Doug Tales 72: Competence, Part Two

The four steps in becoming competent in any skill are 1) not knowing, 2) coming to understand, 3) practicing, and then 4) finally becoming. Doug Mendenhall discusses this process of learning a skill, and applies it to the gospel principle of receiving the Second Comforter in I See…Awake! (2015), on pages 35-36:

What happens when we apply the notion of Unconscious Competence to receiving the Second Comforter or becoming like Christ? Being like Him is one of my favorites. I am anxious to get to the end point, so I work at being “one” with my Lord in order to do what He would do in all cases at all times. Sounds like what He accomplished with His Father when He declared He came here and did all things that His Father asked Him to do. He had become Unconsciously Competent in obedience to His Father—something we should emulate.

“Unless you have the right sequence and the right information, it is not possible to have the veil open. We are going to attempt to put those things into an overall pattern you can understand, then feel, then do, and finally become so you can receive what is being offered.” (Denver Snuffer, The Second Comforter, pp. 20-21)

Here is the pattern:

1. We don’t know about receiving the Second Comforter.

2. We hear about the doctrine, but know nothing about how to achieve it. We are consciously incompetent.

3. We learn the doctrine and practice becoming like Him. You know how to achieve it and you know that you know, but it takes conscious thought and work.

4. We know and are attuned to the feeling, not the thought of how. We get to the point in the gospel of Jesus Christ, in which we are unconsciously competent, and we “take no thought” but only follow the will of the Lord Jesus Christ in all things by doing what He tells us in each moment. We have become “One” with Him and with the Father. They will then “abide” with us.

The pattern can be simplified even more.

1. We didn’t know.

2. We come to understand.

3. We practice.

4. We finally become.

Denver compares this to baseball: “Good batting in baseball is reactive and instinctive. It does not involve a batter reciting to himself a dozen different batting techniques or rules as he awaits a 90-mile per hour pitch. If he does, the ball is going to pass him by every time. The Gospel is no different. You need to seek for balance in your life. It is the object of this work to get you to become balanced, nimble, and more attuned to feeling than to thought.” (Denver Snuffer, The Second Comforter, p. 22)