Intro
Welcome back to Meta Zen—the meditation for game changers and future generations. I am Marc Bubel.
This is the 5th of five episodes in the series. 

While meditation is sincerely a renewing experience, once we find our groove—which is the second stage of meditation—we become curious about how far we can go. We become motivated and ambitious.
But, we soon realize even trivial points of view, like what was mentioned in the previous episode, are demanding we play along with the narratives to keep everyone else indoctrinated.
But this is literally a dirty deal. We can't remain liberated knowing that we are keeping everyone else suppressed.
We realize we need to develop and launch a plan to unravel points of view. This plan includes a strategy to circumvent triggering the witch hunt of different points of view. It also includes a strategy to considerately wake everyone up from their slumber.

But, to what end? What is our end goal? We have an idea why this is important, but if we are unable to succinctly explain it, we feel incomplete. 
We've come this far. It would be great if we had an all encompassing aspiration that captures what we're trying to do.

In the first episode, I mentioned the concept called the world’s greatest moonshot. This is our aspiration though we don't know what it means yet.
I've also alluded that the world's greatest moonshot is nirvana, which has a cryptic meaning that offers us no greater clarity. 
We need a meaning that is irrefutable.
Here it is:
The world’s greatest moonshot is the time in human history when objectivity, not points of view, has started calling the shots the world over.

Yes, this is an ambitious goal. But, many of us have committed to having the CTW Shower until the day we die and it's now a walk in the park. We know we can start exercising moxie and live a fulfilling life while also benefiting our kids, the coming generations and even our generation. 

In this episode, I’ll map out the moxie that enables us to realize the world’s greatest moonshot.

Time loop
From the previous episode, we learned it takes a level of perseverance beyond a single person to unravel points of view that trap our civilization in something like an endless loop. 
Our civilization is like Phil Conners in the movie Groundhog Day figuring out how to break the loop. Like, how do we restore the name Ariya to the Eightfold Path?

How do we break the loop our civilization is stuck in?
We need a group of people that persevere to be counted among the critical mass. Then, this critical mass will start unraveling points of view. 
In the sport of association football, which North Americans call soccer, since 1882 there was a rule that said the kickoff had to be kicked forward toward the opposing team. 
By the 1970s, it became common practice for teams to kick the ball backward from the kickoff on the second touch. They did this because they wanted to keep possession of the ball.
In 2016, FIFA, the international governing body for association football, changed the rule to allow teams to kick the ball backwards from a kickoff on the first touch. 
When FIFA removed the superfluous rule, they demonstrated to the world that they cared more about unraveling points of view than preserving points of view. 

Imagine, The International Chess Federation formally announces the use of a coin flip to decide who gets to move first and who chooses the color and the orientation of the board. 
When that happens, an uncountable number of people will wonder if this is the early stages of the critical mass. 

Imagine, eye experts have retired the colorblind term and have established the color limited term that Wikepedia gets updated. Again, we will wonder if this is the early stages of the critical mass.

Imagine, when we go to a sauna, everyone is wearing a winter or sauna hat. I know that’ll give me goosebumps. 

Imagine we see my definitions for anti-intellectual in dictionaries. Also imagine other words that express negative points of view, like uncivilized, are also updated. That would seem like the critical mass is starting to get traction. 

Just to be clear, we can’t call this a revolution because it will encourage us to push a point of view. We’re seeking objective conversations as this creates an evolution. When things steadily evolve in the context of objectivity, centuries from now, they'll call it a revolution.
Critical mass 
Let’s understand the critical mass in more detail so we understand it well.
This is it’s definition:
The critical mass is the minimum number of people needed to establish momentum.
In our case, it's the minimum number of people needed to enable objectivity to call the shots the world over.

Let’s now understand how we create a critical mass.
Some people throughout history thought oppression was a justifiable way to create a critical mass. All this has ever done is make people more skillful at meditation, which is a good thing. Everything else took one step forward and two steps back. 
We only make progress because of something else, which I’m about to explain.

To understand how we enable a critical mass, I’m going to summarize group intelligence. 
Our first stop is collective intelligence. The greatest expression of collective intelligence is when a group of people function like clockwork. 
While collective intelligence does some great things like a symphony orchestra, it also produces undesirable results like what was mentioned in the previous episode. 
In other words, a byproduct of collective intelligence is what I call incidental intelligence. We end up playing along with narratives because we’re afraid of the witch hunt. This has inspired the sayings, too many cooks in the kitchen and death by committee. 

