Spirituality

Freedom from Conformity

Conformity is nothing but giving in to the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and ways of oneself, our family, and society at large. It can be anything, from not wearing certain clothing to not choosing a certain profession. But conformity doesn’t end there. It goes deep inside a person’s subconscious and makes them take actions according to these norms to ensure acceptability in the world. 

The Journey from Curiosity to Conformity

When children are born, they are curious about everything and have a pious and pure outlook towards everything they see, touch, feel, taste, and hear. They don’t think about right –wrong or good – bad. We teach them these things. We then also incentivize our children towards doing the “good things” and punish them or isolate them for doing the “bad”. Our reasoning is to protect them consciously and to shut their curiosity down unconsciously. Without knowing it, we are conditioning them to seek acceptance and depend on it. These same children, whose brains are working at a genius level till they are 7, become conformists, and stop being curious about everything. By the time they are teens, they just want to get through high school, get good grades for college, finish college and land a job in a big firm and earn good money. If you ask them why though, they won’t have an answer except that money is important. The real reason? What else can I do and still be accepted in society? 

Amongst these, reside the non-conformists. Those who don’t care about what society or their parents or extended families will think about their life choices. Those who don’t have the innate need to be accepted, they don’t care which college or which school they studied in or what their job is. What they do care about is constant learning, acquiring knowledge, and seeking their truth. The good news is, more non-conformists are rising to consciousness every day. The bad news is, they still aren’t enough. 

How Does Tantra Come into All This?

To start with, Tantra diminishes the ideas of right wrong and good bad. Tantra teaches us non-duality discussed in detail here (link to non-duality blog) and it teaches us to learn things through experience. Tantra teaches us the importance of accepting things as a whole and being curious about our surroundings, our environment, nature, and the cosmos at large. The practices in Tantra aren’t set or defined for everyone. A combination of different techniques (Tantra), verbal chants (Mantra), and instruments (Yantra) are used to help a person realize their truth. But all of these are just methods. A Tantra Guru would never confine their student to a particular path or make them walk it. They would always just show the path and ask the student to walk on it. This again requires immense faith and devotion in the Guru which the conformist society opposes. Because a society that’s based on protection and acceptability, cannot adapt to complete trust and devotion and that is why Tantric practitioners and students are considered non-conformists. The benefit is that a Tantra student learns and earns much more being a non-conformist than a conformist can ever think of. Because acceptance and conformity have limits that knowledge and faith don’t. 

So what do we do?

Here’s a little experiment for you, for the next week, be curious again. Start looking at things with complete curiosity and wonder instead of preconceived notions and you will discover things that were there all along, just hidden behind the veil of conformity. At the end of the week, tell us your experiences and the changes you saw. An example would be looking at a house plant with absolute wonder and curiosity and trying to find out more about its leaves, the areas it grows in, and its blooming process. Tell us about your experiences at the end of the week. We look forward to them. 
We hope this blog stirred up something inside you. To know more about Tantra Science, write in to us at info@chamundaswamiji.com