Daily Archives: January 9, 2021

Ego is able to convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.Chgyam Trungpa

A purported benefit of mind-body spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation and energy healing is that they will help quiet the ego, providing an effective antidote to the exalted self. Indeed, such practices do have the potential for such an awakening, allowing us to get more in touch with reality as it is right here and now, including the qualities we dont like about ourselves. Spiritual practices also have the potential to help us cultivate compassion, concern and unconditional positive regard toward othersthings that can truly evolve our consciousness as a species.

However, this is all much easier said than done. As has been observed by many spiritual leaders, spiritual practitioners and psychologists over the years, the ego has an incessant need to be seen in a positive light, and will eagerly hijack whatever flow of consciousness it can use for its own enhancement. As the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo noted:

At every moment [the seeker] must proceed with a vigilant eye upon the deceits of the ego and the ambushes of the misleading Powers of Darkness who ever represent themselves as the one source of Light and Truth and take on them a simulacrum of divine forms in order to capture the soul of the seeker.

Likewise, in his classic book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader Chgyam Trungpa wrote:

Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process: it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.

Psychologists have also pointed out the potential for spirituality to serve as a tool of self-enhancement. According to William James, the father of American psychology, any skill that increases its centrality in the self-system is likely to breed a bias toward self-enhancement. As it turns out, no domain of human skill has been found to be exempt from this self-centrality principle. It seems to be an inextricable part of human nature.

This includes the domain of spirituality. Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we are growing is our ego. Some psychologists have pointed out that the self-enhancement that occurs through spiritual practices can lead to the I'm enlightened and you're not syndrome and spiritual bypass, by which people seek to use their spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences to avoid genuine contact with their psychological unfinished business. In my recent book Transcend, I call it "pseudo-transcendence" transcendence built on a very shaky foundation.

Just how much of a problem is all this, really? Perhaps on the whole, spiritual practices really do help quiet the ego, and spiritual narcissism isnt that widespread. What do the empirical data actually have to say on one of the greatest paradoxes of our time, which is: If a major point of yoga is quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, why are there so many yoga pose pictures on Instagram?

SELF-CENTRALITY AND SPIRITUALITY

In the past few years, a number of high-quality studies have started to unearth the existence of spiritual narcissism and self-enhancement among spiritual practices that purport to quiet the ego. In one set of high-powered studies, Jochen Gebauer and colleagues looked at both yoga and meditation practices.

In their first experiment,they followed 93 yoga students for up to 15 weeks. They repeatedly assessed self-enhancement levels among peopledirectly after participating in yoga and among people who had not practiced yoga within the past 24 hours. Self-centrality was measured by items such as "Focusing mindfully on the exercises across the whole yoga class is..., measuredon a scale of 1 (not at all central to me) to 5 (central to me).

They measured self-enhancement though a standard measure of self-esteem, as well as by asking people the degree to which they perceived themselves as better than the average yoga student in their yoga class. They also included a measure of communal narcissism, an often underdiscussed form of narcissism in which one thinks that they alone will save the world and that they are the most helpful person of them all (e.g., I will be well known for the good deeds I will have done). Research shows that communal narcissism is correlated with grandiose narcissism and all of the entitlement, arrogance and overconfidence that goes along with it (just applied to a helping domain).

The researchers found higher levels of self-centrality as well as self-enhancement (higher self-esteem, better than average judgments, and communal narcissism) among those who had just completed a yoga class compared to those who hadnt engaged in any yoga class in the past 24 hours.They also found suggestive evidence that the augmented self-enhancement of the yoga practice played a key role in the well-being benefits of yoga through increases in self-esteem. This finding hinted at the idea that the well-being benefits of this spiritual practice may actually come through boosting self-esteem, not through ego quieting.

In their second experiment,they followed 162 meditation practitioners for up to four weeks. They repeatedly assessed meditations self-centrality and self-enhancement directly after meditation and in the absence of prior meditation. This time, they directly measured well-being, including a comprehensive battery of measures of hedonic well-being (happiness and high life satisfaction) as well as eudaemonic well-being (higher levels of autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance). Their self-centrality questions included items such as How central is it for you to be free from envy?; and their self-enhancement scale included items such as In comparison to the average participant of this study, I am free from envy. Again, they included a measure of communal narcissism.

The researchers found that, after meditation, self-centrality in meditation-relevant domains was exacerbated, not diminished, and self-enhancement in meditation-relevant domains was augmented, not curtailed. Additionally, increased levels of self-enhancement explained the effect of meditation on higher well-being (both hedonic and eudaemonic).

