The Conscious Competence Cycle

If you’ve been following this blog, you should be aware by now that I believe that as a species we are evolving. With all of the environmental issues that we are seeing, wars, greed, disease, famine, natural and man-made disasters, it’s enough to make anyone want to throw their hands up in despair. When we can step back and take an honest look at what is going on with our beautiful planet, we can see a planet and her inhabitants in crisis mode. We are nearing a breaking point in a planetary cycle. This planetary crisis is (as I discussed in http://peacefulmichael.blogspot.com/2009/10/guiding-principals-part-2.html) the impetus behind the evolutionary impulse that is awakening across the planet. At its core, it is nature telling us “Evolve or Die”.

Fortunately we are waking up, listening and responding as a species. It’s happening slowly but little by little we are approaching “critical mass”. As more and more of us awaken to the deeper truths, as a species we begin to see and feel the deeper potential. Eventually enough of us will stabilize this new consciousness and hold it until it becomes strong enough that we all feel it. That point where enough of us believe something to be true that it allows all of us to believe its truth is the point of critical mass.


THE COMPETENCE CYCLE

As we awaken to our deeper and fuller potential as a species, we are like infants that are beginning to walk. The movements are new, challenging and scary but still we are drawn to the change at a very unconscious level because it is encoded in our DNA. As we awaken to this evolutionary impulse we experience the world of energy as something mystical and magical. We begin our journey with “unconscious incompetence”. At this stage we don’t know what we are capable of and we don’t know how to use the dormant abilities that we are slowly discovering that we have. As a result we misuse, fear, and deny these abilities. Yet still we sense that something is shifting.


Slowly as we grow as individuals we may not know the full depth of our capabilities but we begin to change our behaviors because we first learn what doesn’t work through our problems, failures and setbacks. Each time that we do something that brings us a result that we don’t like or want, we learn to change our behavior to avoid that consequence. It’s like the toddler that learns to avoid touching the radiator because it burns. It takes a few times of getting burned to make the connection or see the pattern but eventually we learn. At this stage we begin to move into “conscious incompetence” because while we may not know everything just yet, we have learned to survive and grow.

Eventually we reach a point where we have gathered enough experiential data that we can begin putting the pieces together and realizing that we are indeed capable of something more than meets the eye. This stage is like the child learning that if he moves a box near the counter, stands on the box and pulls on the drawer handle to use to climb onto the counter top, he can access the candy jar. At this stage we reach “conscious competence”. We know we can do something greater than we did before to gain more desirable outcomes, like the sweet candy, but we don’t fully comprehend the consequences of these more complex actions. Too much candy leads to a tummy ache in the short-term and weight issues long-term which open us up to a whole host of health issues.

Finally after gaining a body of experience and the knowledge to understand cause and effect along with consequences, we move into “unconscious competence”. This is the adult stage where we are able to see what our actions do and so we learn to moderate and modify our behaviors to get what we need with the fewest possible negative impacts in the short and long-term. There may still be consequences for our actions that we aren’t aware of yet but we’re much further along than when we were the infants and unsure and unaware of what was happening in our world. At this stage we begin to become so competent in our actions that we don’t really have to think about it any longer, we just do it automatically.

This is the growth cycle and because it is a cycle, it repeats itself. This cycle however is more like an upward spiral. Each time we reach the “unconscious competence” phase we are wiser and more powerful as we move into the new terrain and return to the “unconscious incompetence” phase but at a more challenging level. This is an endless cycle because the more we grow and evolve in any area we learn that the more we know, the more we know that we don’t know and so the process begins again. This cycle applies to every process we engage.



TIME TO WAKE UP

This is how it is with humans and the world of energy. Some of us are just waking up to our abilities in this realm. Some are already masters and are leading the way for others to follow. Others unfortunately are too afraid of the change and so they deny this world and even ridicule or attack those who have made the shift. Still life evolves and moves on and so those unwilling to change and grow will be left behind because they are trapped by their own resistance.

For those of us who are inspired by those leading the way, until we gain competence in this new world, we have to invest the time to learn. We are physical beings. We can see, feel, hear, taste and smell and this allows us to gather data from our physical environment. We have emotional (“energy in motion”) responses to this stimulus. We are capable of thought so we are able to gain knowledge from our experiences. However we are also spiritual beings but it’s important to remember that this spiritual aspect of ourselves is non-physical and therefore operates in energy realm. We are force (non-physical energy) contained within form (our physical body). We are both at once and must learn to work with this equation rather than continuing to deny its existence.

IT TAKES PRACTICE

The rules in the non-physical world are different than in the physical world and require different tools to navigate. To assist you in this realm I want to begin to offer you some tools and techniques which have been shown to me to help you begin to sense your way around in this world. I hope that you’ve been working with, practicing and hopefully incorporating “The Basics”  (http://peacefulmichael.blogspot.com/2010/04/awakening-grounding.html) into your daily life. If not, I encourage you to begin doing that. As we move deeper with the information I have for you, you’ll begin engaging energy consciously and if these basics aren’t in place you’ll have no framework or structure to hold the experiences in the physical realm. If that is the case then the words will seem empty, the principles will seem foreign and your growth will be minimal at best.

Are you ready to make the journey from “unconscious incompetence” toward “unconscious competence”?