The Four Stages of Learning

Become unconsciously competent at each skill you learn.  This is very important.  For every skill or technique you learn you want to become totally unconsciously competent at it.  For example, if a meditation technique requires 4 components this means that you would practice each individual component to the point where you are so intimately familiar with the effects of each component that you could execute and recognize them without thinking.  You want to slow yourself down enough to learn what you are learning.

Step one: Conscious incompetence
This is when you start with a skill, for example, riding a bike.  You might be starting to be able to balance on the bike for 2-3 seconds.

Step two: Conscious competence
This is when you get a little bit better at the skill. You might be able to finally balance but still have some trouble turning, braking, or changing to the right gear on a hill.

Step three: Unconscious incompetence
This is when you are getting good enough at the skill that you don't have to devote the entirety of your conscious awareness to the task, but still have to slip in and out of being aware of what you are doing.  You haven't quite mastered it yet to do it completely without thinking.

Step four: Unconscious competence
You can completely execute the task or skill without any thought or awareness.  At this level you would be able to ride your bike without your hands.

The best authors will know that they have both levels of competence (conscious and unconscious) and will actively help you through hypnotic suggestion to acquire all of their own subconscious programming for the subject you want to learn.

There are lots of people that only loop their learning processes in the first two steps listed above; they are usually academics and ungrounded philosophers, or are afraid to take risks, i.e., radically change their perspective.  Even big risk takers may not actually integrate what they learn in a practical manner and can remain in the first two levels of learning competency.  The biggest red flag to identify these kinds of people is excessive speculation - competent authors do not need to speculate over their own mastery - and if they do it means they are writing "outside" of their current growth period.

What are you unconsciously competent at?  How have you designed your questioning process? Pay attention to the specificity of the questions you ask. Does it need to be more re-fined in some way? From which place, do you ask questions?  Curiosity?  Complaining?  You can let curiosity dominate your learning process, but give room for other sub-personalities to play as well. What is your underlying intent when you ask questions? Often when I ask questions my intent is to set up my sub-conscious mind to manifest future growth periods for myself.

Lateral Transfer

What is lateral transfer?  It is the transfer of a process, state, or skill to another un-related domain; this transfer happens after achieving a certain level of unconscious competence.  Three examples of lateral transfer include:

1.    Poor posture.  If you have poor posture in one activity or behavior it will affect the rest of your movements.

2.    Being around animals.  You will pick up on all of their unconscious behavioral habits and movement patterns.  You will be able to move like them.

3.    Lucid dreaming.  By practicing pulling up earth energy before going to sleep I noticed that I was able to transfer my grounded state into my dreams and achieve regular, strongly lucid dreams.

Design your lateral transfer.