Doug Tales 73: Competence, Part Three

Jesus Christ taught a parable about building on a solid foundation or a sandy foundation. All that came later in the builders’ lives was the result of what they chose to build upon and how. In a similar way, Doug Mendenhall points to one’s foundation as vital to becoming competent in conquering spiritual evil in I See…Awake! (2015), pp. 36-38:

So how do we get to the Unconscious Competent level to become like our Savior?

1. Practice at the Conscious Competent level over and over. This creates energy pathways in the brain and is how you develop habits. (Neural pathways). Remember that imperfect practice can never make you perfect. If the practice is imperfect, or the pattern is not correct, then practicing it will make the outcome wrong.

2. Observe someone who has achieved the goal. This is why you associate with those that know, read their material, listen to their talks. Observe them and you learn to do it right. This also creates neural pathways in the brain. Read the Scriptures and The Second Comforter over and over. The Scriptures give you many examples of how it was done. Both are manuals.

Why don’t people achieve being able to do things in an unconsciously competent manner?

1. Not listening to the right people. Not getting the right information. Repeating and following the wrong trail.

2. Low teach-ability index—refusing to give up things, not focused on learning, low willingness to accept change, doing the same old patterns over and over again. Strong imbedded neural pathways must be overcome with new ones to change. Change your habits.

3. Spending too much time in the how—the techniques, and skills. Too many excuses, “I have no idea how to do this!” or “I’ll never receive the Second Comforter.” They associate with people of gospel “inaction” and negativity. Their vibrational frequency lowers to match those they associate with. Think about this in your past. Have there been times when you have felt an energetic joy because you learned something spiritually amazing? Then when you start sharing this new knowledge with people, they stop listening and close down, becoming afraid to listen to any more. Do you soon feel deflated? If so, they have worked the Adversary’s magic and brought you down to their level.

4. Not spending enough time on the Conscious Competent level to develop new neural pathways at the Unconscious Competent level. It requires time to reach this last level. It takes work! New habits are pathways in which new behavior becomes automatic and happens instantaneously, effortlessly, easily, thus creating the results as if by magic and as if by doing nothing.

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It is to our advantage to know these fundamental concepts. We can only go as high as the foundation is deep. We must prepare the soil first. When we “think we know it” we have stopped being teachable. “I get it” has just damned us if we think that’s all there is. So in other words it has stopped the possibility of us progressing. There is always more to “get” no matter where we are, and since we are here in this mortality we really don’t know much of anything anyway.

“To go where the Second Comforter is you have to do it the way the scriptures teach. There is a specific way to get there. It makes no sense to think the promised results are not linked to the requirements to get them. These foundational things need to be done or accepted.” (Denver Snuffer, The Second Comforter, p. 25)