How do I deal with the desire to be important?

Believe it or not, this is an utterly useless desire to keep!
This one desire makes us run around incessantly in a race for power, position, prestige, name, success and what not, throughout our life.

And say, your desire is fulfilled one day and you become an important person. What next?

When one becomes important, do you know the amount of price one has to pay? Most importantly, there’s a great chance of us losing out on a lot of our precious diamonds in exchange for some truly unworthy stones? For instance, when one becomes a big person, the constant feeling of ‘I am superior than others’ engulfs the humility in one’s persona. This feeling of divide (a divide between I and others) robs us of all our peace and tranquillity. Not only does it make our heart void of love and compassion, it also attracts many evils like envy, jealousy, hatred, to name a few.

To believe, ‘I am important’ is called pride
This pride makes us lose some more diamonds as we become disrespectful and arrogant in our behaviour. If one does not treat us as ‘important’, we become angry and non-forgiving. Further, pride keeps us engrossed in a constant effort to maintain our ‘importance’, which in turn makes us fearful and stressful all the time. And do you know Nature inevitably punishes the one with pride in order to bring the inflated ego to normality. Why unnecessarily invite any punishment?!

Hence, the desire to be important is fairly dangerous as we can see!

Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan, an Enlightened being, says,
“I did not enter the race-course of worldly life. That is how I found this Lord within.”

“What is the point”, asks Param Pujya Dadashri, “The horse that wins the race gets the first prize, the second and third horse will get some recognition, but what about the horse that comes fourth? He just runs the race in vain, with his mouth foaming (due to strain). I said, ‘Why should I enter this race course?’ Why should one have to have foam in mouth unnecessarily?

Those who want to be big and famous have grabbed on to the ‘gurutam’ yog (ego of being the biggest). Everyone wants to be big and they have all taken a beating in the process, they have died in such beatings, life after life. No one succeeds because how many can take the first prize in a horse race? How many horses win the trophy? If five million ‘horses’ run a race, how many come first? The first prize goes only to the winning horse, does it not? The rest die huffing and puffing. Therefore, practice laghutam yog (the smallest ego).”

Also teaching how to practice the laghutam yog, Param Pujya Dadashri says, “If someone calls you unworthy, then become his disciple by saying, ‘You are my Guru because you made me aware that ‘I am unworthy.’”

Worldly life is created from the ego of being the biggest, becoming the smallest it comes to an end
“The world is based on the ego of gurutam, which is the intent to be bigger than everyone; it is the belief of ‘I am greater than everyone’. This verily is the cause of worldly life, whereas with a laghutam ego, one goes towards attaining liberation. Laghutam ego means to conduct interactions of worldly life with the (humble) intent, ‘I am smaller than everyone.’ That will take him towards liberation. By believing, ‘I am greater than everyone’, one enters into a race-course (competition) and onto the wrong path through unawareness. With laghutam ego, one gradually becomes smaller and smaller until he becomes completely laghutam; therefore one becomes God (Parmatma, the absolute Self)”, explains Param Pujya Dadashri.

What does Akram Vignan say?
The one who is the smallest in the relative world, by law, becomes the biggest in the real! In that stage, God will embrace that person.

But until one’s intention of becoming the biggest and the most important in the world is gone, unless one's inner belief of ‘I am something’ is gone, the intention to be the smallest cannot take hold.

The status of the smallest is achieved by Self-Realization
When we attain Self-Realization, with the grace of Gnani Purush, we have a constant awareness about the line of demarcation between the real Self (I am a pure Soul) and the relative self (I am John – you may insert your name here). Thereafter, as we remain within the directives of the Gnani Purush, we gradually attain the status of the smallest.

Our vision after Self-Realization is towards the state of laghutam (the humblest) and the goal is of only that, thus we do become that!

‘To remain in the intent of becoming the smallest and to keep the vision of oneness (no feeling of division with any living being) is the foundation of Akram Vignan.’ ~ Param Pujya Dadashri

Let’s make our task easy!
Those who are deeply entrenched in the worldly life prior to meeting the Gnani, upon meeting him turn towards the path of liberation – that’s the rule! So following this rule, come, we too go and meet Gnani and attain from Him Self-Realization. And surrendering our worthless desire of being important in his lotus feet, let us become free from this dangerous disease forever!

To know more: https://www.dadabhagwan.org/self-realization/