It's important to point out that they sampled Western participants, and the yoga and meditation practices the participants engaged inwhich included engagement in hatha yoga and loving-kindness meditationdont necessarily generalize to all yoga and meditation programs and practices. Nevertheless, the researchers did find greater self-enhancement in the yoga and meditation conditions even among very advanced mind-body practitioners. These findings suggest that, contrary to the purported benefits of mind-body practices as quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, they may actually boost self-centrality and self-enhancement. Furthermore, and intriguingly, it seems as though it is precisely those self-related boosts that contributed to the well-being benefits of the spiritual practices.

SPIRITUAL SUPERIORITY AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

In a more recent set of studies, Roos Vonk and Anouk Visser conducted an exploration of spiritual superiority. They interviewed several psychologists, spiritual trainers and lay people, and asked them to describe people who use spirituality as a self-enhancement tool. They then translated these qualities to six items:

I am aware of things that others are not aware of.

I am more in touch with my senses than most others.

I am more aware of what is between heaven and earth than most people.

Because of my education and experience, I am observant and see things that others overlook.

Because of my background and experiences, I am more in touch with my body than other people.

The world would be a better place if others too had the insights that I have now.

In three studies, they assessed the relationship between their scale of spiritual superiority and other variables. In study 1, they focused on people who engaged in some form of spiritual training. Participants were recruited via mindfulness schools and energetic training centers, which aim to train skills that classify as paranormal, such as reading auras and regressing to previous lives. In studies 2 and 3, participants were recruited via a popular psychology magazine with a broad audience interested in psychological and spiritual development. The comparison was with people without any spiritual training.

Overall, the researchers found that the correlation of spiritual superiority with self-esteem was lower among the no-training group than those participating in any of the spiritual training groups. Their measure of spiritual superiority was related to spiritual contingency of self-worth, the degree to which people derive higher self-esteem from their spiritual practices (e.g., I feel better about myself when I notice I develop myself spiritually). According to the researchers, this illustratesthat the self-enhancement function of spirituality is similar to other contingency domains of self-esteem.

Interestingly, their scale of spiritual superiority was more strongly correlated with communal narcissism than self-esteem, providing evidence for the notion of spiritual narcissism. Indeed, its important to distinguish between healthy self-esteem and narcissism. The problem isnt with self-esteem but with the pursuit of self-esteem. Healthy self-esteemcomprising a positive evaluation of ones self-worth and masteryemerges naturally and organically through the engagement of authentic mastery and positive relationships, rather than by pursuing self-esteem as the goal. Increases in healthy self-esteem as a result of spiritual practices may be a good thing, and are not necessarily indicative of spiritual narcissism, which is why its good that the researchers were able to tie their measure of spiritual superiority to a specific form of narcissism: communal narcissism.

The researchers found differences depending on the form of spiritual practice, however. Spiritual superiority scores were consistently higher among those who came from energetic-training centers than the mindfulness trainees. In fact, those who underwent energy training were more likely to claim special knowledge of mindfulness, more so than those who were actually in the mindfulness condition! The energetic healers were also especially likely to score high in supernatural overconfidence, scoring high in items such as When I randomly open a book on a page number that is meaningful to me, this is no coincidence, I can send positive energy to others from a distance and I can influence the world around me with my thoughts.

While their study is correlational, it's likely that there is a bidirectional relationship among these factors. Its likely that spiritual practices can be used as a tool to bolster the narcissistic self, enhancing ones feeling that one is special and entitled to special privileges. But its also likely that some spiritual training programs attract people with strong personal development goals that are related to Western narcissistic culture. As the researchers note, the idea of exploring one's own personal thoughts and feelings and becoming an enlightened being may be particularly attractive to people with high levels of both overt and covert narcissism.

Taken together, the researchers concluded:

Our results illustrate that the self-enhancement motive is powerful and deeply ingrained so that it can hijack methods intended to transcend the ego and instead, adopt them to its own service....The road to spiritual enlightenment may yield the exact same mundane distortions that are all too familiar in social psychology, such as self-enhancement, illusory superiority, closed-mindedness, and hedonism (clinging to positive experiences) under the guise of alleged higher values.

HEALTHY TRANSCENDENCE

Is there any way around the allure of spiritual narcissism? Its all well and good that gurus espouse the importance of quieting the ego (often while driving in their Rolls-Royces), but in practice can we ever really override the universal self-centrality principle and transcend spiritual narcissism?

