1 Nephi 11:1

1  FOR it came to pass after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat ^apondering in mine heart I was ^bcaught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high ^cmountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot.

      “after I had desired… and believing that the Lord was able…, as I sat pondering…”

-there are 3 identifiable steps to Nephi’s gaining knowledge through a tremendous spiritual experience:  1.  (intense) desire            2.  Faith in the Lord (specific)    3.  Sober pondering

      -desire, believe, and pondering are all mental processes.  They have corresponding physical behaviors but ultimately the work Nephi did here to qualify himself for his own marvelous vision were mental or spiritual things.  These processes bridged the spirit and the body  and therefore elevated the soul to qualify for the experience about to commence.

      -these three spiritual actions are the prerequisites of prayer:  desire, believe and ponder.  We almost always skip these necessary precursors and jump right into the concluding stage.  We skip the main course and go to dessert, expecting to be filled. 

“an exceedingly high mountain”

      -clearly this is a temple experience for Nephi.  The scriptures are replete with the description of the “mountain of the Lord’s house”.  He is being “plucked” out of the world and given a much wider view of things.  These large picture perspectives are figuratively and literally obtained from a vista that provides an expansive view where we are not so caught up in the immediate details.  It is a longer term (in other words, an eternal) perspective.  And what is the objective of the temple?  Hugh Nibley taught it effectively: to provide us an education, it is a place of learning where we discover our place in relation to God and his cosmos.  Nephi is about to be taught exactly what we can learn from the temple curriculum.

“mountain, which I never had before seen and never before set my foot.”

-while this has obvious reference to a physical change of location and the mountain as a temple, I think it also makes allusion to Nephi’s new level or plateau of spiritual awareness.  He has entered a new spiritual realm, undergone a “quantum leap” of spirituality.  His repetitive description of the mountain as a place “new” and previously unfamiliar to him seems to be particularly noteworthy.