Our Guru Max has taught us many things. How to surrender to Spirit. How to respond appropriately to inappropriate behavior. He’s even taught us not to leave our clothes on the floor.

But our Guru’s most recent teaching is one that not only impacts our lives profoundly now, but impacts all future lessons we’ll receive from the Guru.

Why?

Because our Guru Max recently taught us how to learn.

Some of you know that we recently acquired a travel van. The van, P.J. Freedom, will allow us to offer talks, music, workshops, and retreats all around the country – and sleep in our own bed!  (P.J. stands for Peace and Joy. Because what better peace and joy is there than sleeping in your own bed?!)

Before we got P.J., I was pretty sure that our Guru Max would not be coming with us. The rigors of life on the road seemed, to me, ill-suited for the Guru’s delicate constitution.

Melissa, on the other hand, was convinced that the Guru had to come with us. “He loves us,” she’d say. “He wants to be with us all the time!”

It is true that, in our evacuation during the Tubbs Fire in October of 2017, the Guru stopped eating when we needed to leave him with a friend for a few days. It’s also true that, as we pondered the notion of the Guru on the road, we kept running into people with stories of successful travel with feline Gurus of their own.

Finally, after tale #13 of Free and Easy Traveling Guru, I relented.

“Okay,” I offered. “We’ll give it a try!”

[Insert happy, clapping Melissa, restraining herself from yelling, “I told you so!!”]

Nerd that I am, my first step toward introducing the Guru to van life was to research the ingredients of successful Guru/van compatibility. As it turns out, there are many factors involved said compatibility, but none is more important than The Harness.

The Harness, for those of you who have never seen one, looks like this:

I should point out here that our Guru had never met such a device. Our Guru is a free spirit. Strap a free spirit in a harness? With a leash? Never.

I wasn’t sure it was a workable combination. Melissa, once again, was absolutely sure we could convince our Guru to embrace the harness.

So we ordered one and showed it to the Guru. He was thoroughly unimpressed.

Then we put it by his food bowl to show him that it was a good harness, associated with a good thing like food.

Again, unimpressed silence from the Guru.

The next step, according to our online research, was to attempt to put the harness on the Guru.

There was only one problem with this plan. The Guru had not read any of the online research, and he was absolutely, dead set against putting that thing on his holy, Guru body.

This is where the Guru’s teaching really kicked in.

How were we supposed to get the Guru to embrace something he was dead set against?

As it turned out, there was a way.

It involved verrrry slow, gradual steps.

It also involved treats.

The Guru is a sucker for treats.

We realized that we were going to need to scruff him by the neck to get the harness on. But the Guru hates being scruffed because he associates it with going to the vet.

So we started giving him a treat, and then scruffing him. And then giving him another treat.

Suddenly, the Guru began to see scruffing as not a bad thing at all!

Once the Guru was sold on the the advantages of scruffing, we started holding the harness up to the front of his face while he was being scruffed. Again, with lots of treats to seal the deal.

After weeks – weeks! – of verrry slow, verrry gradual progress, with the harness going a little further onto the Guru’s head each time, one day we simply popped the harness all the way over the his head.

Did he care? Not really, because we immediately gave him another treat. Then we fastened the harness around his Guru body, again followed by more treats. And then we fed him lunch, just to show him how many awesome things could happen when he was wearing a harness.

We then proceeded to do this every day at meal time, until the Guru was a champ at harness wearing. He even started to seem proud of himself for wearing it. Or maybe he was just proud of himself for convincing us to give him so many treats to wear it.

Either way, it was a win-win all around.

And, as the Guru is wont to do, he enriched our lives with yet another lesson about living.

What did the Guru teach us?

1.He taught us that you can teach an old Guru new tricks. You just need to have an effective learning plan.

2. He taught us that an effective learning plan often involves slow, incremental steps. Especially when said new thing is intimidating.

3. And he taught us that treating yourself each step of the way makes learning easier. And more yummy!

As for Part 2 of our training regime, teaching the Guru to love the van, we’re planning on approaching it in the same slow, systematic way that we introduced the Guru to The Harness. If he embraces the van as we’re hoping he might, we might even let him drive!

How have you approached learning something new? Share your comments below!

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