Pattern Recognition

The spiritual teachings are focused on drawing your attention to the awakened/awakening consciousness. The real purpose of awakening is it puts you in a position where it's just much easier to learn without a lot of baggage. --- From an interview conducted in October 2013 with Doug Duncan Sensei...   Transcript: Well again, it's mapping, it's patterning. I won't go into those particularly, but pattern recognition. It's what the human consciousness is particularly good at. "Oh, winter's coming. Oh, nuts are under the snow. Hmmm…. let's build a shed, put the nuts in the shed. I can get to the shed. I can't get under the snow." It's a kind of pattern recognition. So, cabbalistic teachings, Christian teachings, Islamic teachings, Buddhist teachings… it's all about pattern. It's all recognizing pattern, seeing how things work, how things tie together -- psychology, science, mysticism. It's all patterns. "Occult" means "hidden" -- that which is hidden -- so if you're an occultist, you're studying that which is hidden. Science is "anti-occultism." You're studying that which is apparent. Although, I suppose if you're a quantum physicist the distinction starts to (laughs)… starts to fall away. So, everything is teaching. Everything is a potential teaching -- human relationships, psychology, marriage -- again, pattern. What kind of patterns evolve in relationship? Guru/student, teacher-guide/adept relationships. What's the patterning? How does that patterning work? Who gets the high seat? Who gets the low seat? What pattern is involved in that? So, when one is hurt, one tends to see other people's patterns as being abusive. When one is in a state of loving-kindness, one tends to see other people's patterns as being abusive, but not so much to oneself as to others...well, to oneself and the person who is suffering. So the idea is that as you become more and more conscious of patterns, you become more and more conscious of the interconnecting factors in those patterns. You see that more and more everything is a teaching -- science, art, music, relationship. The spiritual teachings are teachings that are focused particularly on trying to draw your attention to the awakened/awakening consciousness. And from many perspectives, the real purpose of awakening is it puts you in a position where it's just much easier to learn without a lot of baggage. So, if you were going to take a shower, would you go in with your clothes on? Or would you go in naked? The idea is you go in naked, because it's much easier to get clean that way and much easier to have that experience. So, too, the transcendent nature is getting naked to life so that you can be washed or have the experience more fully. Having clothes on in the shower, you might get cleaner than you were when you went in, but there's a lot of unnecessary dukkha/struggle in that. The nature of spiritual teachings is to bring you closer to fundamental patterns of how consciousness works and how the self, the ego, gets structured and therefore caught up, and so on. So, whether it's caballistic teachings or Buddhist teachings, or whatever, the idea -- the core understanding -- remains the same. "What is this thing called 'transcendent consciousness'?" "How do I recognize it and how do I live it?" And from there you go to other teachings, like science, art, music, and so on… business. http://www.planetdharma.com/