Our next stop is collaborative intelligence. The greatest example of collaborative intelligence is the starling murmuration.
A starling murmuration is a shape-shifting cloud of starlings flying through the sky. You can see one on the homepage of moxiefrontier.com. Some murmurations contain tens of thousands of starlings. No single bird orchestrates what they do, yet they instinctually collaborate together. 
Said another way, the starlings make up their own minds and they show the world how incredible collaboration can be.
Those are two ways to create critical mass. 
The first is orchestration. Orchestration exercises a duality—a point of view. It’s commonly effective in the entertainment industry. It relies heavily on the leader of the ambition. The shortcoming of orchestration is that it sometimes creates undesirable byproducts that last for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years and are difficult to unravel. 
The second is enablement. Enablement exercises nonduality—it exercises objectivity. Through enabling people to make up their own minds, the byproducts are always desirable as only what everyone admires establishes momentum, like mathematics and the arts.
True ambition
Let’s return to the original question: 
How do we break the loop our civilization is stuck within?
This time, instead of focusing on the critical mass, let’s focus on ambition.  
I’ll get right to the point. Our popular understanding of ambition is our shortcoming. 
I’ll explain.
Our popular understanding of ambition has three stages:
Write these three in your journal.
The first is wishful ambition. 
This is when people argue their points of view. Like saying, You’re not listening, you’re wrong and I’m right. 
The second is imagined ambition
This is when people stop arguing and start doing. But, they don’t genuinely enjoy what they do so they get other people to do their dirty work. Everyone crosses their fingers because they think we’ll enjoy it later.
The third is the subject matter expert.
This is a knowledgeable person in an echo chamber who thinks others are anti-intellectuals. They use a bullying intensity to say trust me.

The subject matter expert is a good person that has done a wealth of research. But, the moment when someone shares an idea that makes the subject matter expert feel like the emperor with new clothes, the subject matter expert goes into autopilot mode and develops the dark arts of winning an argument. 

I ask everyone listening, even subject matter experts, to practice breathing, which was discussed in episode 1. Everyone is a good person, great really. Before this podcast, we’ve had only a light understanding of nonduality, the metanarrative and objectivity. As a result, we unwittingly think ambitiously arguing our point of view is the way to create change.

I will now share with you the Seven Levels Of Ambition…of true ambition.
I’ll summarize them at the end so make your notes then.
The first level of ambition is being able to demonstrate something. Like running for 10 meters shows others you know how to run. Action speaks louder than words.
The second level is doing something because it's fun. This person is becoming an adaptable subject matter expert. 
Adaptable is an important word.
The traditional subject matter expert has stopped listening to alternative points of view. They argue and when they feel like they are losing the argument, they shame and attack—they initiate the witch hunt of negative points of view.
An adaptable subject matter expert listens and adapts like an intellectual.
Adaptation means a person is overcoming mental barriers. Mental barriers are the things that cause arguments and lead to pseudoscience.
When an adaptable subject matter expert enjoys what she does and she continues to push past mental barriers, she enters a flow state every so often. She begins to love what she does. She begins to understand how her interest is not a silo but is woven into the ecosystems of life. She is becoming a scientist.
When a person realizes this, she has found the 3rd level of ambition.

As she gains experience, she overcomes mental barriers that held her back. She then soon realizes she sometimes encourages mental barriers in others. Like telling someone, just do it this way. She realizes she was indoctrinating others.
She begins focusing on enabling others to overcome mental barriers. She encourages objectivity in others. When this is an effortless routine for her, she achieves the 4th level of ambition. 

The 5th level is achieved by objectively using resources without becoming indoctrinated by their shortcomings. 
Like the dated white-goes-first rule in chess.

Level 6 is launching others beyond ourselves. 
For example, Buddha could have kept his enlightenment to himself but he shared what he knew about meditation. 
Imagine what you'll do when you don't need the Ariya Eightfold Path anymore. You'll launch beyond Buddha.
Level 7 is venturing where no one has gone before and coming back to tell the tale. 
Search for the image of the Flammarion Engraving. If you have downloaded the flourishing Method, it’s on page 139. That image is a visual metaphor for level 7.
It's the moxie frontier.
Level 7 is doing the unthinkable. Like what Alex Honnold had done. The intention is to persevere at something and come back to tell the tale.

Through the Seven Levels Of Ambition, we make the objective world bigger.

In your journal, write the following 7 levels of ambition:
Action speaks louder than words
Enjoy what you do. Don’t pretend you enjoy it.
Overcome mental barriers - persevere 
Encourage objectivity in others
Use resources without being indoctrinated 
Launch people beyond yourself
Live to tell the tale 

Let’s return to the original question: 
How do we break the loop our civilization is stuck within?
We need to exercise true ambition. 

