Cult of Significance
By Alan Forrest Smith | December 30, 2009
The cult of significance has spread like a bubonic plague amongst mankind even more so over the past 10 years and especially with the rise and rise and rise on the internet.
Now anyone, anywhere, anytime can be famous.
People are driven messages into their minds about how important they are, how special they are, how they are here for a bigger purpose and to release mankind from one thing or another.
This is the Cult of Significance.
I’m on TV… I’m significant.
I’m on the stage … I’m significant.
I’m on a website … I’m significant.
People look up to me … I’m significant.
And so on and on. But the problem is this…this insidious cult is focused mainly on one thing and one thing only… THEM! The individual, no more, no less.
Look how politicians have changed. I’m old enough now to be able to look back over the years and see how they are gigantically different to how they used to be.
Decades ago a politician would be a person with huge life experience that then dedicated himself or herself to the SERVICE of the public.
They would take their massive experience and go into public office to share their life wealth for the better good. This was built around serving the public, serving the country, swerving a bigger good, a better picture. Of course not all were like that but a good chunk hung on to that ideology. Do you think politicians have your greater good in mind today?
Of course not because they too are now absorbed in the Cult of Significance. THEMSELVES.
I mean how can a guy that has no life experience, just spend so many years in university, have one or two small time jobs and then suddenly be of great value to the community? Doesn’t make sense does it and lets be honest here, you can feel their inner motive coming through.
And as I have spoken all over the planet at different places, met hundreds of thousands of people, spoken to and talked to people time and time again I meet people that are self absorbed into the cult of significance. It’s not their fault!
They will tell me how special they feel, how important they must become, how they can and will do great things in their lives yet unlike public servants from the past they take their experiences, their ideologies from Google, blogs and wiki or self proclaimed gurus.
Trustworthy? Reliable?
No wonder I have yet to meet one of these types in a settled life situation. They carry the same traits of dreams with no foundations, concepts with no experience and all usually based around the cult of significance. THEM.
Am I saying your significance is unimportant? Not at all, what I am saying is the real meaning to happiness and life is not in self serving of self but in giving as much as we possibly can.
I am not condemning anyone here, I am simply saying the planet is going through huge changes and being wrapped up in the Cult of Significance will silence you. On average everyday 100,000 words pass before your eyes built into the 8,000 ads that are fed to you by a greedy manipulative world.
This has created vibrationally distorted views and visions fed and supported by so named reality TV show where someone that is no one with lower level of vibrational output (of a mouse) affect the greater mass of mankind.
Famous for becoming infamous, Lines and line of people being asked by the presenter what do they want from life? The answer is always the same… “I just want to be famous”
The bigger picture leaves us with a society that ogles, goggles and pursues the mind of emptiness as we await them to say something that could possibly be important.
Most base their happiness on a future event of some kind. More money, better relationship etc.
I mean … if they can be famous for doing nothing, so can I say the masses right?
This does affect you whether you feel it does or does not.
This world is changing, it has to.
The Cult leaders of the significance cult will be swept away in the sea of change. It’ll no longer be enough for someone to say… “I am the way” … new kinds of service and transforming societies are coming.
But how about you? How does this make you feel?
Ghandi is a fantastic example of gaining significance through his good works. He never spent day after day proclaiming his greatness and fleecing the masses in the process. He took his service of man to a vibrational level that actually made tsunami like changes on the planet.
And even today, the good neighbour that loves and adores everyone. She helps, she speaks, she lifts, she cries, she does all she can to make sure those around her are touched by her love. She asks for nothing and gets nothing in return. SERVICE in action.
The old style cult of significance will be over shadowed by the silent lovers of creativity, where the mind meets the body and they understand how to FEEL their way through life.
The cult of significance never felt. It was all about being a follower, being and evangelist for the ideas of another.
The effect of this cult is devastation destruction and misery. Yet on the surface those affected but this cult play a good game. They look happy, they appear ready and willing. They appear to be giving for the greater good of mankind.
Yet they are mostly imprisoned in their own thoughts that have been transferred to them by the repeatist behaviours and conditioning of others.
This is an endless cycle designed only to hold those in its grip forever.
You are the change for you, you can eat your way out of the Cult of Significance.
Let me be clear here… YOU ARE significant. You are special and you can have as much significance as you need in your life to create and experience the happiness you desire.
