Welcome
Welcome back to Meta Zen—the meditation for game changers and future generations. I am Marc Bubel.
This is the 3rd of five episodes in the series. 

Up to this point of the podcast, our attention has been on what we put in our consciousness. In this episode, we are taking a break from the Eightfold Path and are concentrating on consciousness itself—the container where we do our thinking. This will help us raise our consciousness to higher levels.

Jnana Yoga
Of all of the eastern philosophies, Jnana Yoga offers the most insightful exploration of our consciousness. While other eastern philosophies put thoughts or nonthought into our consciousness, Jnana Yoga concentrates on consciousness itself. 

To keep this episode on the short side, we’ll begin by creating notes in your journal.
We’ll be creating something like a two column, four row table.
On the left side of a fresh page, write Jnana Yoga—that’s J N A N A. Under this title, write Body, Mind and You on separate lines.
To the right of Jnana Yoga, write Modern Terminology and under this title, write, Subconscious, Semiconscious Mind and Consciousness on separate lines. 

Jnana Yoga
Modern terminology
Body
Mind
You
Subconscious 
Semiconscious Mind
Consciousness


I trust you see the relationships in these terms.

Our body is just a vehicle that our subconscious mind controls. Our subconscious controls our breathing, walking, heart rate and more.
In contrast, our semiconscious mind is just a filing cabinet of our complete and incomplete thoughts. If it holds a lot of points of view, it’s purgatory. 
When I give you the number 3.14159, you pull out of your filing cabinet that this number is the mathematical constant pi.
You are your consciousness and your consciousness is you. 
You are listening to me right now in your consciousness. 

As I explain the relationships for this collection of words, you are using your consciousness to organize the filing cabinet that is your semiconscious mind. You are letting your curiosity play with the thoughts I've given you. 
If you are doubtful or suspicious of what I'm saying, your consciousness is listening more to your semiconscious mind. Your semiconscious mind is thinking, Marc’s wrong.

When we trust our semiconscious mind more than we are curious, we turn on autopilot mode more than we realize. 
The downside of autopilot mode is that our semiconscious mind is a terrible thinker. It’s indoctrination whether it’s right or wrong.
The semiconscious mind loves indulgences like the exclusively warm shower. It also picks the side of the most bullying narratives because uncritically agreeing with popular opinion and the status quo feels safe. 
When we stay away from autopilot mode, we are our consciousness. Even when bullying narratives are right, we know belittling or vilifying a segment of the population is one step forward and two steps back. It creates more repercussions than it solves.
This is why only a small percentage of the population virtue signal. While virtue signalling makes us feel good, there are more people virtue signalling in other ways, which makes us feel inferior. 
The majority knows virtue signalling rings true but in so doing, it implies that anyone who doesn’t virtue signal might be viewed as the opposition, which discourages objective conversation.

Notice, this discussion has put us face-to-face with civilization's rite of passage:
We either exercise our consciousness and risk becoming the target of the witch hunt of different points of view
Or we play along with ignorance and give up any hope to become liberated.

This summarizes civilization before we achieve the world's greatest moonshot.

Thus, here we are. We’re looking for an answer and we believe meditation will give us this answer.
Yes, meditation does give us the answer, but after a few thousand years, it's safe to say it can't do it alone. Our adversary, aka ignorance, is a formidable foe. Ignorance knows the dark arts of winning an argument all too well.
It seems we are in need of another neurohack.

Welcome to neurohack #8.
To defeat ignorance, we need objective people to stop hiding in the shadows. We need to know who in our company is objective as they are the people who will have our back when we bring objectivity to the conversation.
The way we do this is by spreading awareness of Meta Zen.
Like and share this podcast. Put the words Meta Zen in your social media profiles, hashtags and memes, and put Meta Zen stickers on cars, laptops and more. 
Then, when we are in the company of other fans of Meta Zen, we can exercise our objectivity without worrying about the backlash. 
When that day comes, we’ll realize we are creating a critical mass of people that begin achieving the world’s greatest moonshot. 

I'm getting goosebumps. How about you?

5 mechanisms of consciousness
Now that you are developing your understanding of consciousness, let’s look at the 5 mechanisms of higher states of consciousness. 
Pay good attention. Find a quiet place and close your eyes as you listen. At the end, we'll write them in your journal.