Look at the 7 levels of ambition you wrote in your journal. 
Will true ambition enable people to make up their own minds and establish a human murmuration where everyone instinctually collaborates with each other?
Pause the podcast now so you can make up your own mind.

As we reflect on the original question and my answer, we are exercising mindfulness, the seventh fold of the Ariya Eightfold Path. We are figuring out if ambition—as defined by the Seven Levels Of Ambition—seriously breaks the loop our civilization is stuck within. 
Eventually, our mindfulness gets to a conclusion, which puts us face to face with our morality:
Do we play along with the narratives and give up any hope we have to become liberated
Or do we make up our own minds and enable collaborative intelligence for the benefit of our kids, the coming generations and maybe even ourselves?
Nelson Mandela persevered for decades and the byproduct of his perseverance has given us the liberties we value today. Nobody really talks about it but I guarantee you it’s there. If Mandela never left jail, I’m sure our world would be vastly different from what it is today.

Bauhaus 
Every once in a while, a significant ambition emerges and changes the trajectory of civilization. 
We naturally want to align ourselves with what emerges particularly when objectivity tells us it’s a no-brainer. Like the smartphone.
There are periods when meditation emerged and reached people at a rapid pace then reached a plateau. For example, when Chan Buddhism arrived in Japan 1,500 years ago, meditation spread rapidly then became less understood.

Through studying the history of meditation, I wanted to find the patterns of emergence and what caused them to wane. Through understanding the patterns, we could reverse engineer them to create another emergence and enable us to bring our civilization to the second stage of meditation.

I’ll explain the pattern by referencing an emergence that comes from our recent history.

In 1919, the Bauhaus School of Design was established. 
They initiated the shift from the Victorian era to the modern era throughout architecture and industrial design. It became a global phenomenon that spread into other disciplines.
That's significant. That's an emergence.
Design went from embellishments to accentuating the beauty in form and function.

The shift is encapsulated by the saying, less is more, which was conceived by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the last director of Bauhaus.
When the less is more design philosophy experienced rapid growth, it became misinterpreted. It went from accentuating the beauty in form and function and drifted into cost cutting. 
This happened because the less is more philosophy became mainstream—it became vogue. As a result, instead of having patience to understand the less is more philosophy, the majority took it at face value and turned it into a point of view. 

In other words, the less-is-more design philosophy waned and became replaced by lower quality philosophies.

Meta Zen emergence
Imagine, Meta Zen becomes mainstream—it becomes vogue. The Meta Zen sticker has gone from building awareness to virtue signalling. In other words, people start promoting objectivity instead of demonstrating objectivity. It’s a bittersweet byproduct of becoming mainstream.
Notice, promoting objectivity is the first level of the old-school ambition and demonstrating objectivity is the first level of true ambition.

How do we sustain an emergence such that it doesn’t get hijacked by old-school ambition?
Spreading awareness of the 7 levels of ambition might help but once something becomes vogue, people are often impatient and they look for shortcuts to be part of the in-crowd. 

To seriously sustain an emergence, we need to develop and launch a plan to unravel points of view and enable objectivity.
 
I’ve given this some thought and have mapped out the most organic solution.
This will enable us to maintain Meta Zen's emergence and achieve the world's greatest moonshot.

As businesses self govern, if some businesses want to enable objectivity in the workplace, that’s their prerogative. They can give their employees Meta Zen stickers to encourage everyone to listen to this podcast. It will help.
But, more than anything, it’s their leadership that is essential for enabling everyone to be objective. When leaders demonstrate objectivity, so will everyone else.
There are a few obstacles we need to unravel to fully enable leaders:
The first obstacle is sincerity.
Objectivity isn’t an easy effort when points of view are everywhere. If it was easy, then there wouldn’t be a need for meditation. Thus, leaders sincerely need to persevere to demonstrate objectivity. They can’t fake perseverance or objectivity. When leaders fake it, everyone will keep up the façade and objectivity will come to an end.
The second obstacle is the old-school leadership ethos.
The old-school belief is that leadership is about getting people to do what the leader wants them to do. This isn’t leadership. It’s a person in a position of power. People do what they are told because they worry what would happen if they didn’t.
The true leadership ethos is about being someone people want to follow. This is someone who exercises her moxie to do something uncomfortable that has long-term benefits. True leadership isn’t about delegating the uncomfortable efforts. True leadership is going to bat for their team members. When a leader does this, she will be followed most anywhere.
As the true leadership ethos has yet to become standard, I give you neuralhack #9.
Visit moxiefrontier.com and review the Leadership 3.0 Program. It's a game changer for leaders.