But right now this might sound like more directions, more rules, more step by step for you being happy.
It isn’t, it’s simply my way of communicating everything I have seen over the years with the Cult of Significance.
Try this, it’ll help.
- Unplug for a while and gather your thoughts.
- Avoid the thinking of others.
- Meditate and think deeply about you and your life.
- Give yourself realistic challenges that you never usually do.
- Change your thought patterns.
- Learn from the past by weighing up the time spend and the results from your efforts.
- Be honest and ask yourself… has this cult held me back, held me still or have I really grown from it?
The cult wants you to stay forever.
It wants to carry on pushing and promoting it STUFF to you and it will tell you everything you need to hear in the moment.
And as we face another year are you falling into repeated patterns, the ways of the conditioned?
Have you set into motion a new years resolution along with the rest of mankind with their fatally flawed premise of salvation because of a list of resolves that are rarely fulfilled?
Just remember this is all about your life, where you are and where you want to be. Do all you can to swerve, help and love others. Build your own personal value within yourself and this will bring you more significance, more attraction that you could ever wish for.
Does this help you? Have you been stung by the Cult of Significance? I’d love to hear your feedback.
Alan
5 Responses to “Cult of Significance”
Thanks Alan, as usual perceptive and compassionate
Such a bizarre world where people want other people to know their every move, thought, opinion & what their budgerigar had for tea. Not to mention the whole celebrity/nonentity culture associated with it.
Real communication, care and connection gets lost as more and more of us subscribe to the cult of online personality.
The worst side effect is that millions of children and young people around the world are growing up believing that this way of being is what they should be aspiring to. Many of them are also losing the ability to communicate without online tools and outlets.
No…. I’m not a technology/online communication luddite, there are some real and life affirming benefits that can be grown from the new technology and some of them I use in my own work and daily life. Its just that the whole online cult of self advertisements and personality has got totally out of proportion.
We need to find some kind of balance. Maybe it’s time to take some deep breaths, look around and see what is really important about being human and communicating with each other in this next decade of the 21st Century before we disappear into a culture/society of virtual trivia and self obsession.
By Gordon sharp on Dec 30, 2009
Thanks for the post Alan. It’s refreshing to read that there are others who believe that the idea of “being famous for being famous” is such a crazy idea that so many of us seem to get swallowed up in.
Whilst on holiday last week I ended up watching the dreaded CNN as it was the only English channel available whilst my wife was getting ready each evening. I watched a report from their Ceremony of Heroes (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cnn.heroes/) where 10 or 12 individuals received awards for the things they had done to help mankind.
One was a bartender who set up http://winetowater.org to help eradicate the diseases associated with dirty water throughout the world, another was a 16 year old who had his legs amputated after a boating accident but whilst in hospital recovering set up a foundation to help poor kids with similar problems receive false legs and to fight the US insurance companies who try and wriggle out of paying out on such injury claims.
Great people doing something without seeking recognition.
If only those who seek fame for fames sake could be as equally inspired by these “heroes”.
By Colin Maddocks on Dec 30, 2009
Dear Alan:
A thoughtful if somewhat confused post. Your ranting about the “Cult of Significance” is well taken if a little bit over the top for my taste. You can trace the real start of the movement to the Nazis and Hitler. The methods pioneered by them are refined and used today by both political parties and self serving people. The methods are well understood and duplicatable by any worthwhile PR firm. On this side of the Atlantic we have celebrites who are famous for being famous like Paris Hilton.
I will have to take exception to your comments about public service. As a student of History, especially recent history, I can point to very few public leaders who were selfless and operated for the public good. Winston Churchill is one example of the selfless man. At the same time Joe Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo and Franklin Roosevelt all worked to promote aggendas that were NOT in the best interest of the public. Three of those four rank as among the largest mass murderers of all time after #1 Chairman Mao.
As a side note, Robert Macnamara and Ted Kennedy both served the public all their lives and two bigger nincompoops would be a challenge to find.
The US Congress has discarded the Constitution when considering new legislation. Many are lifelong public servants who are ignoring their oaths of office.
