Selfish mindfulness

An interesting take on mindfulness from professor of psychology Thomas Joiner in Friday's WaPo:

What we might call authentic mindfulness [the nonjudgmental awareness of the richness, subtlety and variety of the present moment], I found, is a noble and potentially useful idea. But true mindfulness is being usurped by an imposter, and the imposter is loud and strutting enough that it has replaced the original in many people’s understanding of what mindfulness is. ... 

Mindfulness, as popularly promoted and practiced, can itself be a distraction. It purports to draw on ancient traditions as an antidote to modern living. Yet it exacerbates the modern tendency toward navel-gazing, while asking us to resist useful aspects of our nature.

Much more worth checking out in the longer article.