E2: White Belt 1/2 - Seeds Of Spring

Welcome to the White Belt Training. This is the start of the protege's journey to become who they were meant to be.

This episode applies our modern outlook on life to set a wide foundation for the overwhelming integrity of the belts that follow. 

In this episode, we'll touch on the following topics:

• meditation
• the metanarrative
• positive-sum games
• zero-sum games
• negative-sum games

Visit www.moxiefrontier.com for related resources.

Transcript

© 2025 Marc Bubel

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

This episode is the first of two for the White Belt.

I am your host and mentor, Marc Bubel.

In the previous episode, we walked through the history of martial arts. 

We’ve learned, martial artists became highly valued for their moral code, but as globalization became a reality, their moral code lost its community value. Martial artists became like a musical instrument without a case, without a home. 

Meta Zen is proposing to be the summation of their philosophy so that it becomes the new home for Martial Arts and other pursuits of perseverance. It’s a bold proposal though listeners are open to hear the pitch.

Let’s get right to it.

Lesson 1: use a journal

Imagine it’s your first day of physical martial art training and your sensei informs you how to stand. Do you swing your hand through the air and think, you know how to stand?

The first lesson for Meta Zen is just as simple: Use a journal as you listen to this podcast.

Are you swinging your hand through the air?

I’ll explain why a journal is important to Meta Zen.

Before note taking became available to the common person a few hundred years ago, if you wanted to remember something, you had to close your eyes and meditate on it. 

Let’s understand meditation through two exercises and one discussion:

Here’s exercise 1:

Close your eyes…and recall how many belts there are to Meta Zen.

Pause now.

This might be an easy exercise when you were paying attention. If you were driving or washing the dishes, you were distracting yourself and were partly listening. 

When you choose to be serious with Meta Zen, get rid of every distraction when you listen.

Here’s exercise 2:

Keep your eyes closed and…recall the colors of the belts for Meta Zen and in the right order.

Pause now.

This is a slightly harder exercise though achievable when you are fully paying attention or have experience with meditation. 

My generation, and the generations before mine, are not encouraged to develop the skill of meditation. We are more likely to be encouraged to develop the skill of memorization, which is similar but different. 

Meditation is not having any way but our own memories and reflection to recall and uncover new information.

Meditation is a skill that develops critical thinking.

Memorization is practicing something to remember for the benefit of someone else.

Memorization is a skill that develops…dogma. 
It dumbs us down.

Here’s the discussion:

Imagine, recalling the purpose of each belt.

Recalling the purpose of each belt takes a wealth of deep meditation. This is what our ancestors had to do when they wanted to remember the wisdom from their elders and the generations that came before them. 

Our ancestors went so deep into meditation that they created intellectual artifacts like martial arts and meditation for future generations like ours to appreciate and learn from. Ah-mazing.

Imagine it’s 2,000 years ago and a well known philosophical guru was traveling through town never to be seen again. People from 2,000 years ago had to meditate to remember what the guru had to say. 

Resources like a journal, whether paper or digital, simplifies meditation. We can store wisdom and reference it, revise it then build from what we write. 

This is why we use a journal.

Write each lesson on a separate page of your journal so that you have room to add more notes at a later date. Put lesson 1 a few pages into your journal as you might catch up with what I've shared in the previous episode. 

Your first lesson is complete. 

Lesson 2: transparency everyone understands

Transparency that everyone understands is one of the most important concepts in Meta Zen.

An example of transparency everyone understands is the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. This is the level of transparency you will find in Meta Zen.

Without transparency, we trust what comes our way, which is a form of gambling. 

Transparency and trust have an inverse relationship. When transparency is high, trust becomes replaced with certainty. When transparency is low, certainty disappears and trust is present.

This is lesson 2: Nothing is more important than the transparency everyone understands.

On the page titled lesson 2, draw a chart with the word transparency on the horizontal axis, the word low on the left and the word high on the right. On the vertical axis, write trust on the bottom and certainty on the top. Next, draw a straight line in the area of the chart. 

This straight line begins in the region where high transparency and certainty match up and ends where low transparency and trust match up.

