Reflecting on how I've been feeling lately, an analogy occurred to me.
Spiritual connectedness--that is, for me, the level of awareness of God's perspective on the world and the ability to hear and energy to follow promptings of the Spirit--has a time series like a first order exponential falloff after infinite impulse inputs (Dirac Delta Function). The decay parameter becomes faster or slower based on our environment, behavior, and consistency. The scale factor depends on the spiritual event; sacrament meeting might be a higher coefficient than studying with a friend, and personal study may vary widely.
This produces the normalization of deviance "boiling the frog" decay curve of complacency and inactivity.
This also reminds us of why consistent personal study is so critical. Without it, the impulses are further apart. with it, the decay coefficient slows. The variance of impulse and decay coefficients means denser pulses are needed to sustain resilient and durable levels of connectedness.
One can draw a connection to historical area under the curve and spiritual power--to me that is efficacy of spiritual gifts from blessings of healing to knowing when to say hi to someone feeling down. The starting bound of integration is not fixed, though, so again consistency is vital.
We know that early Christians regarded the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy, were considered the greatest differentiator of the Gospel from the sundry religions and philosophies of the time. Without them we are merely maintaining a meaningful tradition, not boldly drawing the world towards Christ. That said, I there is a subtlety here that teaching and ministering in the Lord's church must engender the capacity, not the results, then the results will quietly manifest themselves.
