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%FREEDOM FROM CONFORMITY REBEL SALVATION COMPULSIVE 900712

     Freedom   from   "formity"   involves   freedom  from
compulsive   conformity   and  freedom   from   compulsive
nonformity; i.e.,  freedom from trying to avoid conformity
through rebellion against conformity.

     People who are enslaved to conformity feel that their
salvation  and  identity depends upon the  right  kind  of
conformity; the right kind of forming themselves according
to external criteria.

     People   who  are  enslaved  to   rebelling   against
conformity  feel that their salvation and identity  depend
upon  the  right  kind of  rebelling  against  conformity;
rebelling  in keeping with external criteria regarding the
form and focus of rebellion, another form of conformity.

     People  who  are  enslaved to  conformity  and  those
rebelling  against  conformity  are all  preoccupied  with
conformity of some form or other.  Freedom from formity is
freedom  from  all kinds of compulsive preoccupation  with
conformity,    including   conformal   rebellion   against
conformity.

     Freedom   from  formity  entails  both  the  external
security   which  is  the  gift  of  the  freedom  to   be
vulnerable;   and  is the internal security which  is  the
authentic  conviction  that  who one is,  is  an  internal
matter   which   cannot  be  truly  changed  by   external
realities.   In the serenity of such security there is  no
preoccupation   with  conformity  or   rebellion   against
conformity, the duality of the dichotomy is transcended in
a union where formity is not a central issue.

     Those  who  are enslaved to conformity  or  rebellion
cannot  believe that it is possible for conformity not  to
be  a central issue.  To many people the central issue  is
whether  you  are conforming in the proper way.   To  many
others  the  central  issue  is whether  or  not  you  are
rebelling against imposed conformity in the proper way. To
all  such people conformity is the central issue,  and you
are  not  o.k.   if to you conformity is not  the  central
issue.

     We  cannot  be  healthy,  be  whole  and  enjoy  both
personal  and communal integrity so long as conformity  is
the central issue to us.

     Conformity  is  the central issue to participants  in
the  collusive games of mutual self deception  of  addicts
and their supportive codependents.

     To  transcend the issue of conformity is to  threaten
the  cohesiveness  of  the participants in  the  games  of
mutual self deception; to threaten to promote the collapse
of their paradigm,  their world. They encourage each other
to  be dedicated to their traditional ways of  comfortable
pain,   so that they can be free of the paralyzing fear of
change---change which would entail the acknowledgement  of
endlessly  repeated mistakes,  and the acknowledgement  of
the  endless  denials of such  mistakes  through  habitual
dishonesty.   To  acknowledge and own  such  mistakes  and
denials as one's own; that appears to be worse than to own
and  willfully continue in one's own endless,  comfortable
and familiar PAIN.

     Thus conformity continues to be the central issue  in
many  of our lives,  and we do not break free of  our  own
preoccupations with conformity to be honestly ourselves in
ways which are authentically our own.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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