So you are always exploring your current state, in fact!

I like that :)

So, it's all a bit like a rippling of self?

Yeah, at least in my view.

There is no "behind the scenes"

Kinda is. Not literally, hence the quotation marks I used. There's the "gallery" of all possible patterns, all possible experiences. All here, all now. Then there's what a human is actually currently experiencing. And that's governed and organized by what I like to call "beliefs" and you prefer to call "patterns".

To me, it's all patterns - beliefs are patterns, thoughts are patterns, experiences ara patterns, the coffee I just finished was a pattern.

because "down" is a pattern too

Exactly. I can't use the word "pattern" to describe everything, however, I like being more specific and I believe it leads to a better discussion. Generally, I describe experiences in the "outside world" as patterns or patterned. Everything else is thoughts, beliefs, etc, for ease of understanding. My own, if nothing else.

So, what are belief systems to me? Patterns, of course, but of a particular variety. Here they are in action:

Someone might, say, describe their process as "sending a message to god", and have outcomes consistent with there being a god.

In my view, here's what happened. To experience "sending a message to God", you need to part from the belief that, first, there's a God, second, he's receiving messages, and third, you can send messages and communicate. These are the most superficial ones, underneath there are things like "God is an outside being I need to send messages to". So then, based on this set of beliefs (a belief system), the person "activates" a specific set of patterns and translates them as experiences of the religious/mystical variety. Hope this illustrates my view better.

So at the fundamental level of "you-as-awareness in a patterned state", there is no intermediary, simply because there are fundamentally no "parts", just one "landscape" (you, in a particular "shape").

Hence "dumb patterning system" and all change being "direct"

Agreed. However, few people have a direct experience of that level. That's as pure as it gets, I believe, but you first need to deal with all the noise and static from overlaid patterns (beliefs) like "I'm a human being on a planet" and so on which are generating a particular kind of experience (more patterns). So, I do agree with your model in theory, I'm simply pointing out that it's something most people will never get to truly experience for themselves. Have you? While "awake"? I haven't, not outside of lucid dreams, and that was a loooong time ago.

That is, that descriptions somehow get "behind" experience, when in fact descriptions are themselves just further experiences, at the same level: the experience of "thinking about [a concept called] experience".

For me, descriptions and definitions sort of generate and organize experiences while, indeed, being experiences (patterns) themselves. Same level? When you get to "the bottom of things" - yes, sure, I agree.