THE INSANITY OF CONFORMITY

The Achilles’ heel for many of those too young to have mastered the skills of advanced Contemplative spirituality is conformity. This takes the form of what many call “boredom with the ordinary” in the face of something more stimulating. Boredom is the underpinning reason that those who are young, being tested by the fires of false gods, find themselves ever so slowly losing their Centers of Faith. Probably more accurately, replacing Christ with the cotton candy of relativism, pantheism, and an anemic view of life based on whatever their minds scavenge to place at their one and only Center. What you place at your Center is who you are at that moment.

Consequences of choosing any Center of your life.

Because each of us has reason (analyzing what is good and bad for us) and freedom to choose either the good or bad (evil, in the case of living in three universes of physical, mental, and spiritual), even if it goes against reason or the faith commitment we made at Baptism, the ultimate person who sets boundaries for us can be one of two options: a. I AM THE BOUNDARY SETTER: I set my own boundaries, am my own God, my own pope and judge of right and wrong, answerable to no one, accountable only to my own humanistic drives. b. I CHOOSE GOD TO BE THE BOUNDARY SETTER: I have reason for a reason and the ability to set boundaries for myself, but also the freedom to choose the boundaries that someone else sets for me, in this case the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If I choose this way, I need to constantly fight against my nature every moment to keep that Center I chose from being corrupted by the magnetic pull of my humanity, which would revert me to the first option. It is a relentless pull that demands I have the sustainable energy to lift the weight of my second option and keep it from deteriorating back to its original sin.

Not only do humans fail to detect the subtle “war of wills” going on, but often, without enlightenment from a source of energy outside of themselves (where they received the power to rise to the deepest part of their humanity and sustain it there), but we are cronicly lazy (slothful) and prorone to do what feels good, the path of least resistance, what stimulates us sexually and titilates the mind, and what seems natural (because there is no alternative to the need to feel good. The human default is to choose what makes us feel good in the moment, in a way that our humanity says is what it means to be fully human. (Apologies to B. F. Skinner)

This is the bedrock of what goes on in each choice. We have reason to know what is good or evil, and if all we use is our mind and reason, we always choose the path of least resistance.

I am not suggesting that this is bad so much as that it lacks the full picture suggests that humans have reason and free will to reach the next level of evolution, one involving individual free choice, one that we were meant to achieve by our own means and strength. Still, somehow, we lacked the awareness and energy to know what to choose or how to move to the next level, unless we get help from outside of our nature, from one who is reason and the inexorable freedom to choose absolute truth.

THE FRAGILITY OF HUMANITY

Keep the notion of the seduction of young and pusillanimous minds in play. Young and easily swayed minds (because they have not yet learned to harden themselves against the various wars that plague being human (physical and mental universes only). A few of the characteristics of human (which I see in myself) are:

• Not allowing my ego to be pricked by someone I think is inferior, so I fight back, either with fists or passively/aggressively. I preserve my good face and name.
• Being angry if someone makes a personal slight or insinuation that my parents are less than human.
• Not wanting anyone to get the best of me in anything, being king of the hill, the Center of my universe, and the one most important to me.
• Not wanting anyone to tell me what to do. My will is challenged, and the default is to do what I want, even if evil, because I am God. I get angry when corrected, or my self-perceptions of who I am are challenged.
• Not wanting any boundaries from parents, siblings, and most of all from the Catholic Church to limit what I can do (confusing it with boundaries that free me to become who my nature intended in the beginning of humanity). I always choose me over others. I see others as an IT rather than a THOU (Martin Buber).
• I lack the fortitude or depth of awareness to want to dig deeper in my religion (if I am still a pursuer of truth) because it is so old and monotonous, boring me with its repetitiveness and stressing conformity with a set of boundaries from the Catholic Church that my reason and emotions tell me go against my tendencies to be free from coercion and a lifeless mindset.
• Lacking the spiritual toughness and warrior training to defend myself against the invisible temptations of the dark side to chuck God and the Catholic Church as going against everything I feel is good.
• Being seduced into listening to Scriptures in particular and the existence and writings of those who are battle-hardened (Mary and the Saints) and can intercede for us to have a higher power, if asked.
• Living only on the level of what we can see that is true (presupposing that the only truth is what you can see or verify). Oddly, that is true, but it does not allow individuals to incorporate the invisible yet real worlds before them.
• Feeling that there are three intangible yet somehow unreachable longings in the hungry heart, always beyond our grasp, yet somehow the underpinning that comprises what is most important to discovering who I am as a human. a. The insatiable longing to know what is deeper about my humanity. b. The unresolved feeling that love is at the Center of true energy but not quite knowing what or where to go to find it outside of myself; c. The realization that human truth is corruptible and tainted by personal persuasions to define truth by what they think. There is no absolute truth, and humans don’t like to be told they must believe this or that. There must be absolute truth, but where to find it in humanity’s capabilities?
• Failure to move beyond “intellectual Catholicism,” the realm of the mind and thinking that this is spirituality.
• Failure to get your hands dirty in defense of your Baptism promises by coasting along the road of life, confident that all you have to do is be baptized and you can “sin bravely.”
• Failure to convert yourself daily in prayer, and through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to be more like Christ and less like you. (capacitas dei).
• Acceptance that your hearts are far from Christ and the slothfulness of thinking you do not have to work daily to convert yourself to “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus,” (Phil. 2:5)

Conformity breeds monotony, especially with those unprepared to meet the cruel expectations of being human. Monotony is the martyrdom of ordinary living in the Catholic Church. The key here is to embrace your humanity by digging deeper than the default of conformity. But here is also a problem. The Catholic Church does a decent job of teaching the young (not the young in age, but those willing to keep learning). Still, there is work to do in forming Catholics in how to specifically address the psychopathology of the average (Bernard Basset) and how to actually move from intellectual facts to emotional and spiritual needs of the hungry heart.

ISSUES MODERN CATHOLICS MUST ADDRESS TO LIVE IN A WORLD OF DISSONANCE AND MORAL CHAOS.

TRAINING IN THE BOOT CAMP OF CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE — Humans may not be lazy by nature. Still, we tend to make choices that avoid pain, don’t get our hands dirty, or don’t take time away from seeking our own pleasure, rather than taking up our cross daily to follow Christ’s way, truth, and life. The only boot camps I know about are those of the Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carmelites, Augustinians, Cistercians, and many other specific ways that Laity have to follow a strict regimen of silence, solitude, prayer, and work in the context of community. I belong to one of these boot camps, the Lay Cistercians (www.trappist.net). Where the parish is the incubator for the daily living out of our Catholic journey, these boot camps require a deeper level of commitment, one that only a few make it through, and all of which are the strictest forms of Catholic spirituality there are. My final profession as a Lay Cistercian with stability at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, means that I accept living out the rest of my life, using Cistercian charisms and practices, to focus intensely on Jesus and be present to him in the silence and solitude of my heart. Because I made it through the Marine Boot Camp of Lay Cistercian information/formation/information, and was invited by the Monastic Community to pledge a lifelong, strict observance of penance, prayer, contemplation, and the practice of daily placing myself in the presence of Christ and waiting for His answer, not just in words, but in the thrill of being filled up with Christ, as I can assimilate it. Love of Christ in me to share with those in whom I come into contact each day. I recommend each Catholic to consider joining one of these boot camps to learn to dig for heavenly gold under the ground on which we now stand.

