The other day I went up to the highest mountaintop to visit my favorite guru. Living in Florida that didn’t take too long, as our tallest mountain in the state would barely gain notoriety as a speed bump in Texas. Heck, you can ride halfway up an elevator in New York City and be higher above sea level than my favorite local guru ever gets. Well anyway, after ascending to the peak and dropping some cash in his hat (most gurus aren’t free you know), he proceeded to dispense the following nuggets of wisdom:
What you resist, persists
Don’t struggle against the tide
Fully embrace the moment
Wax on, Wax off
Having offered such revelation, the guru appeared quite pleased with himself and trotted off towards his cave. Yes, there was a cave on top of the mountain here in Florida…work with me a little. Anyway, off he went, and pretty quickly too. This guru didn’t even have a beard or a cane, just a number 8 tee shirt and a billy club.
Not completely satisfied I’d gotten my monies worth, I stopped him dead in his tracks. “Wait a minute”, I said. “I’ve seen ‘The Secret’, can’t stand Alabama football, have already read Eckhart Tolle, and I must have watched ‘The Karate Kid’ several times growing up. I came all the way up here with my bottle collecting money just to hear you recite a bunch of tired old quotes?”
Suddenly, his eyes lit up with a sparkle. You would have thought I’d just offered him a ride to the Burning Man festival on a magic carpet - mood altering substances included. He stops and stares me down. “Words are meaningless!” he says. “Understanding is everything. What do these words really mean to you?”
Put on the spot, I began to spout off all the latest mumbo jumbo I could remember from one of the positive thinking books I had been reading and some of the new age movies I had recently seen. Unfortunately, Mr. Guru wasn’t impressed. 
I began to sweat. Did I come all the way up here just to get told off and be made a fool of? Hell no! I was mad, and I was going to let him know about it.
But then something happened… I remembered something from all of those self help books and their advice on maintaining a positive state and not letting the ego take over. Darn, I was messing things up and of course I of all people should know better. I began to criticize myself inside my head for having messed up, and then congratulated myself for recognizing the error and taking appropriate action. It was actually quite a conversation. I thought I was having it to myself, yet Mr. Guru was watching me the whole time and had this to say immediately afterward:
“You fool, you have just proven that you haven’t understood a single thing! All those self help books have been wasted upon you. Better they were used as kindling for a homeless man’s fire pit!”
As I nervously looked on, he began to explain. “You may think you know a little about enlightenment, yet your actions speak otherwise. Lets take a look at that list again:
What you resists, persists.
Fully embrace the moment
Don’t struggle against the tide
Wax on, Wax off
“My words to you are as applicable inside your mind as they are in the outside world. All except the last quote, of course. I just threw that one in to see if you were listening.”
“If you are angry, do not seek to deny it, but rather acknowledge your emotion of anger as part of what is. Your anger is real in the moment, and only through acceptance and acknowledgment can you discover what it was that brought on the emotion in the first place. From there you are free to choose your response. Yet you subverted your anger and then became angry at yourself for being angry in the first place. Judgment. You completely lost touch with the moment and whatever it may have had in store for you. You threw good after bad. Finally your ego took over and told you how wonderful you were for ‘understanding how the process works’ and getting your mind back on track. You were so lost in your thoughts I could have tied your shoes together and pushed you over the mountainside and you never would have noticed.”
Next, he said: “That brings me to my points about embracing the present moment and not struggling against the tide. Don’t ever think that things have to be a certain way in life. They don’t. However they are, they just are. You can never change the past by your actions in the present. Similarly, you can never undo your emotional responses by your internal criticisms of them. Whatever emotion you feel, acknowledge it fully and listen to what it is trying to tell you. If it is laughter you feel, then laugh. If it is gratitude you are overcome with, don’t wait until it is time to meditate or pray to show your appreciation. Life is not so much about understanding as it is about being. Remain present in your internal dialog and cease to place judgment upon it or to deny what is. Embrace your thoughts, overcome them if necessary, learn from them and enjoy them, for they are real and now is all there is.”
The guru, satisfied with his response to me, asked me if I had any more questions. I told him that I did indeed have one more.
“Go ahead my son, ask away”, he said.
So I asked him: “What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow (sans coconuts)?”
He pondered this for a moment.
While he was lost in thought I tied his shoes together and pushed him down the hill. 
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