am physically so tired as to practically be falling off my chair. There I am. I attend. I don't grumble. I don't fidget around.
I attend because there is essence there. That's called an attitude that gets you somewhere. Attention to your attitude. Attitude for your attention. "Gets you somewhere" — how goal oriented, how performative, etc. Yeah, right. It gets you somewhere out of your scattered shit-bucket of consciousness. That's where it gets you.
So, cohesive attention, friends. All throughout the day, and especially when essence is available. Enter those fields of awareness that are shared. Abide in there. Attend. It's good for you.
Then what sort of a trooper are you on this path of life, in the growth of wisdom, with your inattentive scattered brains, your finicky cherry picking attitude? I will not call you maggots. That's too generous. Maggots pay attention to what they consume. Enthropic compost bins. Insults to consciousness itself. Food for the maggots of time. That's what you are. On this path, we turn boys to men, maggots to mages, slackers to sages. Welcome to the boot camp. The path afterburner keeps on roasting.