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idea of a shield means that normal human beings keeps a number of 'props'
to fend of 'the onslaughts of the unknown'. These props may be anything,
habits, situations, objects, explanations, rationalizations, anything which
can keep our interest long enough, and thus keep our awareness away from
the unknown. Shields are necessary to function normally.
For the practitioner shields become even more important, as his/her energy grows, his/her awareness of the unknown becomes greater. After a while the pracitioner looses much of her/his 'natural' shields, and it becomes necessary to artificially maintain some shields, for protection. Castaneda describes how he was more or less forced to use his note taking as a shield. Some of our shields, as normal human beings, concists of trying to rationally explain the unknown, the abstract, or to try to make everything have an 'natural explanation'. These are examples of shields which the practitioner will loose, no matter what. Even advanced practitioners
will try to explain things, and from this we have alot of branches of mysticism.
Take Spiritism, for instance, where the unknown takes the form of 'spirits'
from deceased people. Even in Zen, where it is clearly understood that
knowledge has to be direct, we may find a huge load of explanations. We
use these explanations to shield ourself from the silence of the unknown,
the non understandable.
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