I think we can, but I believe the first step is simply awareness that its incredibly difficult to do so. One serious obstacle to healthy transcendence, as I see it, is how spiritual practices are sold to the masses. Yoga and mindfulness are big businesses in America. The purported benefits of mindfulness meditation have generated a billion-dollar industry (see here, here and here). Yoga is the most popular mind-body practice in Western societies. Many of these programs offer a long list of promises, including the reduction of stress and anxiety, along with greater confidence, creativity, focus, achievement, success, eating habits, sleep and even happiness.

But heres the thing: Healthy transcendence doesnt stem from an attempt at distracting oneself from displeasure with reality. Healthy transcendence involves confronting reality as it truly is, head on, with equanimity and loving kindness. As I put it in Transcend, healthy transcendence is not about leaving any parts of ourselves or anyone else behind or singularly rising above the rest of humanity. Healthy transcendence is not about being outside of the whole, or feeling superior to the whole, but being a harmonious part of the whole of human existence. Healthy transcendence involves harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.

This involves seeing reality as clearly as possible. As Nancy Colier, author of The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World, notes, the point of mindfulness is to be able to see what is happening inside ourselves, without ownership, judgment or action. And simultaneously, to lose our great belief in and reverence for the productions of our mind.... The dangerous habit is this: The mindful witness itself is becoming yet another form of ego, a new identity, a new somebody that we wear with pride.

Don't get me wrong: I genuinely enjoy looking at all the varied and intricate yoga poses on Instagram. But from my reading of the yoga literature, it doesn't seem as though the theoretical intent of yoga is primarily for physically attractive people to display with pride their ability to twist themselves into a pretzel. Rather, it seems that the most growth-oriented benefits of mind-body spiritual practices occur when we arent using them as a tool for satisfying any of our basic needssuch as our needs for security, belonging and self-esteem. Instead, such practices seem to lead to greater maturity, wisdom, compassion, acceptance and unconditional positive regard toward others when we repeatedly attempt to cultivate the ability to be witness to our mind and behaviors so that we can catch when our crafty ego has hijacked the system in a way that is detrimental to our own self-actualization and self-transcendence.

Which has me thinking: Perhaps it's time for all of these yoga and mindfulness centers to chill on all of the extrinsic purported benefits they are claiming (Better heath! Better sex! Amazing concentration! Great success at work!), and just focus on the benefits of such spiritual practices for allowing us to realize that such concerns of the ego are just the ego doing its thing. That awareness, in and of itself, is enough of a benefit to last an enlightened lifetime.

Link:

The Science of Spiritual Narcissism - Scientific American

There were few positives we could muster from the past 12 months in culture. A live music industry left in tatters; anticipated albums pulled or indefinitely delayed; big-screen movie experiences a thing of the past. Many creatives, however, have persevered throughout, lucky enough to be in situations that meant they could ride out the pandemic, waiting to release their art at a time when we could all enjoy it at its fullest. Enter 2021, a new beginning: a year of double-stacked albums, movies, tours, and TV shows.

Its bound to be a busy year all of those pop stars who were set to make their comebacks in 2020 have likely waited until now and so weve filtered through the noise to pinpoint exactly what the world will be shouting about. From music documentaries to heartthrobs marking their return to the silver screen, these are the biggest pop-culture moments to have on your radar.

Read more: 5 Exceptional Netflix Originals To Watch In 2021

Billie Eilish: The Worlds A Little Blurry, premiers globally on 26 February.

By the time Billie Eilishs feature-length documentary, The Worlds a Little Blurry, arrives on Apple TV+ on 26 February, almost two years will have passed since the 19-year-old superstar dropped her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. The film captures the process of making the record right up until her Grammy Awards sweep in early 2020. Its Emmy-winning director, R.J. Cutler (who made 2009s The September Issue), has been given unfiltered access into Eilishs life, both at home and backstage on tour, in what promises to be the most insightful look at the pop juggernaut to date.

When Ella Yelich-OConnor the artist known better as Lorde isnt releasing albums, she lives between New Zealand and Los Angeles, avoiding social media (she hasnt tweeted since 2017) and staying off the celebrity grid. Such long spells of silence only increase anticipation for whatever she may come back with.

After her 2017 sophomore record Melodrama wound up on a number of critics end-of-decade lists, fans have been waiting more than three years to hear from their hugely talented gen-Z leader. And in a rare newsletter sent to fans at the end of 2020, in which she discussed her trip to Antarctica, she confirmed what we had all been waiting to hear: a new record will arrive in 2021. Could it be another generation-defining masterpiece? It seems we wont have much longer to find out.

