Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Loving Onlooking
To take the attention already gathered by recollection and pour it outward, with loving will, into one ordinary living thing — a tree, a bird, a person — until self-consciousness drops and a direct, communing perception of that thing ‘as it is’ opens.
In 5 lines: First gather your attention (recollection). Choose one living thing — a tree, a bird, a person. Pour yourself out toward it; don’t pull its image in. Drop every label, use, and judgement — just look, with impassioned attention, until you forget yourself. Let it become communion rather than observation, and receive what it shows.
What it is
Where recollection (Underhill’s first discipline) gathers the scattered attention by will and holds it on one point, the first form of contemplation spends that gathered attention outward.
Underhill asks you to take “one of the myriad manifestations of life” — she famously suggests something humble and alive, a tree, a sparrow, a wave, a fellow human — and to “pour yourself out towards it, do not draw its image towards you.” You stop using the thing (its name, its uses, its “anatomical peculiarities”), drop your habitual labelling, and simply look with what she calls a “deliberate — more, impassioned — attentiveness, an attentiveness which soon transcends all consciousness of yourself.” Held long enough, that loving gaze ceases to be observation and becomes communion: you perceive the thing for the first time as itself, and (for Underhill) as a “theophany,” a showing-forth of the one living Reality.
The mechanism that does the work is plain attention married to love and wonder (The Inner Creates the Outer + The Inner Creates the Outer), turned wholly outward.
The Method
From Practical Mysticism, ch. VII (faithfully described, short quotes only):
- First, recollect. Begin with the gathered, quieted attention you have already trained in recollection — settle, still the body, collect the wandering mind. This onlooking is the next move, not a replacement for the first.
- Choose one living thing. Pick a single ordinary object — Underhill’s examples are deliberately humble: a tree, a bird, a running stream, another person. One thing, not a scene.
- Stretch toward it by an act of loving will. Make “a distinct act of loving will” outward. The direction matters: “Pour yourself out towards it, do not draw its image towards you.” You go to the thing; you don’t summon a picture of it into your head.
- Refuse all usefulness and labels. Look at it “without considering his reputation, his practical uses, his anatomical peculiarities” — drop classification, judgement, and what-it’s-for. Just let it be there and meet it.
- Hold an impassioned, self-forgetting attentiveness. Sustain the “deliberate — more, impassioned — attentiveness” until it “transcends all consciousness of yourself.” Self-awareness thinning out is the sign it is working, not a distraction.
- Let communion happen — don’t force the “result.” “In this quiet yet tense act of communion, this loving gaze,” a relationship discloses itself; the thing begins to show “unsuspected meaning, beauty, power.” You do not manufacture this; you make room for it by the loving attention and then receive what comes.
- Carry it back. Underhill means this to re-enchant ordinary seeing — to start meeting the living world with this quality of attention rather than only using it. (Sourcing note: the bolded phrases — “Pour yourself out towards it…”, “deliberate — more, impassioned — attentiveness…”, and the “reputation / uses / anatomical peculiarities” line — are Underhill’s wording from ch. VII; the surrounding description is faithful paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) was the foremost English interpreter of the mystics of her era; Mysticism (1911) mapped the path (awakening, purgation, illumination, dark night, union) and Practical Mysticism (1915) distilled it “for normal people.” This outward-pouring contemplation belongs to her staged scheme: recollection and purgation prepare the self, then three forms of contemplation unite it with the World of Becoming, the World of Being, and the Absolute.
She drew on the Cloud of Unknowing, the Rhineland mystics, the Carmelites, and quotes Kabir and à Kempis.
The Traditions' versions
Recollection (Underhill, prior step) — gathering the attention by will; this practice spends that gathered attention outward.
- Goethe / Steiner “exact sensorial imagination” — patient, loving, non-instrumental looking at a plant until its life-form discloses itself.
- Zen “just seeing” / shikantaza on an object — dropping the labelling mind and meeting the thing bare.
- Ignatian application of the senses — entering a scene with the full senses rather than analysing it.
- Awe / nature-contemplation practices — modern “savoring walks” and awe-induction by slow attention to the living world.
- Thich Nhat Hanh’s “looking deeply” — sustained mindful attention to one object until its interbeing shows.
Common refinements
Drawing the image inward. The whole instruction is to go out to the thing, not to picture it. If you find yourself building a mental image, return your attention to the actual object in front of you.
- Analysing it. The moment you start cataloguing uses, species, value, or memories, the communing perception collapses. Drop the labels.
- Trying to force the “theophany.” Straining for a mystical result guarantees you won’t get even the ordinary one. Pour out the attention; receive whatever comes, including “nothing special.”
- Skipping recollection. Without first gathering the attention, the outward pouring has nothing steady to spend. Do the gathering first.
- Choosing a whole scene. One living thing. A panorama scatters the very attention you gathered.
- Picking something you find boring on purpose, to “test” it. Underhill’s point is loving attention; start with something you can actually feel warmth toward.