Hi Brent,
Regarding your first question, i suggest you keep reading the Wave and you'll find the answer. Laura writes quite a lot on the subject of channeling, and the dangers one is faced with, when ignorant or misunderstanding of hyperdimentional realities. And here i come to your second question: it seems that you begun becoming aware of your predator's mind (a concept used by Castaneda which, if you read the Wave online, you must be familiar with by now). Coming to terms with the concept, "getting it", becoming aware of the predators mind, engaging in constant self-observation thus learning to distinguish it from your real mind, recognizing its voice and defying it, is a long and arduous process, demanding one's full focus, energy, and immense discipline as i understand (for i have a hard time REALLY getting it myself at this point in time, so i feel i write this as much for me as for you). And unless one is able to discern the true from the lie in ones' own mind, is not armed with the preparation and protection necessary for effectively facing the behind the scenes dangers of channeling. "As above, so below" kind of thing. Or so i came to understand this far.
Below is a passage from Castaneda's the Active Side of Infinity, where Don Juan introduces CC to the reality of humanity's imprisonment by the predator in a graspable (to me at least) way:
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... We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so [act independently ...] You have arrived, by your effort alone, to what the shamans of ancient Mexico called the topic of topics. I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico.
'Why has this predator taken over in the fashion that you're describing, don Juan?' I asked. 'There must be a logical explanation.'
'There is an explanation,' don Juan replied, 'which is the simplest explanation in the world. They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops. Therefore, their food is always available to them.'
I felt that my head was shaking violently from side to side. I could not express my profound sense of unease and discontentment, but my body moved to bring it to the surface. I shook from head to toe without any volition on my part.
'No, no, no, no,' I heard myself saying. 'This is absurd, don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone.'
'Why not?' don Juan asked calmly. 'Why not? Because it infuriates you?'
"'Yes, it infuriates me,' I retorted. 'Those claims are monstrous!'[...]
'I want to appeal to your analytical mind, ' don Juan said. 'Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.'
'But how can they do this, don Juan?' I asked, somehow angered further by what he was saying. 'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?'
'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!' don Juan said, smiling. 'They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver - stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now.
Don Juan continues: 'I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its maneuver is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear.'
"Don Juan had said that by means of discipline it is possible for anyone to bring the energy body closer to the physical body. Normally, the distance between the two is enormous. Once the energy body is within a certain range, which varies for each of us individually, anyone, through discipline, can forge it into the exact replica of their physical body - that is to say, a three-dimensional, solid being. Hence the sorcerers' idea of the other or the double.
By the same token, through the same process of discipline, anyone can forge their three-dimensional, solid, physical body to be a perfect replica of their energy body - that is to say, an ethereal charge of energy invisible to the human eye, as all energy is. [...]
Don Juan explained that sorcerers see infant human beings as strange, luminous balls of energy, covered from the top to the bottom with a glowing coat, something like a plastic cover that is adjusted tightly over their cocoon of energy. He said that that glowing coat of awareness was what the predators consumed, and that when a human being reached adulthood, all that was left of that glowing coat of awareness was a narrow fringe that went from the ground to the top of the toes. That fringe permitted mankind to continue living, but only barely.
...To his knowledge, man was the only species that had the glowing coat of awareness outside that luminous cocoon. Therefore, man becomes easy prey for an awareness of a different order, such as the heavy awareness of the predator.
Is the "heavy awareness of the predator" the "imaginary beliefs of mankind" that are thrust upon us by our "reduced knowledge" state?
He said that this narrow fringe of awareness was the epicenter of self-reflection, here man is irremediably caught. By playing on our self-reflection, which is the only point of awareness left to us, the predators create flares of awareness that they proceed to consume in a ruthless, predatory fashion. They give us inane problems that force those flares of awareness to rise, and in this manner they keep us alive in order for them to be fed with the energetic flare of our pseudoconcerns.
All we can do is discipline ourselves to the point where they will not touch us. How can you ask your fellow men to go through those rigors of discipline?
They'll laugh and make fun of you, and the more aggressive ones will beat the shit out of you. And not so much because they don't believe it. Down in the depths of every human being, there's an ancestral, visceral knowledge about the predators' existence.
What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat. There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.
The only alternative left for mankind is discipline. Discipline is the only deterrent. But by discipline I don't mean harsh routines. I don't mean waking up every morning at five-thirty and throwing cold water on yourself until you're blue. Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are strong and tough but because they are filled with awe.
Sorcerers say that discipline makes the glowing coat of awareness unpalatable to the flyer. The result is that the predators become bewildered. An inedible glowing coat of awareness is not part of their cognition, I suppose. After being bewildered, they don't have any recourse other than refraining from continuing their nefarious task.
If the predators don't eat our glowing coat of awareness for a while, it'll keep on growing. Simplifying this matter to the extreme, I can say that sorcerers, by means of their discipline, push the predators away long enough to allow their glowing coat of awareness to grow beyond the level of the toes. Once it goes beyond the level of the toes, it grows back to its natural size.
The sorcerers of ancient Mexico used to say that the glowing coat of awareness is like a tree. If it is not pruned, it grows to its natural size and volume. As awareness reaches levels higher than the toes, tremendous maneuvers of perception become a matter of course.
The grand trick of those sorcerers of ancient times was to burden the flyers mind with discipline. They found out that if they taxed the flyers' mind with inner silence, the foreign installation would flee, giving to any one of the practitioners involved in this maneuver the total certainty of the mind's foreign origin. The foreign installation comes back, I assure you, but not as strong, and a process begins in which the fleeing of the flyers' mind becomes routine, until one day if flees permanently. A sad day indeed! That's the day when you have to rely on your own devices, which are nearly zero.
There's no one to tell you what to do. There's no mind of foreign origin to dictate the
imbecilities you're accustomed to. This is the toughest day in a sorcerer's life, for the real mind that belongs to us, the sum total of our experience, after a lifetime of domination has been rendered shy, insecure, and shifty.
Personally, I would say that the real battle of sorcerers begins at that moment. The rest is merely preparation.
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Irini.