The ability to immediately and effectively function in any foreign culture and in mixed-culture environments is of paramount importance to today's expeditionary-style operations. Cultural training specific to a particular local may not offer a viable preparation, when the geographical destination of overseas deployment cannot be predicted or planned. The present paper examines an approach to culture general (CG) competence over those methods to enhance culture-specific skills. "CG competence" is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to interact effectively with peoples across different, unplanned, or unforeseen cultures. Having completed a review of literature on enculturation, we conceptualize cultural understanding as the neurological processes of transformative schematic activities that are related to symbolic exchange and learning. In CG training, we take into account the importance of transference from one mindset to another; symbolic representations as to how one expresses self and relations in everyday life; and anthropological reflection on socially-constructed emotions and meaning-creation. The present CG approach focuses not so much on what to think, but how to think about unfamiliar and complex cultural environments. It displaces the teaching emphasis from rule-focused, heuristic skills to shaping the "mindset" of an individual engaged in multi-cultural interactions. Interactions refers both to communications with native peoples and to adjusting, mentally and emotionally to a foreign environment. The paper identifies four cognitive culture-general competencies and three affective competencies that mirror the natural learning progression of the cross-cultural learner. Once learners acquire CG competencies, they will be able to quickly learn cultural-specific skills, because the act of gaining cultural competence is literally embodied in the creative, multi-layered activity of how learners interact with native peoples and how they reflect on such interaction and how they modify behaviors on the ground.