In a year that forced most pop stars to cower in fear, overthinking every element of their career and, in many cases, holding back on releasing records, there was one woman who decided to do it all: Dua Lipa. Her ascent to the top tier of pop godliness was affirmed in 2020 with a critically acclaimed album, international notoriety, hit singles, collaborations with major luxury brands and a record-breaking live-stream performance that attracted more than five million viewers in one night. There is just one thing left to do: bring that show to arenas around the world. It might be a little late, but expect Lipas Future Nostalgia tour, due to kick off in the UK in September, to be the glitter-doused cherry on a delicious disco era.

Read more: Dua Lipa Covers The February 2021 Issue Of British Vogue

There were enough blockbusters slated for release in 2020 to please everyone. Fans of musical theatre were hotly anticipating Steven Spielbergs take on West Side Story; the sci-fi lovers had their eye on Timothe Chalamet in Dune. Meanwhile, Marvel Cinematic Universe enthusiasts were finally getting their first movie about Avengers heroine Black Widow, starring Oscar nominees Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh. But as cinema was one of the industries hit the hardest, most of those crowd-pullers were postponed at the last minute. Any movie that needed packed theatres to earn back their big budgets are going to arrive throughout 2021 instead. Double the number of movies? Just when you thought youd had your solid fix of screen time, these aforementioned flicks, plus hundreds more, will remind you of the magic of the communal cinema experience.

Timothe Chalamet in Dune.

Chia Bella James. 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

When it first hit our screens in 2009, RuPauls Drag Race was a niche show for queer people, in which drag stars competed against each other to become the USs greatest queen. It was a hotbed of glamour, comedy, and pin-sharp bitchiness; the ultimate form of rivalrous reality TV. Today, not much has changed beyond the shows global, far-reaching appeal. Last year saw the birth of Canadas Drag Race; in late 2019, a UK version of the hit show launched. Now, we have two new seasons hitting screens in January: season 13 of the US version launched via Netflix on New Years Day and a second series from the UK is due on 14 January.

Ready for a hotbed of glamour, comedy, and pin-sharp bitchiness? Us too.

Two summers ago, teenagers and their parents across the world fell hard for Euphoria. The compulsive HBO series, which followed a drug-addicted high-school girl and the cast of tortured characters who lived in the same suburban town, won its lead star Zendaya an Emmy last year. Now, following a couple of standalone dives into the Euphoria universe, solely capturing the characters Rue, played by Zendaya, and Jules, played by model-actor Hunter Schafer, a new season is set to arrive later in 2021. Prepare for more controversial teen hedonism and beauty inspiration, as the shows make-up artist Doniella Davy returns to the make-up chair.

A new season of Euphoria is set to arrive later in 2021.

The K-pop industrys big-budget escapades were a tonic during lockdown. As Korea bounced back from the pandemic, the countrys biggest stars got to work making art the way they were used to: on the grandest scale possible. Case in point, the worlds biggest girl band Blackpink, who managed to squeeze in a debut studio album, multiple music videos and collaborations with Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez into their year. Next up? A live-streamed concert called The Show, so Blinks across the globe can see the group perform the bangers from their new record on stage. Streamed via YouTube Music from Seoul, expect jaw-dropping visuals and unrivalled choreography when it kicks off globally on 31 January.

Blackpinks The Show airs on 31 January.

Courtesy of YG/Netflix

Four years after making his cinematic debut in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, pop favourite Harry Styles is currently shooting his next project, touted to be gunning for Oscar glory. Dont Worry Darling, the latest film directed by filmmaker and actor Olivia Wilde, is a domestic thriller in which an all-American housewife (played by Florence Pugh) envisions her mundane life falling apart during a psychological episode. Harry Styles plays her husband, and photos from the set suggest hes going to be captured in similar outfits to the 70s ones hes been donning during his Fine Line album era. Wildes last movie Booksmart was a big critical success could this sneak in a late 2021 release to secure some nods for next years Oscars? Here's hoping that means four years of non-stop Styles red-carpet looks.

Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard and Fionn Whitehead in Dunkirk, 2017.

Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock

More from British Vogue:

Read the original here:

8 Major Pop-Culture Moments That Will Shape 2021 - British Vogue

The turn of a year is traditionally a period of reflection and resolution. This year, lockdown has amplified that feeling as we consider a seismic 12 months and catch glimmers of hope.

