I’ve been frequenting a meditation class at the Arlington Center pretty regularly this year. I’ll probably talk more about it later, but one of the reasons I like it is that the teacher who teaches Tuesday nights often makes points using references that resonate for me. Including classic movies. Last night he was talking about how our brains construct experience, and brought up this little quote from the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup:

Mrs. Teasdale: Your Excellency! I thought you’d left.
Chicolini: [Impersonating Rufus T. Firefly] Oh, no, I no leave.
Mrs. Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes!
Chicolini: Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?

Which is great.

I was reminded of it just now when reading Sharon Salzberg’s post about doubt (which I found via Caterina Fake’s blog). Which is a little more serious than a Marx Brothers’ quote, but worth it. Here’s what really spoke to me today:

The truth is available at every moment when we trust our own ability to discover it, when we have the presence of mind and balance to distinguish fear from intuition, to know the difference between a corrosive concern about our own capability from the disavowal of something not even worth doing.

It’s an ironic age. The common belief is that cynicism proffers strength, or so we think. Really, it just leaves us stuck, unwilling to take risks and try things for ourselves. That’s where the real wisdom of mindfulness comes in. The practice of mindfulness is not a technique to be mastered, but a movement we make as we arrive in each moment to fully listen to and learn to trust the truth of our own experience.