My Problem with 'Clarity'

[here]

'Clarity' by Jamie Smart has absolutely nothing to do with mindfulness!

It is marketed as a 'self-help' book alongside all the others, with a 'brand new' way of thinking (he calls his 'new' system a 'paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense').

However, let's talk about the content:

He says that everybody else is doing it wrong...he explains that the way to happiness is not to look to something in the future, or back to something in the past, but find contentedness with the present moment...

Sound familiar?

In a small section of the book, he dismisses a whole bunch of 'techniques' at once, saying that "stuff like positive thinking, mindfulness and affirmations are completely unhelpful"...and he also says that "there's no point meditating to try to reach enlightenment, when you can instead be content with the present"...(those are actually not direct quotes but basically what he said, and I haven't got the book to open right now to make them 100% accurate).

He is telling everybody in his book that 'mindfulness' is meditating to reach enlightenment, and that it is in the same boat as 'positive delusion' and 'affirmations'! He thinks it's just another technique!

This book is selling really well and currently has 22 five star reviews on Amazon UK. But is it just me that's really offended by the way he is basically putting people off mindfulness and thus off a great deal of fantastic resources which SUPPORT what he offers?

He calls his 'new' system "Innate Thinking®"...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clarity-Better- ... 017&sr=1-1

I have emailed Mr Smart asking him to 'clarify' (get it?) some of the odd representations of mindfulness he has in his book...I've also asked if he has ever actually read a modern book on secular mindfulness.

I suggest you do the same:

info@jamiesmart.com

[JonW]

I've noticed quite a few "self-help" books on the market that are obvious mindfulness spin-offs/rip-offs. "Mindfulness" itself does appear to be something of a buzz word and is often used to flog books with only a tenuous link to what we understand mindfulness to be.
It seems as though Jamie Smart has some big guns behind him. The support of Paul McKenna alone should guarantee him a few thousand sales.