THE STRUGGLE TO BE SPIRITUAL — Those who begin their boot camp are uncomfortable with the discipline, the routine, all members having the same set of boundaries instituted by Christ to allow us to be adopted, sons and daughters. Modern Catholics, at least as I look around, do not have the awareness that is needed to confront the dark side of humanity (false self) and convert that to be more like Christ, but have the temptation to go through the paces of being present to Christ only on Sunday and to fail to interiorize the graces that come from Jesus to confront the war we all wage against our flesh (Galatians 5) each day. Each day. Humans, and I can only speak for myself, are constantly bombarded with those human temptations to fame, power, money, adulteration, orgiastic sex (Erich Fromm), and making ourselves into God as did Henry VIII. All Catholic Novices (all those who have never even thought that there is a deeper level to being spiritual) begin at zero, and remain at zero until they take up that cross (shovel) and begin to dig deeper, as Christ shows us. Conversion of morals daily to the mind of Christ must be a passion. That only happens when the Church trains us to go through the same boot camp as did the Apostles, three years of seeing but not believing, until the Holy Spirit overshadowed them and “Let loose the Spirit of Truth” through them that has lasted until you. I hear it and abandon our worldly selves to live a life of a pilgrim on earth until we get to Heaven after we die. If a Catholic goes to Heaven and meets Christ at the entrance, Jesus will only ask us to show Him our hands, the bruises on our bodies. When we say, “What do you mean by dirty and cut hands with the scars of battle on them?” Jesus will extend his arms, taking our hands into His, and tell us to look at what He did for us. We will see the crown of thorns, see the cuts on his arms, see the nail holes in his hands, and notice the flesh pierced below his heart. The struggle of being like Christ shows us in our bruises and cuts, just like it does for the Church down through all the centuries.

CATHOLICISM MAY NOT GIVE YOU INSTANT GRATIFICATION OF YOUR DESIRES BUT WILL ALWAYS GIVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO BE FULLY HUMAN. — Humans love instant gratification; I know I do. There is a tendency for me to take this most animalistic trait and apply it to the spiritual life as an adopted son or daughter. This takes the form of a mindset in prayer and in the presence of God, thinking that, since Jesus Himself said, “Ask anything in my name, and I will give it to you,” I get whatever I want, when I want it, immediately. The trouble with that thinking is the nuance that there are two citizenships, one of earth, the one where I eak out my daily existence, and then the spiritual one (containing physical, mental and spiritual universes), and the other where I have been adopted by the Father as son (daughter) and heir to the kingdom of Heaven here on earth and in the life to come. In this second citizenship (the spiritual versus merely the flesh (humanity)), I have the mindset to ask Christ anything, but realize that the answer will not come cloaked at the human level, but will be given in God’s own time and place. All prayers are answered, but we must discern them using the template Jesus left us, not the one the world’s impatience dictates. Those without discipline and who are not tied into the energy of Jesus through the Holy Spirit seek a sign, as Scripture notes, but no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. We fit into God’s plan for reality, not the other way around. This simple awareness takes away the seemingly amemic response that God gives when I ask for something and allows me to wait in silence and solitude for the answer. God always answers my pleas for help, but I don’t always receive what I expect the answers to be. The answer is always, “My grace is sufficient,” admittedly not the answer that someone seeking instant gratification wants to hear. Waiting to let God speak to me in the silence of that upper room of my inner self is not the easy way; it is not the way of the cross. The silence transfer of grace (energy) from God to me through, with, and in Jesus, because of the power of the Holy Spirit- demands I am alert enough to receive it, and not like those Apostles who slept in the Garden of Gethsemane. I keep repeating this over and over, as I say the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, the Agony in the Garden, “My God, My God, why have I forsaken you?” This realization means you have Christ as the ground of your being and will never be bored, nor will you keep asking the Holy Spirit to entertain you in exchange for paying attention to what God has to offer.

DO WHAT HE TELLS YOU.

Copyright 2026, Michael F. Conrad. Ed.D. The Center for Contemplative Practice. All Rights Reserved.

Six Core Websites Every Catholic Should Memorize and Use Frequently: www.wordonfire.org; www.scotthahn.com; www.usccb.org; www.newadvent.org; https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org/; www.vatican.va

Bonus site of the Month: https://ashenden.org