I think you are wrong for ranting about need that many people have to follow someone they can look up to. The Cult of Significance give them that. The real problem is the general lack of responsibility celebrities demonstrate towards the public. Some use it for good like Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Sadly, most don’t care or are fundamentally dishonest people. Tiger Woods is the most recent example. The world’s first Billion Dollar athelete and what does he do with his fame? He had it all and threw it away for lust! Sad and common.
Lastly, your appeal to service to others is an ideal that most never get to beyond their immediate family and maybe a few friends. They will never be famous or remembered but they do the day to day sacrificing that makes the world a decent place to be. You mention that but I think you take it too far regarding public service.
I have a simple rule that goes “Never prevent a fool from making a mistake; he’ll hate you for it and repeat the mistake at the earliest oppurtunity”. Part of being a servent is knowing when to let the other person learn the hard way even when you could have helped them. Sadly, it is how we learn the important lessons.
At the end of the day the “Cult of Significance” is a hollow shell and most will see through it. Those that don’t have a lesson to learn.
Talmage
By Talmage Shipman on Dec 31, 2009
Dear Alan,
Thanks for your post.
The Cult of Significance is the contagious spread of the Sexual Energy Virus, created from the imbalance of the masculine and feminine energies. Life on Earth up to now has been the ‘School of Hard Rocks’, the classroom to experience life and to discover self. The 3D (third dimensional) dualistic world is all about experiencing the opposite scenarios of the one source – the light and the dark, good and bad, right and wrong and male and female etc. There is no balance and safety with duality, but fear and to survive with just enough.
The ego is not a bad aspect of self, it is the protective mechanism for survival for the human body whilst in physical form. Its survival is based on fear and because ‘the mind doesn’t know beyond what it knows’ it also fears the unknown and change. The human condition is based on the scenarios ‘to love, to be loved and to belong’ and this instinct is very strong for survival. The ego/mind will go to great lengths to be loved and to belong and accepted by others, so it becomes a people pleaser, filled with obligation and compromise, even if it is with the Cult of Significance’.
Mixing duality and the ego with a limited perception of the mind and the human emotions creates more unbalance within the masculine and feminine energies of self and this is what feeds the Sexual Energy Virus. Humanity places the mind on the pedestal, they see the mind as hierarchy over the body and they squash and ignore the soul. This is a field day for the ego and the mind to play their fear driven games of ‘how important they are, how special they are, how they are here for a bigger purpose’, they are the SELF-AHOLIC’s. It is all about THEM, the self-absorbed ego that drives their arrogance by their overinflated ego. That is the ‘I’m Significance’ – they fight, strive, control and manipulate for power and greed by covering up their fear and doubt and the fear of lack.
Because humanity is playing the dualistic game of the dark and the light, there are many individuals playing the game of I’m Insignificant. Through fear they have allowed their ego to become squashed and suppressed; they are subservient and submissive, they are influenced and inferior from being controlled and disempowered to where they think they are unimportant, they feel that they are not good enough and their worth is less than their hierarchy brothers and sisters, especially if they don’t have the right cultural background and financial, material or positional status.
Both aspects of the light and the dark of whatever you believe is light and dark, the boasting arrogant I’m Significance or the meek and humble I’m Insignificant are playing the masquerade story game and both parties are feeder-feeding, fight-flight victims.
The I’m Significance is the Feeder FIGHT Victim and the I’m Insignificant is the Feeding FLIGHT Victim
These egotistical and subservient games of duality come from IMBALANCE and FEAR. The feeding mechanism is draining, taking and stealing energy from others. They can do that in many ways from emotional, mental and physical abuse or spiritual, energetic, financial and material stealing, whether it is legal or illegal – all feeding relationships whether personal, business or social is still stealing. All experiences are serving them, the fight or flight victims are getting something from playing that game, it depends if it empowers or disempowers them.
Balance is about integrating the ‘I Am Soul Presence’
The I Am Soul Presence is already ‘I Am Significance’, but the little human plays the game of thinking that the high IQ mind or brain is significant over everything else, including body and soul and the Silent Lovers of Creativity, which doesn’t come from the mind – it comes from the heart, the soul.
In order to balance the masculine and feminine energies within self only comes with accepting and loving the Self. When you come to this level of consciousness, your awareness is beyond the limitations of the ego and the mind to where you disconnect from the hypnotic belief system and overlays of mass consciousness; it no longer feeds off others in order to satisfy the needs and wants of the little human.
