Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
The High Watch
To habitually redirect attention upward to the Good/God rather than down onto problems and appearances, so that sustained focus on the higher reality reshapes perception and experience.
The High Watch in 4 lines: Keep the inner gaze lifted to the Good, not down on the problem. Hold the watchword — “Look unto Me, for I am God.” All day, catch the moment attention falls into fear or lack and gently lift it back up; let the “dry branches” of worry drop for want of attention. Watch — stay awake to where you are looking.
What it is
The High Watch is the contemplative discipline at the heart of Emma Curtis Hopkins’s later teaching (High Mysticism). Where the denials and affirmations are discrete statements, the High Watch is a continuous posture of attention: keeping the inner vision lifted toward the Good (God) rather than cast down onto problems, lack, and appearances.
It is the practice of habitually “looking up” — sustaining awareness of the higher reality through the ordinary day — and letting that sustained focus gradually transform what you perceive and experience. Hopkins illustrated it with Mary at the empty tomb: “With vision cast downward, Mary was accusing some gardener of hiding her Lord; with upward vision she beheld the Lord.” The same scene, two directions of attention, two utterly different experiences.
The governing call she gives is: “Look unto Me, for I am God, and there is none beside me.”
The Method
Drawn from High Mysticism and Hopkins’s “High Watch” teaching (short quotes attributed; rest faithful paraphrase):
- Set the direction: up, not down. The whole practice turns on the direction of inner attention. When the mind drops to the problem — the symptom, the bill, the grievance — you are looking down. The High Watch is the steady choice to lift the gaze to the Good instead.
- Hold the watchword. Keep a single elevating recollection running: “Look unto Me, for I am God, and there is none beside me.” It is the rudder that turns attention upward whenever it has drifted down.
- Practice “upward vision” repeatedly through the day. Hopkins calls it “upward vision oft practiced.” It is not one sitting but a habit — many small deliberate liftings of attention, again and again, until the upward set becomes the resting state.
- Catch the downward look and redirect. The active move is noticing when your attention has fallen onto fear, lack, or fault — and gently turning it back up to the Good. (Like Mary: drop the accusation of the “gardener,” lift the eyes, behold the Lord.)
- Refuse the “dry branches” of lower attention. Hopkins taught that by upward vision “every human being starts anew from his Sincerity Root, and drops the dry branches of lower attention, which have formulated into nervous prostration, decrepitude, poverty, discouragement, apprehension.” The practice is to let go of the chronic lower preoccupations (worry, dread, resentment) by simply not feeding them attention.
- Watch — stay awake. The “Watch” is alertness: a vigilance over where the mind is looking, sustained rather than occasional. It is meant to underpin and continue the work of the denials and affirmations — those clear the slate and write the truth; the High Watch keeps the attention there. (Sourcing note: the Mary-at-the-tomb illustration, “Look unto Me, for I am God.,” “upward vision oft practiced,” “Sincerity Root,” and “dry branches of lower attention” are from Hopkins’s High Mysticism / High Watch teaching. Wording outside quotes is faithful paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
High Mysticism (c. 1920) is Hopkins’s mature, more contemplative work, twelve studies “in the wisdom of the sages of the ages,” of which the High Watch is the pinnacle of metaphysical healing as she taught it.
The term and practice passed into New Thought as the ideal of sustained God-consciousness; “the High Watch” survives as the name of New Thought retreat communities. It is the New Thought cousin of Brother Lawrence’s “practice of the presence of God” and of contemplative recollection generally, framed through Hopkins’s attention-and-vision language.
The Traditions' versions
Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence) — continual gentle turning of attention to God through ordinary tasks; the closest devotional parallel.
- Recollection / the Jesus Prayer — sustained inner focus on the divine as a continuous state.
- Mindfulness of where attention rests — secular attention-training; noticing the “downward look” and redirecting is a reappraisal/attention move.
- Denials & affirmations (Hopkins) — discrete statements the High Watch sustains and protects.,
- Witness / sakshi practices — watchful, elevated awareness above the play of appearances.
Common refinements
Treating it as one meditation a day. It is “oft practiced” — many small liftings throughout the day. The win is frequency, not duration.
- Forcing/straining the focus. It is a gentle repeated turning, like Brother Lawrence’s, not a clenched concentration. Strain triggers fatigue and backlash.
- Suppressing rather than redirecting. The move is to redirect attention to the good, not to white-knuckle “don’t think about the problem.” Acknowledge, then lift.
- Ignoring problems that need action. “Looking up” should reframe and steady you so you can act wisely — not be used to avoid paying the bill or seeing the doctor.
- Doing it without the groundwork. Hopkins placed it after the denials/affirmations; it sustains attention on a truth you’ve already cleared and affirmed. Skipping straight to “just look up” with an un-cleared mind is harder.