The third obstacle is the modus operandi in our workplace.
Traditional work environments were formed based on the points of view of the people that came before us. Thus, the modus operandi encourages leaders to preserve points of view, much like how we preserve what the previous episode has shared. These systems undermine true leaders and turn them into old-school leaders.
To overcome the third obstacle, I give you neurohack #10.
Visit moxiefrontier.com and review the Collaboration as a User Experience resource. It's a game changer for businesses.
In summary, Collaboration as a User Experience enables executives to engineer their workplace. 
It scales objectivity from individuals, through teams and up to the business as a whole. 
When objectivity is natural to the business culture, the business will be as agile as a starling murmuration. 
Competitors will not be able to keep pace.
Notice, when many businesses begin operating like a starling murmuration, they will synchronize together to create a larger murmuration that then establishes the critical mass for our civilization. 
Phenomenal. 

Ariya Eightfold Path 2.0
In conclusion, we are thinking big and starting small. We know the path that leads to achieving the world’s greatest moonshot and it starts with individuals who want to become honest intellectuals. 
This path is captured by the Ariya Eightfold Path, which I’ll summarize for you in a moment. 
In addition to the edits I’ve shared earlier, I’m switching the order of the eight folds. 

Here is the Ariya Eightfold Path in modern terms and in a new sequence:
Objectivity
Curiosity and organized thought 
Expressing zen, which is expressing objectivity through what we say and do not say like our actions and inactions.
Mindfulness, which is unraveling points of view in our thoughts. 
Concentration, which is the ambition to develop and launch a plan to unravel points of view and enable objectivity.
Initiating action, which is moxie. This is doing what is uncomfortable as it makes things better in the long term.
Perseverance, which is continuing to exercise moxie until it completes generosity.
Generosity, which is giving to others and ourselves equally without an advantage given to others, ourselves or certain groups. It's the positive sum game.

Let’s call this new arrangement The Ariya Eightfold Path 2.0.
This is how we break the loop our civilization is stuck within.

Metanarrative 
There will come a time when you no longer need this podcast as a reference. What you have is certainty your conscience is honest and clear and you remain you. You are a person waking up to the indoctrination we were born with. You are also certain you are contributing to achieving the world's greatest moonshot. 

Through the pursuit of the metanarrative, which is the greatest expression of objectivity, slowly, you surround yourself with a growing environment of the metanarrative. You will notice it as it will buffet you like the wind does sometimes. This will surprise you and will put a held-back smile on your face as you don’t want to appear too obvious. 
Be sure to summarize these experiences in your journal as you will value referencing them later.

This buffeting will continue and then a few buffeting moments will amass together. In these moments, your smile will most likely come with a chuckle. You will know this means the critical mass is starting to get traction.
Then, it will happen again. Then again. Then you will notice someone else smile and chuckle when it happens again. You think, this person knows it too. This is just confirmation you were a part of a small critical mass. You will also know someone who might collaborate with you to set another critical mass in motion.
Imagine, you consciously notice a critical mass of the metanarrative is set in motion external to yourself—like the kickoff change by FIFA, widespread awareness of the multiverse, the coin flip in chess, people wearing a sauna hat and so on. This is when you realize, this is all we do. We set critical masses of the metanarrative in motion.
Remember to write these into your journal as this will enable you to develop your skill for catching the wind in your sails.

Then, you consciously notice a metaphilosophy that weaves into the ecosystem of a universal philosophy that will stand the test of time—like this podcast. Then you notice another and another. This is when the larger critical mass is set in motion. 
By this time, we’re starting to taste nirvana and it feels really good because we know this larger critical mass will achieve the world’s greatest moonshot. We know objectivity, not points of view, are calling the shots and people are waking up in droves. 
Nirvana is coming for all of us and it will be here before we know it.
You might as well jump in with both feet to get the full experience.

Closure 
We’re taking a break from the podcast for an unknown length of time. We’ll only release the next set of episodes when they will be as important  as the first 5 episodes. 
Be sure to follow this podcast and give it a review.
When you think this podcast is unprecedented, you’ll know the resources at moxiefrontier.com will change the game for businesses.
I also invite everyone to buy Meta Zen stickers and place them where you and others will see them. This is neurohack #8, which is a great way to spread objectivity the world over. 
While this will lead to virtue signaling, the integrity of Meta Zen will enable the critical mass of leaders to change the game for all of us. Then we will achieve the world's greatest moonshot.

Thank you for listening. I look forward to discovering how you have launched beyond this podcast.
Set aside a personal evening or day every so often to reset your understanding of what this podcast shares and of the metanarrative. Let all these ideas sink in and orient yourself to the future.
Enjoy.