By Cathy Eck

Leaders with a God Complex

In a recent History Channel documentary on John D. Rockefeller, H.W. Brands, a historian, said Rockefeller had the ruthlessness that sometimes comes from the utter conviction that what he did was correct — not just correct, but divinely inspired.  So people who opposed him weren’t entitled to their point of view.  It was almost as if going against Rockefeller was going against God’s grace.

Rockefeller exemplified the God complex.  Leaders with a God complex have ruled the world since we became civilized.  The oldest trick in the book is to proclaim divine inspiration.  We believe them without a fight unless we know what divine inspiration actually feels like.

The God complex isn’t reserved for the famous or world leaders.  Many preachers, motivational speakers, and business leaders have a God complex.  Criminals work the God complex with great savvy.

Fear of The God Complex

Most of us know someone with a God Complex — perhaps a parent, teacher, or boss that we’re afraid of, blindly obey, and hide our True Self around them to stay under their radar.  When free thinkers are asked what they fear most in life; they often respond, “People with a God complex” because they see a very narrow, self-serving view of the world.  If they deem you evil, they see nothing wrong with punishing you.  In fact, they think they are punishing you for your own good.

It’s hard to tell if one with a God Complex is telling the truth or lying.  They often make perfect intellectual sense even if you come out on the losing end.  Since they project their emotions outside of them, they believe anything they say.  They have no discrimination and no empathy.  Win-win is not in their vocabulary.

We often feel emotion when they speak, but we ignore it because they have authority.  They sound just like the false God in the Bible and since most people are psychologically reversed around the Old Testament God, they don’t notice the coincidence.  If someone does challenge their God complex, they say things like, “Don’t you trust me?”  “You think I’m lying do you?”  “You hurt my feelings.  I’d never lie to you.”   We feel guilty or ashamed if we don’t believe their God complex, after all they do.

The Inner Rulebook

If this person plays a major role in our lives, we put their rulebook in our mind to stay safe.  In time, their rulebook becomes our own inner false God, our voice of divinity.  We feel good when we follow it and bad when we don’t.  We ignore our True Self completely.  We’ll even punish ourselves if we think we disobeyed the false God.  People often say, “Why did this happen to me?”  I tell them to ask the false God inside.  They do, and they nearly shit when they realize they get the answer because they were punishing themselves based on an old rulebook.

Sadly, our rulebooks tend to stay in our mind until we take them out.  People think that if they get a new belief system, they’ve replaced the old rulebook.  But the mind is like a tape recorder.  If you don’t delete the old recording, it will play when turned on by a triggering event.

The False God Voice Sounds Normal

We become accustomed to this inner voice with the God complex; we accept it as normal.  We’d never question it if others didn’t suggest that perhaps the Voice isn’t God talking.  Sometimes when others challenge our false God Voice, we get angry at them and protect the very voice that is harming us.

In today’s world, we see the God complex in religious fundamentalism of all sorts.  They are sure that God is defining who to hate.  But it’s important to remember, that God doesn’t hate; and God doesn’t tell us to hate — the church leaders do that with their very convincing God complex.

Our True Self helps us think correctly; it doesn’t tell us what others should think, believe or do.  Everyone has their own True Self.  If they ask us for help, then our best advice is to steer them toward their True Self so they can find what is right for them.  Often that means steering them away from the God complex in their mind that is shouting orders.

Initiates painted God as being of few words, communicating symbolically, or just a good feeling.  If you’ve ever felt inspired to do something, you may not have heard any words at all.  You just started doing it because it felt like the right thing to do, and it was.  If you love someone, you feel it.  For me, God is a feeling that is just right.  When I get in that place, I don’t feel the need to change anyone.  But I know I would not have found that place if I hadn’t learned to discriminate and get rid of the false God voices and rulebooks in my own mind.

Under the God Complex is Fear

God complex people look powerful and strong, but their strength is fragile.  Without followers, their beliefs have no power.  This is extremely good news.  Conspiracy theorists often create fear around these people.  They give them way more power than they actually have.  When people believe the conspiracy theorists, the God complex grows.  Adoration and fear are the same; a God complex feeds off attention.

While we might not be able to remove the God complex from leadership positions in short order, we can drop them and their rulebooks from our own minds.  We can discriminate when an inner or outer Voice tells us who to love, what to do, or who to be.  When we remove these false Voices from our own mind and return to our True Self, we have far more power than the biggest God complex alive.  They no longer affect our life.

People with God Complexes often use these Ten Big Lies.