Two types of seeing
Our soul is passive and receptive. We are, to be sure, awake and active, but our attention is not strained; we simply “look”—in so far, that is, as we “contemplate” it and are not already “observing” it (for “observing” implies that we are beginning to count, to measure and to weigh up). Observation is a tense activity; which is what Ernst Jünger meant when he called seeing an “act of aggression.” To contemplate, on the other hand, to “look” in this sense, means to open one’s eyes receptively to whatever offers itself to one’s vision, and the things seen enter into us, so to speak, without calling for any effort or strain on our part to possess them. There can hardly be any doubt that that, or something like it, is the way we become sensorially aware of a thing.
There are many ways of seeing, yet this belittles rational observation.
I resonate with non-optimized receptivity too, a kind of "open perception"—but is discernment really such a sin? The Jünger quote introduces "aggression" as a phrase to slander reason, but actually, there are harsher words: interrogation. There is a mode of seeing where you take a single object, rotate it in every way, try to pick the locks of all the side doors, with the goal of understanding its hidden essence. This is the vision of the scientist, the cartographer, the taxonomist. Can they not have souls?
You can't perceive all of reality all of the time in such a rigorous way (that would be exhausting). There's delight in the mosey of undirected consciousness. Rather, these are two opposite modes: divergence and convergence. Passive attention gives you range, where focused and obsessive attention gives you depth. Without range, you'll fixate your mind on something stupid. Without depth, all your insights will be shallow.
Reason has its pitfalls and limits, but my sense is that post-Enlightenment thinkers have gone too far in trying to dethrone it, creating a schism between the thinkers and feelers. We are in trouble if our thinkers can't feel and feelers can't think.