Contemplative vision requires disinterested but loving eyes. Disinterested because you refuse to make egocentric judgements. Loving vision because whatever is there, no matter how discomforting, can be embraced as an occasion of awe. Nowhere is disinterested love more necessary than between people. Spiritual growth, in community and as individuals, demands seeing what is there.
Contemplative vision refuses to waste the energy that goes into spiritual hallucinations.
This way of seeing doesn't discount the conscious use of imagination but it does focus us when efficacy is required to finish what we have started. It empowers us with the discernment to dispel distractions. Disinterested love was practised in the community of the desert. With no inflated reputation to maintain, their personal gifts and limits, as well as those of their fellows, could be acknowledged. Being threatened by someone's gifts, or being naive about their own weaknesses, would threaten the community's very existence.