This chart in your journal is an example of a neurohack. If you were to stop listening to this podcast now and you lost your journal, I’d wager, you'll be able to remember this chart for the rest of your life. That's what makes this a neurohack. It does away with a wealth of meditation. It gives us the opportunity to go further than the people that came before us. 

Modern meditation is far more impressive than the chart you drew. 

Look at your chart and place a dot where you think the topic of science is located. 

Next, place a dot where you think the topic of pseudoscience is located. 

Both words sit on the opposite ends of the line, don't they?

Pseudoscience is not all that bad. It comes with great intentions, but it has a narrow mind; it doesn’t think of the big picture. When we dig our heels in and say trust me, the end result is the end of an emergence of intelligence. 

Now that you know this lesson, reflect on this chart. The more you do, the more this understanding widens your foundation for the higher belts. 

To help with your reflection of this chat, reflect on the following:

Can the straight line be pulled at the middle to turn it into a curve? 

Where do you think engineering and math fit on this chart? Hint: they are not together.

Where does Meta Zen fit in this chart?

Where do other disciplines fit on this chart? 

Is this chart a deserving part of philosophy or is it contrived?

Can you make this lesson more transparent?

When you seriously reflect on these questions and others you might have, you turn this lesson into an essential part of who you are. 

Similarly, through reflecting on every insight shared throughout this podcast, you will turn them into understandings that become as effortless as breathing.

Lesson 3: Metanarrative 

Undoubtedly, you already know zen is an expression of wisdom and patience. I’ll now describe the word, meta. This will complete your understanding of the Meta Zen name and it will share lesson 3.

Meta is simply the pursuit of the highest transparency. 

The word metanarrative helps us understand this concept best.

At the base level of any topic is the story. Like this is a podcast on the mental path for martial arts. 

What comes next are the narratives or interpretations of the story. Like, Meta Zen isn’t a martial art because it has no relationship to combat. 

Then there is the metanarrative that tells the objective and considerate story of the narratives and it maps the transparent path forward to the future. 

Draw this in your journal:

In the center of a clean page, titled lesson 3, write the word story and draw a small circle around it. 

Draw a medium sized circle around the small circle and write narrative within it. Draw two other medium sized circles that overlap the first medium circle and add an S to the word narrative. Also write a slash after narratives and write the words points of view.

Then draw a larger circle around the others and write metanarrative next to this larger circle.

If you want to see an example of these circles, visit moxiefrontier.com, download the book, The Flourishing Method, and look at page 117. 

This concludes lesson 3. 

I’ll now start easing off on the coaching as it should become natural to you to reflect on what you learn. Take nothing for granted.

The best way to reflect on anything is to find transparency in what you learn. 

Are you trusting me or are you reflecting on what you hear so that you become…certain you know the essence of the insights I share?

Lesson 4: positive-sum game

Lesson 4 is to play positive-sum games as much as possible. 

The positive-sum game is what results in the win-win-win scenario. For example, through this podcast, I am playing the positive-sum game. By benefitting you, you will return the favor. Plus, because we benefit each other, together we are in a better position to benefit others. This is the win-win-win.

The very nature of any species is to participate in positive-sum games with each other. This is what enables a species to proliferate. 

The moment when an advantage is given to an individual or group, we either play zero-sum or negative-sum games. 

Zero-sum games are like the game of chess. There is one winner and one loser or it's a stalemate. 

Negative-sum games are when the intention is to lose less than someone else. Like in an argument.

Spend some time contemplating the three styles of gameplay I’ve just mentioned. Write them in your journal. Also, notice every interaction people have is one of these three styles of games. 

In time, you’ll see the calling cards of each style of game. Then, you’ll notice when you need to update your habits to play the positive-sum game much more effortlessly. 

When we are conscious of these styles of gameplay, it’s another neurohack that builds a stronger foundation to Meta Zen.

Segue 

This is the end of the first set of lessons for the White Belt. In the next episode, you’ll hear terminology that comes from our ancestors. 

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 leave the world of narratives behind and come back home.

It's a great time to be alive.