Loving and accepting the self and all of their experiences will be the most challenging journey any human will ever have to face. For eons of time humanity taught NOT TO LOVE THE SELF, but only to SERVE others, to Deny Self, to Suffer, to Struggle, to Punish, to Work Hard, to be in Poverty by being in SERVICE to others. Those beliefs are so ingrained that we loath the self and belittle the self because of the dualistic games of dark and light that we have played and we are still playing.
Energy reflects from the inner to the outer. Energy responds to consciousness. Energy serves Self in whatever manner is chosen. If you don’t love yourself, or accept yourself, and if you don’t honour, bless, respect and have compassion for self – how on earth can you love another unconditionally? The self-aholic, self-absorbed ‘I’m Significance’ has no love for self, all they think about is taking from others in order to satisfy a fearful physical need. When you don’t love yourself you are an empty vessel. An empty vessel that is trying to SERVE others, because society says ‘that is what you have to do to be a good person’, so you can be saved on judgment day, you have to be in SERVICE in Action. Serving others with conditional love becomes the feeder-feeding, fight-flight victim. The self-aholic, self-absorbed server only gives and loves conditionally, they have nothing to give other than their fears, agendas and burdens, because they lack compassion and they are filled with expectation of what others can do for them – that’s the attention pay-off, the feeding.
The I Am Presence of Significance is the master creator, is 100% responsible for all experiences. A master has no agendas, has no feeding and is full of true compassion. You are the I Am Presence of Significance, but you don’t know it or you don’t want to know that you are divine also, it is within you and will always be there for you, when you don’t look outside of yourself for validation and when you don’t hide from yourself, your divine self. True compassion is beyond sorrow and pity, but to accept, bless and honour another for their chosen journey and experiences, without trying to heal, fix and change another. When you have an agenda, you are trying to alter another to buffer or cover up your fears to suit your needs and wants and you are not allowing them to discover the awareness of their own ‘I Am Presence of Significance’ – even if their journey is tough. The I am Presence of Significance is being a master creator; a master is not a victim because there is no feeding mechanism going on and a master takes ownership and full responsibility of themselves within their reality.
Until you can discover your truth, not the truth of others because that becomes your story lie, until you can consciously choose your truth, to disconnect from mass consciousness, so you can truly begin to love yourself unconditionally; until you can accept all of your experiences, to meld and integrate the light and the dark; self-worth and self-love and the masculine and feminine energies cannot unify and come into balance. It is only when you can truly love yourself can you avoid the contagious Sexual Energy Virus, to where there is no feeding and stealing from others. Only then, can you fully trust yourself, only then can you have unconditional loving relationships, only then can you truly allow your body to heal and rejuvenate with ease and can you allow yourself to receive true abundance on all levels, including financial and material abundance.
Yes, change has occurred, the Quantum Leap of Consciousness has come and gone and it is still expanding. The New Energy era brings in a change and because humanity hates change it will enforce the Cult Leaders of I’m Significance to appear worse, because they don’t want to let go of their identity and control. It will also encourage the I’m Insignificant victims to discover ‘Who Am I’ to become more empowered and aware of self. The controllers will take time to ever begin to look at self in the mirror, because they think they have everything, they are getting it from others, but the suppressed and disempowered will seek change sooner, they have nothing to lose but their freedom if they don’t. They are the strong ones deep within self, the inspirers and pioneers of new consciousness. As new awareness comes forth with an inspired and expanded consciousness will swept away the ‘cult of significance into the sea of change’ and they will form a new kind of service. Both dual parties will one day begin to follow the Authentic Self of ‘I Am the Way, of I Am Presence of Significance’ for self only, instead of following the egotistical or submissive MC Sheep (mass consciousness sheep) that belittles and misinterprets the human existence.
By Pamela Skuse on Jan 6, 2010
Great article Alan.
The world is becoming more and more selfish and self indulgent. Kids these days just want to famous for being famous – to earn lots of money and everyone else be damned.
It seems young people don’t care who they tread on or hurt to get to the top. Here in Australia they ran a recent poll among young people regarding future careers and winning Big Brother and becoming a celeb came out on top – Winning Big Brother!!!
Where will it stop?
Cheers, Mike from South Melbourne
By Mike Moss on Jun 8, 2010