The first mechanism of higher states of consciousness is awareness. (snap) You know I snapped my fingers. This awareness is what distinguishes us from being dead. It’s the most basic form of consciousness.
The second mechanism of higher consciousness is exercising our curiosity and objectivity. Like, wondering about the CTW Shower.
The third mechanism of higher consciousness is moxie, which is to do something uncomfortable that makes things better in the long term.
When you have the CTW Shower, you are exercising the third mechanism of moxie. 
The trick to sustaining the third higher state of consciousness is to exercise your moxie every time it’s called upon. The CTW Shower is not enough. 
Imagine, someone is expressing a point of view like saying, it’s called the Noble Eightfold Path. 
Do we let the point of view continue to parade around like the emperor with new clothes or do we use our moxie to find a way to discuss the metanarrative?
The fourth mechanism of higher consciousness is routinely directly enabling others. 
Enablement seriously puts a smile on the faces of people. It might even encourage unawakened people to exercise curiosity, objectivity and moxie. 
Remember the analogy of the pole vault at the start of this podcast. I directly enabled you to understand the 2 stages of meditation. Without this enablement, you would struggle to understand the second stage of meditation and this podcast. 
The fifth mechanism of higher consciousness is indirectly enabling others. 
When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa after being in jail for 27 years, he indirectly enabled a countless number of people to persevere.

I'm not saying that each and every one of us has to save a nation like Mandela. I'm saying we are to persevere whenever our moxie is due until we’ve indirectly enabled others. Then it’s back to eat-sleep-moxie-repeat until our successors find their groove. Then, let the good times roll.

In 1880, Vincent van Gogh wrote the following to his brother through a letter:
One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. 
Is all this imagination, fantasy? 
I do not think so. 
And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it for ever, is it for eternity? 
Do you know what frees one from this captivity? 
It is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force.

Van Gogh explains how we indirectly enable others: Love. It’s listening instead of picking sides. 
Mandela gave the world one of the greatest expressions of love. When he became president, he didn’t put the offenders in jail. He gave to everyone equally without an advantage given to anyone. That’s generosity, which we discussed in the previous episode.
If people weren't afraid of their own shadow, Mandela would never have spent time in jail.

Practicing organized thoughts
This is a great opportunity to practice organized thought.
In a minute, I’ll ask you to pause this podcast to summarize the 5 mechanisms of higher states of consciousness in your journal. Afterward, I'll summarize them for you and you can see how you've done.
This simple exercise is different from memorization. Memorization is willful indoctrination, which is often with good information. The downside, however, is that it encourages thinking with your semiconscious mind, which argues points of view instead of listening and having good conversations. Memorization is crossing our fingers that we will be rewarded for our good deed, which is entitlement.
Meditation is far better as it exercises our consciousness. It’s an important part of our intellectual development.
Pause now and summarize the 5 mechanisms of higher states of consciousness in your journal.

Let’s see how you did:
 The five mechanisms are….
Awareness (snap)
Exercising curiosity and objectivity.
Moxie, which is doing something uncomfortable that makes things better in the long term.
Directly enabling others
Indirectly enabling others

Sometime tomorrow, when you have some personal time, close your eyes and recall the 5 mechanisms. Don’t practice. Just recall them.

Mentor protégé 
Remember the development of the protégé-mentor relationship as Buddhism traveled north through China. I chose the protégé and mentor terms out of all the possible synonyms because they express the most objectivity.
I like the word protégé because I know it’s inevitable protégés will launch beyond me one day. If I don’t sincerely know this, then I’m the problem.
I like the word mentor because they listen to and enable their protégés. They know protégés need to make up their own minds independent of narratives and then achieve what the mentor’s generation thought was inconceivable. 
A mentor that doesn’t directly or indirectly enable her protégés of this inevitability is not a mentor. She’s a lost soul that might be parading around like the emperor with new clothes and is unwittingly handicapping protégés brimming with potential. 

When I pieced together the emergence of Zen Buddhism, I realized the protégé-mentor relationship became well understood by their generation. 
Calligraphy came to Japan at the same time as Chan (shan) Buddhism. Zen is simply the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese term Chan. 
I believe, as the people of Japan practiced calligraphy, they wrote Buddha’s story and the two mnemonics. This is because the most common use of writing in the classical era around the world was for the transmission and preservation of religious texts. 
Throughout that time, mentor’s enabled their protégés through learning calligraphy and Buddhism at the same time. Both spread rapidly.
Plus, the indigenous religion of Japan at the time was Shintoism. It emphasizes harmony with nature, purity, and respect for ancestors. Buddhism and Shintoism were highly compatible with each other, which elevated both and enabled the people of Japan to express themselves, which they did in the many ways we admire today.
When the people of Japan expressed themselves through their livelihood and they noticed the benefits of this being reciprocated, the critical mass formed. This then elevated the protégé-mentor relationship to further amplify the benefits. This is what I believe made Zen Buddhism an important milestone in the history of meditation.
Keep this in mind as you’ll understand how it relates to the eighth fold of the Ariya Eightfold Path, which I’ll discuss in the next episode.