© 2025 Marc Bubel

Welcome back to Meta Zen. The mental martial art. The philosophy of life.

This episode is the first of two that introduce the Green Belt.

I am your host and mentor, Marc Bubel.

From Episode 1 through 5, we’ve gone from the White to Orange Belt developing the individual’s progression for Meta Zen. This was like basic training for the military.

Then, Episode 6 revealed that the practitioner has completed basic training and is now welcome as a member of the Meta Zen community. 

Just think about that. When you successfully complete basic training for the military, it’s like you are given the opportunity to go backstage with your favorite musical artist. You are honored and you gush how much the musician has changed your life. 

The thing about the Meta Zen community is that everyone is welcome. People only think they've been excluded. They think they need to be worthy, which is so far from the truth. You just have to be you. Don't repeat narratives, which is like playing catch with a hand grenade. Start objectively figuring out who you really are independent of narratives. 

Here’s how you realize you’re a member: Know that you will persevere until the day you die.

For example, Flow-State Ambition takes a wealth of perseverance. In contrast, for Conventional Ambition, all you need to do is pretend you are ambitious.

Go ahead, and look at your notes for episode 5 and review the five types of Conventional Ambition. They’re all pretending to be ambitious. They're all subconsciously crossing their fingers.

Don't worry. We’re all guilty of at least one type of conventional ambition , self included. 

But, once we start being honest with ourselves, and we persevere because we know how to persevere, we’re instant members because we allow ourselves to be. 

We don’t pretend we are members because that’s how golden ages crumble. 

Ok, here is a quick tour of the Meta Zen Community.

The Green, Blue, Indigo and Purple Belts are the tour of our community. These belts show us what practitioners do in their day jobs. 

The Green Belt tells us about the main artifacts of past golden ages that continue to get back up every time they get knocked down. They’re a little weary but they know their day will come again and then they’ll shine more brightly than ever before.

The Blue Belt tells us about the people that hold the key to The World’s Greatest Moonshot. We want to get on their good side so that they allow us to help them shoot for the moon and land amongst the stars.

The Indigo Belt tells us about the only thing that has ever enabled us to get past our differences.

The Purple Belt, well, that’s a special belt. It finishes off our tour of the community. We will know what life is like as a member of the Meta Zen community. 

When we Stitch it all together, we become a Black Belt.

It’s actually quite easy. We just need to reorient our view of the world, which we do through persevering. And believe me, future generations will honor us. We’ll be among the greatest generations in history one day. 

Let’s get the tour started.

In this first episode for the Green Belt, we’re learning how to decode our history and how to encode our future. 

Harmonics - how to decode our history

Martial Arts and meditation are two examples of intellectual artifacts that had golden ages of their own. 

Many intellectual artifacts seem to settle into a lower vibration waiting for rejuvenation. This happens because Conventional Ambition upstages objectivity through sensory overload.

But for some fortunate reason, the intellectual artifacts that are good for us never die. Soon, Conventional Ambition will realize, if you can’t beat them, join them, and that’s closer than it’s ever been before.

Behind all intellectual artifacts are patterns, like I described in episode one. Like the bones beneath our skin. They share a similar structure and they share similar nodes.

At the most basic level, they possess a universal pattern. It’s so simple, but as you’ll soon find out, it’s also so obvious. 

I’ll explain this universal pattern like if it were a hands-on exhibit in one of the rooms of our tour.

Imagine we have a rope hanging from a ceiling. It’s lightly swinging as it’s responding to the movement of air from all the people walking by.

I imagine you know how to put that rope into a motion similar to a skipping rope. This skipping rope motion is called…the first harmonic of a standing wave.

Did you know, by changing the energy put into the rope, it will enter and sustain two lobes that move like pedals on a bike. This is the second harmonic of a standing wave.

This continues through additional harmonics like the third, fourth, fifth and so on.

Each collection of harmonics is called a continuum. This is the universal pattern.

Remember Flow-State Ambition from Episode 5. that’s a continuum consisting of seven harmonics.

Go to a rock climbing gym, get belay training, then before you or someone else start climbing top rope, put the rope into its first harmonic, then into its second. 

To get the rope to go from the first to second harmonic, we first need to briefly relax the energy we put into the rope then follow with a flick of energy. This flick of energy sends a pulse down the rope so that the two lobes form. 

The second harmonic takes some finagling, but once we get it in motion, it becomes easy to sustain.

Notice, when you have the first harmonic in motion and you stop moving your hand, the rope becomes limp like a cooked spaghetti noodle. 

Also notice, when you have the second harmonic in motion and you stop moving your hand, the opposing lobes maintain the motion for a while longer like they don’t want the harmonic to stop. 

