Conformity?
In centuries past the 'educated and ruling elite' often
attempted to influence social trends. Not surprising,
it's an aspect of human nature to wish to control others,
or at least influence them to our way of thinking,huh?
Equally unsurprising, therefore, is the way in which the
'old religions' blended hygeine or cohesive social laws into
their 'God said' pronouncements in order to progress
social understanding, health and 'moralities'.(I understand
that Moses managed to borrow quite a few laws from
a Persian King a few centuries before!).

When I was a youngster you never bought a pork pie on
a Monday. It had been made on Saturday as, in those days,
few people worked on Sunday. These were the times when
refrigeration wasn't exactly widespread. I can easily understand
then an injunction in roaming desert tribes that eating pork
was forbidden. In the heat of the desert it wouldn't last long
before it became a danger to health.

In India people eat with their fingers, the right-hand only.
The left being kept for 'toilet functions'. In the kind of heat
that's in India, one can fully understand such a tradition.
Though perhaps using a spoon would be better hygeine
now that we have internationalised communities as
opposed to untravelled village communities.

So you could go on to list many 'religious injunctions
or traditions' that played a part in the development and
health of the human species.

Occasionally, however, there have been monumental
breaches of traditions that have re-orientated a whole
religion, nation or even the world (which is now known
to be round instead of flat!). If Abraham had followed
the 'custom of the time' where would be the Jewish
and Islamic faiths today? Abraham dared to follow the
voice of love in his heart and break the tradition of
'first-born sacrifice'.

What of Samaritans who cast aside conventions
espoused by Pharisees,Scribes, Sadducees and
the 'temple elite' in favour of compassionate acts?

What of Sons of Kings who rejected their royal
inheritance, left wife and recently born son, in favour
of a life of 'enlightenment', as did the Buddha.

If you would hear the 'voice of The One-ness' then
listen to your own heart first. For is it not absurd to
listen to the clamour of outdated tradition, the
carcophany of contradiction in out-dated doctrines,
and place them higher than your own experiencing?

Is it not absurd to think that 'The One-ness' is so
spiritually impotent as to require the 'seal of approval'
from some man-created humanity-controlling institution,
no matter how good it's motives may have been or are?
Or that 'The One-ness' is so un-powerful as not to
be able to speak directly to anyone? Even the lowest
amongst us.

In the depth of your lovingness you know what is your
fullest loving self and no rules or conventions can ever
conform you to someone else's experienced
or theorised conceptualities. You are part of 'The
One-ness', an individual and essential expression
of love.

Listen to your heart, your inner self, this
is where the voice of unconditional love is best
heard. If your actions are born of love then they
are the highest expression of the presence of
'The One-ness' and your acknowledgement that
you are a living expression of that unconditional
lovingness.

Your presence is a unique present to the world.
Your presence in this 'reality' is no accident of
circumstance.