Last Christmas, I wrote about the need to make 2020 a year of teamwork across football as we fight racism and discrimination. Nobody could have anticipated what transpired. The Covid pandemic and the death of George Floyd have changed us. Initially, Covid created a resurgence of community spirit most vividly symbolised by the weekly clap for carers ritual. That spirit has frayed over time with frustration and individualism rising. But football has consistently demonstrated real leadership with clubs continued work in the community exemplified by Marcus Rashfords stellar work on child food poverty.

The death of George Floyd has returned racial inequality to the front of public discourse. Again, football showed great leadership, players symbolically taking a knee to call for action. The Football Leadership Diversity Code has now been adopted by 48 clubs setting gender and ethnicity recruitment targets for coaches and senior leaders. Long term, this is potentially a game-changer.

What should we expect in 2021 and beyond? As the Nobel laureate Niels Bohr said: Prediction is very difficult, especially if its about the future.

Football does not exist in a vacuum. It is affected by broader social and economic trends. These send conflicting signals but two major themes are likely to dominate as we enter a post-Covid and a post-Brexit world. The end of the first world war and the Spanish flu pandemic presaged an age of hedonism in the roaring 20s and there are predictions that our current forced contemplation of mortality may trigger a similar era once the shackles are off. Happier people tend to hate less.

It is tempting to believe that now Brexit is done, social divisions will heal. I am sceptical. I tend to think of Brexit as more symptom than cause it reflected divisions that have been percolating for years. The usual backlash against rising demands for racial equality has commenced look at some of the responses to players taking a knee. We await more detail on the governments new equalities policy but initial noises worryingly resemble a dog whistle.

But there is reason to hope that football can rise above the noise. I sense a real mood to turn words into action and football has an opportunity to lead. We need to focus on three key areas in 2021: using data to monitor change, tackling online hate and aligning on education.

By committing to the Football Leadership Diversity Code, the game has made commitments to better reflect society. Over the next few years, we need to help football meet those commitments with talent programmes and hold the game to those promises using data to track progress. We intend to use our partnership with Sky with its global technology capabilities and broadcast platform to play our part in doing this.

Social media is the battleground of hate. It is partly a technological and partly a behavioural problem so we will need technological and behavioural solutions. That needs to involve Twitter, Facebook, the government, law enforcement, football clubs and governing bodies. The government can play its part by accelerating the Online Harms bill, regulating big tech, creating a duty of care on social media providers and creating rules around transparency. But we cannot just wait for that. There are things we must do now.

Clubs and players have enormous followings which can be a force for good (ask Rashford). But with great power comes great responsibility to take care. The vicious trolling of Karen Carney was grimly predictable in the febrile tribal culture of social media that rapidly escalates to misogyny, racism and other forms of hate. It was completely avoidable.

The recent abuse of QPRs Bright Osayi-Samuel and Bournemouths Junior Stanislas led to more calls for the removal of anonymity. But anonymity at which level? Anonymity on the face of social media can serve a vital protective purpose (for example, if you are gay in a country where homosexuality is illegal). The real issue is how quickly account verification information is revealed to law enforcement and action taken once that anonymity is abused. This is the heart of the problem.

There are gaps in the system between football, law enforcement and social media which contribute to the culture of impunity. Current processes are largely reliant on complaints and targeting high-profile prosecutions. But the culture of social media is set by the repeat offenders who spread hate little and often. We need to be proactive. We need to go trawling, not whale hunting. We monitored social media posts in the summer with the PFA and an AI company called Signify. I believe that football needs to invest in monitoring solutions to identify and pursue the serial and serious offenders.

What if we could identify the top 10 offenders every week and create an accelerated evidence pathway to law enforcement? The question is who pays for this kind of monitoring. Last summer, several clubs balked at the cost of a pilot scheme. The cost for an entire season across the leagues is likely to be in the region of 0.5% of the aggregate transfer fees spent during the pandemic. This is a question of priorities. Football needs to invest in real solutions or the players will continue to pay the price.

Finally, it is a truism and a refrain that education is key to countering discrimination. But educating whom, about what and when? Most people know that hate is bad but they may not realise the impact it has. There are many education providers across the football ecosystem. It is time we got aligned and focused on driving measurable outcomes.

The financial success of English football over the last 30 years has been built partly on slick marketing. But players and fans are now cynical of the PR machine. Above all else, in 2021 football needs to build on the statements of intent from 2020 and commit time, energy and resources to convert that intent into action.

Go here to see the original:

In 2021, football needs to turn words into action when it comes to discrimination - The Guardian