This is an ah-mazing insight. The second harmonic has a higher level of stability than the first harmonic.

The generations around me are currently within the first harmonic for civilization and the World’s Greatest Moonshot is civilization's second harmonic. 

To get a civilization into its second harmonic, the energy needed is…objectivity.

Objectivity gives The World's Greatest Moonshot incredible stability. Far more stability than the narratives that sustain the first harmonic for civilization. 

When the European Renaissance emerged into a golden age, it was attempting to nudge civilization into the second harmonic. It attempted to do so with intellect. 

When Zen Buddhism emerged into a golden age, it was attempting to nudge civilization into the second harmonic. It attempted to do so with culture.

Remember the difference between the individual and the member of the Meta Zen Community. Those are the first and second harmonics for a practitioner. The tour between the Green and Purple belts is the awkward stage between the first and second harmonics. But, the moment we get past this awkward stage, we’ll be a Black Belt. We’ll be as talented with objectivity as Shakesphere was with a quill.

Mechanisms of higher consciousness

For practitioners to become a Black Belt, it takes a wealth of perseverance. This is because they are forever tested by Conventional Ambition, which uses crab mentality to get its way. 

Here is an example of crab mentality in the form of a question:

Are you with us…or are you one of them?

Can you feel the bullying crab mentality in this question? You know, one way to answer this question will lead to feeling welcomed and the other will lead to a witch hunt.

There are a few narrative features in this question:

First, the question is contrived. Those are not the options. A person might still be undecided. Thus, the question implies that curiosity is a bad quality and as bad as being as one of them. 

Second, the question is recruiting through bullying and shame. It enforces division and casts…them…as outcasts. This tactic is like leading the witness in legal proceedings.

Third, the absence of capturing the available options in the reply enables the questioner to interrupt with something like, you're avoiding the question, which enforces the narrative. It also has tools like tinfoil hat wearer and talk to the hand as the face ain’t listening in its toolbox. 

These are some of the dark arts of Conventional Ambition.

It takes a wealth of perseverance to maintain objectivity when Conventional Ambition is afraid of its own shadow.

For a person to become and remain a Black Belt, she needs something transparent that enables her to remain conscious of objectivity, transparency and the metanarrative and not succumb to crab mentality.

With this in mind, I’ll share the Five Mechanisms Of Higher Consciousness, each of which raises a person to a higher state of consciousness. 

I recommend writing this continuum in your journal:

The first 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 is exercising our curiosity. Like, wondering why I snapped his fingers.

The third is exercising our objectivity. It's assessing all the options before acting on any option. Like assessing the Five Mechanisms Of Higher Consciousness after you’ve written them into your journal.

The fourth is exercising…moxie…every time it’s due.

As moxie is a new term to civilization, I need to explain it.

Historically, we have used the word courage, but as we now have this new term, it has refined our understanding of objectivity.

Here is how moxie and courage are different.

Life is like a chess game. Each move in chess has multiple cascading moves requiring objectivity to filter down to the chosen move. When the move is based on deep forethought, that’s moxie. When the move lacks forethought, that’s gambling, which takes courage as the odds are against us.

Members of the Meta Zen Community…never gamble.

I imagine you've recognized the deep discernment that leads to the fourth mechanism. Like in the game of chess, even after assessing every move and counter move that can be comprehended, the chosen move has an element of gambling. But, when the practitioner has reflected deeply on the many options with objectivity such that the chosen move is not based on something like a coin flip, the resulting action is moxie.

As our ancestors have been down this path many times, they became…aware…of being proactive. They used their…curiosity…to determine the ultimate end goal, which was discussed in episode 4. They then used their…objectivity…to reverse engineer the path to achieve it, like I discussed in episode 1. Then they used their…moxie…to map the path forward so their generation, and future generations like ours, can be proactive.

In other words, when the first four mechanisms of higher consciousness are treated…as a whole artform, that's the fifth mechanism, which takes perseverance. 

Now that you know the Five Mechanisms Of Higher Consciousness, you know how to sustain the fifth harmonic for a person. Turn awareness, curiosity, objectivity and moxie…as a whole…into an artform.

Voila. 

Segue 

This is the end of the first episode for the Green Belt. In the next episode, we’ll look at three ancient artifacts that continue to make a difference in our world.

As you are enjoying Meta Zen, enable people to stumble upon it. Buy some Meta Zen stickers from moxiefrontier.com and put them where you and others will see them. 

The Meta Zen sticker is our invitation to pull up a chair and make ourselves comfortable. 

It's a great time to be alive.