What's all the Hype? Recognizing and Rejecting HYPE

By Lori Lines

What Is the Hype?
“Don’t believe the hype,” “believe the hype,” “create the hype,” … “Hype” has become mainstream vernacular, but what does it really mean? Hype can be more than a fast-spreading wide-reaching craze like Elvis Presley during the 50s or Chia pets in the 80s. Hype can happen globally, politically, socially, or individually. Hype is anything that becomes disproportionately admired, exaggeratedly important, and intensively influential.

Manufactured Hype
We’ve all witnessed the mass media “hype beast” at work, sensationalizing whatever whets the public’s voyeuristic, fear-mongering appetite. Capitalistic hype is also very familiar. It can be presented as “medical discoveries” such as the new popular superfood of each decade - ginseng, echinacea, goji berry, acai, or psilocybin. While these foods and herbs can be healthy, it becomes hype when acai, for example, is everywhere we look, in everything we eat, and touted as a cure for every ailment we have.

There are other types of hype that can be harder to recognize. Over the holidays, you may attend a family dinner where everything your cousin says is viewed as insightful, funny, or beyond reproach by the family. The same cousin, or perhaps their parents, often talk at length about how much they know, possess, or have accomplished – This becomes a type of social hype.
 
The hardest hype to recognize is the hype we create for ourselves. We can aggrandize someone or something in a way that is inconsistent with their actual power, influence, intelligence, or significance to our life and well-being. We may do this with social media likes or views, a parent, a love interest, a job, or even a lifestyle. This is an example of how we both create the hype and believe it.

Don’t Believe the Hype
Whoever first said, don’t believe the hype, had a valid point! Believing the hype can be very costly financially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Hype can drain our bank accounts as we shell out hard-earned money to partake in the latest wellness craze. It can be tiresome and stressful to continually re-condition our beliefs based on the newest guru on the scene. And how emotionally exhausting to repress our own desires and thoughts to align with what has now become the most socially acceptable value system!

What at first seems like going with the flow or staying current can have deleterious effects! Believing the hype can rob us of what we have, who we are, and what we believe. Ultimately, it diminishes our true selves, disconnects us from our higher selves, disrupts the path of destiny, and delays our spiritual evolution. 

Demystifying the Hype
So, why do we buy into the hype? It is often due to ego-based fear and comparison. We are so afraid that we will miss out, be left behind, or be excluded, that we buy into what we are conditioned into believing. While getting swept up in the hype is nothing to be ashamed of (if it didn’t work to some degree, why would it be such a common tactic), it can be avoided.

The best defense against buying into it is remaining grounded in your personal truth and conviction. You won't get swept up in the swirling waves of crazes and trends when you are rooted in your unique sense of integrity and values. You may sometimes find yourself swimming among them, but you won’t drown.
 
Reconnection is Key 
You must first reconnect to yourself and then reconnect to the Divine. The best way to unlock these two doors with one key is by getting out of your left brain and reawakening your right-brained, higher consciousness. By quietening automatic conditioning, which is highly suggestible, programmable, and readily accepting and instead heeding inner knowing, intuition, and Divine Truth, what will become extraordinarily clear is that hype is temporary, and the truth is transformative. 

Dismantling the Hype
Our approach to the hype determines whether it is harmful or healing. Ultimately, it is healthy, even beneficial in some cases, to be intrigued enough by the hype to try, explore, and learn about it. Instead of approaching the hype like a mindless participant, we strengthen our higher consciousness by observing, as mindful watchers, fostering the ability to disseminate and process our experience by connecting with intuition and truth. 
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Similar to what Gandhi said, hype doesn’t become truth the more widely it is spread, just as truth cannot be denied no matter how deeply it is hidden. Yet, the truth is never hidden from those willing to look with their hearts instead of their eyes. 

In love and truth,
Lori Lines
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